Bartosz Kruczyński’s new record is undoubtedly an approximation. It’s more than meditative sound, breaking up the MDMA-soaked dance numbers of which he’s been raising his profile with since 2020 as Earth Trax. The Warsaw native’s early ambient works, which he released under his real name between 2016 and 2020, are also closer to »Closer Now« than, say, last year’s rapturous techno manifesto »The Sensual World«. Album number four holds what the name promises – and not only on a purely descriptive level. Tracks like »Understand« or the tear-jerking »Pied Piper« play seductively, almost sensually, with Kruczyński’s ethereal and sophisticated sound design, the ingredients of which have been tested live for years: the longing for the elegiac trance numbers of the early nineties, lucid references to IDM and Warp compilations for chill-out zones, but also a sense of how you can actually still formulate your own signature for ambient and techno today – with a special focus on the ambient. Vocal samples, pads and sprawling chords, which were still embedded relatively straightforwardly in a club context on the predecessors, come across here as more of a soundtrack for the sunrise at a woodland rave, where you meet the love of your life in an elf costume. Often enough, this album has just such romantic, redemptive qualities, like when the light-flooded build-up to »Lullaby« pours into an ecstatically floating breakbeat or the fluorescent shots on »Bruises« kit out an upbeat melody. Confidence – yes, »Closer Now« exudes that every second. It’s a mental antidote in these absurdly fucked up times.
Closer Now
