If Miłosz Kędra’s music evokes a certain ruined grandeur—crumbling Gothic facades, vine-snarled spires, centuries-old bricks ground to dust—those suggestions may not be entirely metaphorical. The Poznań composer plays an instrument that he designed himself, utilizing metal and wooden pipes scavenged from old church organs across Greater Poland—some battered and bent, some leaning at odd angles. Sheets of paper stapled around their tips look like miniature sails; the bellows appears to be held together with duct tape. Kędra has compared the rhythm of the bellows to a heartbeat, but this is no ordinary mortal pulse: The instrument’s jagged architecture resembles some fantastical robot monster’s ribcage.
By taking the pipes out of their liturgical setting and Frankensteining them into such a strange new configuration, Kędra might be reminding us that church organs were always meant to seem futuristic and superhuman—tools to keep the masses cowering before God. His new album, their internal diapasons, demolishes such hierarchies, rendering the pipe organ’s fundamental mystery in unusually intimate terms. Rather than looming imposingly above listeners, it meets them on their level; in place of triumphant harmonies and mathematical perfection are detuned intervals and soft, pleading sighs. Early Christians often built their churches atop pagan temples, obliterating all trace of the faiths that preceded them; Kędra’s album feels like it’s rewilding sacred ground, unleashing spirits that had been trapped for centuries.
their internal diapasons begins with a whisper, air catching against metal edges. It’s a profoundly physical sound, redolent of heat and friction—halfway between noise and music, tones struggling to take shape from the hiss. The palette expands on “airborne,” where tentative, wheezing bursts alternate with bright, declarative chords. You can feel the effort of the air straining through the pipes; moving in short, jabbing strokes, the rhythm has the dogged pulse of a work song. In “principale,” a fistful of flickering drones rise and fall in pitch, microtonal vibrations rolling in waves as the notes rub against each other. The shirred textures suggest a hint of what might be digital manipulation, an impression that becomes stronger in “for how long were you silenced?,” where glitching chords cut in and out, and a spectral voice moans in the silvery haze.
It’s tempting to compare Kędra’s album to Kali Malone’s organ music, with its unusual tuning systems and eerie harmonies, but a closer comparison might be Mica Levi’s Under the Skin—like that soundtrack, Kędra’s album frequently tips into the realm of pure texture, almost unnervingly severe. “drzazgi”—“splinters” in Polish—is the album’s darkest track, buffeted by foghorn blasts, hooting owls, and what might be a sack of flour being dropped on a stone floor.
