‘Ja niby jestem tutaj, Ale nie ma mnie, Marzę o powrocie, I nie rozpoznasz mnie’ (Bezsenność) / ‘I’m supposedly here, But I’m not, I dream of returning, And you won’t recognise me’ (Insomnia)

Belgrado underwent something of a dramatic reimagining between 2016’s Obraz (Image) and their fourth album, 2023’s Intra Apogeum (Enter The Apogee).  Gone was the dark, guitar driven post-punk and in its place was a rather more brightly propulsive, synth fuelled incarnation.  This reinvention is now further embedded on the Barcelona band’s beguiling new four track 12-inch, El Encuentro (The Meeting).

The drums have again been shorn in favour of crisply motorik programmed percussion and then intertwined with thickly throbbing bass lines.  Pulsing synths now form the melodic core, displaying an intriguing ability to glow warmly and seethe icily as the mood shifts.  The resulting soundtrack has an almost cinematic quality, clinical yet catchy and ineffably danceable.

Yet, beneath the surface level sheen, there also resides a languid melancholy that calls back to the band’s origins.  The shards of shimmering guitar and the hauntingly ethereal Polish vocals infuse the likes of Moje Myśli (My Thoughts) and Labirynt Marzeń (Labyrinth Of Dreams) with a hazily evocative, hallucinatory sense of the unrequited and the unresolved.

The EP also comes with a twenty-page lyric booklet that builds on the theme of the modernist cover art to explore the importance of music and culture in building towards a more equitable and just world.