Piotr Kurek’s new album “Smartwoods” is a sprawling root system of tiny melodic phrases thatloop and curl around subtly evolving instrumental thickets. The Warsaw-based producer andcomposer takes his cues from early music, baroque music and experimental jazz, entangling hisinfluences with filigree traces of contemporary computer music and fueling it with sonic vaporsfrom the near future.Made up of seven distinct segments, the album blurs its acoustic and electronic elements into anillusory hedge of abstract sound. Harp, saxophone, clarinet, double bass, voices and guitar twistinto computerized processes and synthesizer chirps, creating an uncanny dreamworld where thereal isn’t always what it seems. Each player is entwined with the other to create a living, breathingwhole.Like Kurek’s painterly 2021 album “World Speaks”, “Smartwoods” is also inspired by visual art -particularly the whimsical work of Algerian-French graphic designer Jean Sariano. The albumcover features artwork by Polish painter Tomasz Kowalski, whose shapeshifting creatures andminiature stories aptly reflect the music’s wild fantasy. The first manifestation of “Smartwoods”– a live show at Unsound in Kraków in 2022 – featured animations by Italian artist FrancescoMarrello, who put together a visual treatment for the single “Harps”Music composed, arranged and produced by Piotr Kurek