After a three year gestation period, Polish-born, Dublin-raised Mateusz Koznik, AKA Poor Petal has only in the last month started to drip-feed his own blend of tripped-out, yet subdued melancholic hip-hop, woozy bedroom pop and lo-fi indie rock, imbued with found sounds and homespun charm.
At turns hopeful and inward-looking, debut EP zzz – written, produced & mastered by Poor Petal – horizontally floats and drifts along, picking up, peering at, and ultimately casting aside personal flotsam across its six somnambulant tracks. Mateusz told us more about its creation:
“zzz took me almost 3 years to finish. Before this project I was always writing music and making beats, but I felt caged in with my inability to sing. Then I started listening to a lot of Puma Blue, (Sandy) Alex G, Mk.gee, potsu and some other artists that gave me courage to go with my own gut instinct. ‘unwind’ is the first song I ever tried singing on and I just kept learning while getting these songs off my chest. I fell in love with the “raw” sound and intimate atmosphere. I got bored of music that is obsessed with always being perfectly on time and unnaturally in tune. Instead of overthinking, I embraced mistakes and tried to keep as many of the initial takes as possible.”
“I was having a lot of fun with unusual samples on these tunes as well, for example half the outro in ‘drift all’ is distorted whales, and ‘unwind’ features an improvised acapella video by my very talented friend Chlöe Gray that just happened to fit perfectly into the song. I knew what I wanted the songs to sound like from early on, it just took a long time to figure out the exact sound design and mix balance. The whole process was very difficult, nerve-racking and yet therapeutic. It wraps up an era of my life into a neat 6-track bundle that hopefully others can get something out of too.”
Expect a full album in the not-too-distant future, and stream zzz below:
