Another installment of our monthly podcasts, this time chartering the first month of the year (usually a pretty dead period in terms of releases), but there’s still good stuff released. From Dark Side of Pop compilation by Poland’s Cowshed Records, to the 90s sonic tribute Crni Pek to Romanian hommage to a Czech composer. Sound-wise it’s dark and gloomy and cold, not dissimilar to the weather outside. 

Poland has been no novice to witch-influenced tunes (courtesy of Cowshed Records), but lately there have been projects appearing on the scene that even though utilising some of the aesthetics of the once popular microgenre, create their own sonic language. 

Lasariage is a project of Jakub Wojciechowski who was also featured on Cowshed’s compilation Side Effects last year. His influences range from Boards of Canada via Beastie Boys to Salem. His latest album R■n■sans is out now and it follows in a characteristically languid vein but also offers some light at the end of the day (with customary John F. Kennedy samples on the way).

You can download and listen to the album here.

The mysterious Sopot based producer caught our attention a few month ago (read the article here), and since then he has kept in touch with the wide world via a steady stream of videos and tracks. His latest endeavour is a remix of Husband’s Lovesong accompanied by an old anime video. Below is another of his visual messages about a medical experience.

“This shocking documentary will give you some idea about the strange medical experiments which has taken place at the secret laboratory where Ebo has been kept. The same night when this video has been shoot, Ebo escaped. This video material is NOT A FAKE. The tape has been stolen from the secret archives of the Institute of Tropical Medicine.”

The Hungarian project Gazsi Rap Show sing about loneliness?? (Egyedül vagyok mint az ujjam) on the backdrop of industrial beats and lofi rapping. 

The Slovak duo BIOS - visual artist Boris Sirka and graphic designer Jozef Tušan - are based in east of Slovakia in Košice. We met them on our audio travelogue almost a year ago. From looping black metal records they are now slowly moving into similarly opaque but more abstract sonic territories - somewhere where drone, ambient and noise hovers in the background. These are two excerpts from their jamming at the Košice cultural space Tabačka.