Meet Jonty Czuchwicki, the driving force behind CZUCHWICKI, a musical project that effortlessly blurs the lines between drummer, producer, and audiovisual artist. Czuchwicki's journey began with the 2021 release of "Reoccurring Dream," a five-track EP that set the stage for a unique exploration of sound and visuals.
Known for his affinity for rhythmically complex styles, the Valencia-based Polish artist draws inspiration from the fringes of left-field electronica, trip-hop, and industrial movements. His latest EP, Phosphenes, is a testimony to that diversity, unraveling the layers of innovation and musical exploration that define CZUCHWICKI's artistic vision. Unveiling a new track each month, over a period of six months that started on September 13, 2023, Phosphenes has had a slow birth, allowing listeners to traverse its intricacies with each carefully crafted installment.
Beyond the sonic realm, Jonty Czuchwicki is on the verge of completing a Post-Master's Program at Berklee Valencia, where he envisions pioneering new forms of multimedia works.
In this interview we delve into the intricacies of CZUCHWICKI's newest EP, Phosphenes, unraveling the inspirations, creative process, and the unique sonic landscape that defines this latest musical chapter.
Miriam Boulos: Can you tell us more about how you came around with this new EP and how did it differ from your older artworks?
CZUCHWICKI: Fundamentally, I’m creating a lot, so I tend to have a big backlog of different songs, musical ideas, projects that I’ve kind of started or whatever. In terms of choosing a songs and direction for my latest EP that has been coming out since September was really around the live show and the songs that I wanted to develop my live show for. I knew that I wanted to have a kind of drumming and percussion based live show so I out of my top 20 demos that I had at the time, I picked the ones that I thought would work best for that kind of set.
The sonic influences and genre influences range from like down tempo, and ambient to like trip-hop to more industrial and electro sounds. It’s pretty eclectic as a whole for the EP because the songs were chosen based on how I might perform them live as opposed to how they will go together on an EP if that makes sense.
MB: You bring up the fact that it’s a fusion of trip-hop, it’s an eclectic album. Well, some tracks are more fun, more bouncy, happier, while some are more trap-triphop driven. “Guangzhou” was very bouncy-ish I thought. How would you say is your sound evolving and in which direction are you aiming to take it?
C: I think the contrast between the sounds. There is the kind of music that you make that flows out of you like effortlessly. Say you decide to boot up the computer and the equipment and have a jam and see what comes up, for me that’s more often the bouncier, colorful, playful stuff that is easy for me to make. The stuff that is a bit heavier and darker maybe it’s like a bit more serious, it takes a bit more focus and concentration for me to make that kind of stuff because you have to focus that energy that goes off to this playful imaginative place that for me is easy to access and for others it might not be and really focus and not lose track of “oh I’m making it a heavy track so I better focus on that mission”.
So even from the EP I’m promoting at the moment, and my last EP, you can see that the first one had that more ambient, dreamy more ethereal theme to it and this one has more heavy tracks. In terms of direction, I’m determined to make heavier stuff because I listen to heavy metal, dark techno, dark trip-hop that I want to imbue into my music more. But it tends to take more time and energy and focus. But I have a lot of tracks beyond the EP that I’m developing and taking time with. At the end of the day, you want to sound like your influences and have people consider you to be in the same genre as your influences.
MB: So who are your influences actually?
C: For this project, I definitely take a lot of influence from some trip-hop artist like Massive Attack, Portishead, Sneaker Pimps. Then also, stuff on the more techno side I really like this German techno artist STRFKR. I also like The Hacker who is a French electro artist. Another producer from France called Miss Kittin and she’s really amazing and does a lot of collabs with The Hacker as well. I like a mix of French electro and German techno and Belgian style EBM (electronic body music). Also, stuff with a bit dark, cold-wave vibes like Boy Harsher who is an act I really appreciate and draw a lot of inspiration from. The well is pretty endless, I playlist a lot of music and categorize a lot of music for my own purposes and listen whatever I’m in the mood for and I soak in a lot of stuff, I guess.
MB: So have you ever experimented more with vocals or adding any to your music? Are you open to doing that?
C: It’s something that I did for the first time with one of the tracks that I’ve released in the last months called Chester featuring Bridget Tarquini. It’s a song I did when I was studying music performance in my undergrad. It had a pretty solid composition focus, so I had to do a few compositions and write for all the instruments and subsequently write the lyrics. So when I wrote this song for that purpose I performed it in ensembles and had other people singing it. I wasn’t really planning on releasing it until I decided that I was going to put it in my live set, and I’ve re-recorded the vocals when I was in Spain because I had demo-d the vocals using my laptop microphone sitting in my car cause I didn’t want any of my flat mates hearing me singing!
I’m not a singer, I’m not even trained to be singing.
But once you take that first creative risk, you think “oh maybe I should try doing it.” But before I released that song and performed it and sharing demos in my own circles with friends and colleagues, they have given me good feedback about vocals and singing. How much I might do it in the future I honestly don’t know because I always want percussion to be the big focus.
Drums is my primary instrument, so I always want that to be a focus in my music and a focus in the performance if I’m able to do that logistically. So, if I’m going to sing, at what point is that going to take over? Can I be a multi-instrumentalist and do both things? There’s all these questions that pop up.
In a more productive sense, I have been recording a bit of vocals in Spain for new material, newer tracks, for song arrangements I’ve written recently as well. It’s interesting because one is a very calming, chill, mellow, down-tempo electronica track. It’s one of my recent tracks that I’ve played at the Palau in the city of arts in Valencia. The other one is more “in your face”, aggressive, it’s a bit more of a post-punk kind of song, getting some angsti-ness out. And for both they’re both my vocals!
MB: The name of the EP Phosphenes, how did you come up with that?
C: The EP is called Phosphenes and It’s not a very commonly used word in the English language but I had developed my live show, and it has all the songs from the EP, and I wanted a name for the show and a name for the EP as well to match. It’s an audiovisual live show with audio reactive visuals that I created.
I was thinking about the visuals and what they would look like. You know when you’re a kid and you put your fist into your eyeballs, and you start seeing these crazy colors and stuff.
I figured that my visuals kinda looked like that and I figured that this was always something that I did from time to time when I was bored as a kid when waiting in the office when your mum has something to do, or when you’re in an elevator going up 10 floors.
I thought it would be cool to bring it back to this sensory visual thing that’s kind of child-like in nature and linking it to the visuals and this ethereal dreamy world and it seems to really work.
MB: The title really captures your universe and not only this EP’s. I’m gonna wrap it up and ask, what’s next for you and are you playing any live shows now that this EP is constructed with a live orientation in mind?
C: Well, I currently have some shows in Australia, in Adelaide, my hometown. I have one in early January in Melbourne so that is exciting as well. In Europe I don’t have any shows organized just yet because I performed one earlier right before summer in Spain and I had another one in November around the release of the single Phosphenes.
I would definitely be keen to do some! I need to assess what I can do, playing in Valencia where I’m based right now is interesting or even Barcelona or Madrid. But I need to do some planning and book them in as well in a planned manner. So, if there are any promoters out there who are reading this article, you know who to contact!
###
