The Best Polish Musicians

 Over 20 years or so I had collected several thousand Polish music tracks, which I have now reduced to 761 that are suitable for my general listening. This lists the artists with the highest number of tracks.

Apart from CDs, I found a large resource of apparently legal self publishing and downloading music. These included mp3.wp.pl (now 140 tracks, which closed while I was still going through it), Last FM (203 tracks, from when it was largely a download site), Metalpromo (not really my taste) plus the music publisher Jimmy Jazz (33 tracks, which is very impressive for a punk and related taste portfolio.) With other individual sites there are at least 490 such free tracks.

First with 28 tracks is Mell O'Deque. To be fair to all the others, this reflects the number of items he uploaded, but I am much attached to them. The music is a wide range of electronic styles, particularly melodic and dance. His name was sufficiently Irish sounding that it took me a long time to get the "melody" connection. Some of the music is from computer games. He is sufficiently unknown to be absent from Wiki Poland, but he can be found by internet search.

Second is Coma, an excellent world quality hard rock band with my 17 tracks of their music coming from 2004 to 2006. Their Polish language may limit interest to foreigners.

Also second, Normalsi: also 17 rock tracks from 2000 and 2006

Fourth is another world class hard rock group: Hunter, with 15 songs from 1995 to 2009 (maybe). They have a significant English language repertoire. One of the tracks comes from the type of concert that any star would love, where the audience takes the lead with the singing and the band just supporting.

Fifth is Budka Suflera, whose 15 tracks from 1992 to 1999 were major pop favourites. They had particularly good accompanying videos. (Not from the internet.)

Sixth: Buldog from 2006, with 13 tracks. I labeled them rock, but they have diverse styles. Important in the group was Kazik who for some time seemed the most inventive popular musician in Poland, although much of his music (especially lyrics) are now outdated. I have 8 other tracks by or including him.

Seventh is sPeeX with 12 tracks, which I labeled dance, but it's basically very upbeat electronic. Language is largely sampled English excerpts: I am sure"Steve speaks" comes in somewhere. Once again virtually unknown, but you can find downloads at Hearthis.at/sPeeX/

Eighth, Komety with 11 tracks from 2009 onwards. Pleasant band pop music.

Also eighth with 11, Holdcut. Checking quickly on the web, this is the most obscure of all the artists. It may be the nickname for an individual musician. The music might be best described as progressive electronic dance. (English language samples).

Tenth brings Incrowd from 1994/95. 10 tracks of roisterous, good rocking, guitar focused music, much in English (eg Santa Sucks). One of the members was Sydney Polak, from whose website I got this, along with 10 other tracks involving him that are still in my collection.

Last and eleventh, but still with 10 tracks are Paprika Corps, a rapping reggae band. Much of Polish reggae seems very derivative of British pop some years ago, but this is refreshingly different. Music from 1999 to 2004.

Although the tags are not very meaningful, the main genres covered in the collection are Rock (338), Pop (184), Electronic (86), Dance (65), Rap (38), Reggae (29). One of the problems I have with Polish Pop, in particular, are the common singing styles ranging from a low key melodic chant to a basic one octave vocal with an occasional jump to the next octave for the emotional impact. I doubt if many people here would notice it and it seems very popular. Having heard of the impact of US black gospel singing on music I prefer, I wonder if, and to what extent, this reflects Roman Catholic church singing in Poland.

I was slightly disappointed that no Rap artist made the list. RR Brygada only had seven tracks. Special mention though for Buka, whose Inspector Buka (from Inspector Gadget) is a favourite. I was wondering at one time whether the intricacies of Polish language made it difficult to get lyrics to rhyme and scan. Rap artists swiftly disproved this.

Special mention for a few artists. Mitch & Mitch for incomprehensible lyrics with a few catchy words to sing along to (Oh Yeah!). If you want to make an English language song, but understand virtually none of it, this is for you. Brutally Awful Coffee have a great name. All Alone produced a great 23 minute, "So I've decided to make a record of a summer thunderstorm", adding subtle guitar to what sounds like a continuous recording of a typical Polish thunderstorm in

Finally, thanks to Foobar 2000 for PC, which has been an essential part of my music library system. My Android player is Pulsar free edition.