Atol Atol Atol exploded onto the scene of Wroclaw, Poland as the result of combined musical talents of the strongest pillars of the CRK’s ‘Salka’ community. Ukryte Zalety Systemu, Kurws, Przepych – they were the ones who raised the wave of the most exciting music to come out of Wroclaw since the legendary Klaus Mitffoch. The fact that this wave is still going strong is proved by Łukasz Plata (bass, vocal), Agata Horwat (keys, vocal), Hubert Kostkiewicz (guitar) and Artur Soszyński (drums), grouped under a bizarre banner in which a fantasy of having an exotic holiday clashes with a phantom of nuclear annihilation. The Atols play post-punk, but not in the manner dictated by the worn-out Anglo-centric canon. They rather evoke the dreadful spirit of no wave, the social sensibility of Dutch anarchists from The Ex, the approach of free music, and the reminiscence of the European rock avant-garde tagged as Rock In Opposition. All mixed together in changing, mutating proportions. The result is ragged, lunatic songs in which space is straddled by a sharpened groove, druggy synth clouds, the moans of a degenerated guitar and mechanically organised vocals, drawing heavily on Devo.
On their first album, tied to island imagery and filled with alarm sounds, Atols proclaimed the surreal “End of the Thousand Islands Dressing” (pol. “Koniec sosu tysiąca wysp”, 2022). Now they reduce the title message to a stark warning: Drone Drone Drone. The heat of the Pacific beaches recedes to make way for the cold breeze of local dystopia. In Plata’s lyrics, rats chase dogs in staircases, city blocks form Kafkaesque labyrinths, and icy neon lights bombard the streets. Drones fly into households through open windows (‘or maybe it’s just the system dropping by because it wants to know how you’re doing?’), ‘there’s stress in the air’. When exposed to these daily oppressions, the band acts like an irritated nerve, twisting in a feverish convulsion. However, it steps out of it in a dance-like manner, guided by the angular paths of a hyperactive bass. As if allowing itself one last dance against the world’s end. It is significant that the album ends with a denial, the word ‘no’ shouted at the end of the track 2025 – a readiness to resist. It is affirmed in the music: jagged, anarchic riffs and relentless rhythms, ready to tear the bodies and minds of listeners away from their senseless service to global capital and plunge them into a liberating trance.
“Dron Dron Dron” also channels connotations towards the second album by the unmissable band Przepych – “I inne zabawne rzeczy” (2022, eng. And the Other Hilarious Stuff). This is where the title track comes from, which Atol Atol Atol generously decided to save from obscurity and include in their repertoire. Both albums are imbued with an atmosphere of joyful experimentation. Here and there, electronic spectres and flashy dubs fly by, opening up spaces for motoric improvisations that enhance the absurdity of Plata’s poetry. The mosaic of references beams in many directions: the well-known This Heat, Contortions, a touch of Japanese Wha Ha Ha-style wackiness, but also the familiar native neurosis of and 80s Polish band Kosmetyki Mrs. Pinki. The result of this strange equation is a brilliant, stirring soundtrack to the old crises of the new times. [Mateusz Sroczyński]
LP / Digital Album [free download]
