11 Táto Strana Európy: Antonina Nowacka

An interview with Polish musician Antonina Nowacka on the narrative framing of 'Sylphine Soporifera', the element of voice in her work, and “world music, which isn't from our world”.

Antonina Nowacka

Photograph by Riccardo Caspani

Receiving comparisons to personas like Meredith Monk or Diamanda Galás, Polish vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Antonina Nowacka’s musical trajectory starts back in 2016. Since then she was a part of the audiovisual duo WIDT and Mentos Gulgendo (both with her sister Mila Nowacka), and also participated in many collaborations, theatre commissions and sound installations. To follow up her festival appearances at the Brussels festival KRAAK and Easterndaze x Berlin, among others, she is a part of this year's lineup of Krakow’s Unsound festival and on the SHAPE+ artist list.

Nowacka’s solo music is an imagined map of her journeys, which physically exist in their outlines, but their final otherworldly form is shaped by her unique toolkit. This also applies to her third solo album Sylphine Soporifera (2024, Mondoj), whose title refers to the fantastical aerial spirits ‘sylphs’ and the phase of deep sleep called ‘sopor’. It mostly encapsulates the ecstatic experiences from her stay in the deserts of the Peruvian peninsula Paracas, moulding them into a meditative narrative story. She tells this story using her repetitive opera-like vocals surrounded by quirky synths and the new-age-tinged instrumental accompaniment of Italian ocarinas, Mexican zither, and Nepalese flutes, all encountered on her travels. Together, these elements construct the majestic, yet timeless and flowing sonic landscape.

We talked in the middle of July, shortly after the release of her third album via Google Meet. We were separated only by the Adriatic sea, me sitting on the balcony of an Albanian hostel, while Antonina Nowacka glimpsed through the camera from her Italian apartment. You could say that the conversation resembles a musical travelogue, in which Nowacka enthusiastically talks about the journeys and encounters with the surreal places that inspired Sylphine Soporifera. Our talk left me with an aftertaste of longing to see and hear much more. – Julia Pátá

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Julia Pátá: From following you on social media, I feel you are always on the move. You're in Italy now, aren't you?

Antonina Nowacka: Yes, I recently performed here. I have also lived here with my boyfriend for around a year already. That also comes with traveling less, so I hope the new season will be more adventurous. Otherwise, it's so hot right now, like 35 degrees. When I played in Genoa, it was a similar temperature. It was probably the hottest concert of mine (laughs). I generally love this weather, but performing in this heat is challenging.

I saw this beautiful costume you wore, it had a mesmerizing sci-fi vibe. But overall, are you planning to tour a bit with the new album? I noticed you have a few concerts scheduled in summer and autumn, the closest in Italy at Ortigia Sound System and in Portugal at the Ponto d'Orvalho festival with your fellow Italian producer Francesca Heart in the same lineup. I hoped to catch your gig on that one...

I look so forward to this concert because I am going to play in the church, which is my favourite place to perform, because of the acoustics. It looks so beautiful and minimalistic. The place is just in the middle of Portugal between Lisbon and Porto, but closer to the latter. I love the country. I haven't been to many places there, but I have been traveling around Lisbon and had stayed at Castro Marim directly on the border with Spain due to the residency conducted by Particular Universal, which revolved around imaginary bird songs. It's an area from which people run away because no one wants to live there. It's very remote and the climate is similar to a semi-desert, but it also has the sea and tasty cuisine. I felt like I was living in paradise. I stayed at the farm called Quinta Da Fornalha, where oranges grow.

I like the fact you talk about these places so precisely because this focus on the landscape and locations also transcribes into your recently released album. You released Sylphine Soporifera with the Warsaw-based experimental label Mondoj, which you already worked with on your previous releases. But I guess it's not too far-fetched to say already that the album got you so far the widest media recognition for your solo work. It includes the first bigger feature on your album in The Quietus by Jakub Knera. What did you take from the time after the release?

It was a literal release. I feel much lighter, like I let go of some heavy ballast. I'm getting into the mood of creating something new. So I just finished one chapter. It also included a different approach to work, because I usually record everything quickly. This time I tried to do something else, so the process was longer than usual. It also regards the publishing process. But when I discussed that with Mondoj, we concluded it wasn't so time-consuming because some people wait for their work to be released even a few years. For me, it was only a few months. But still, I am a very impatient type of person, so it felt like decades. A lot is going on. I receive plenty of nice messages, and people listen to the music and write sympathetic reviews. I value that because I invested a lot of work into the album.

How long did it take you to finish the album, now that you mention the longer process?

I think around half a year. It was also the first album made in the studio. I visited it once a month and a half. In between each visit, I had a lot of time to listen to the material and think of its direction.

And where do you see the qualitative difference between the fast-paced preparation of the album and more sprawled, thorough work?

My previous works were closer to impressions, which I also like very much. This time I stuck to the idea of the story. I had a vision of audio narration, and I wanted to compose it in a way, in which I recorded many things and added some effects, or worked with my producer Adam Asnan, who helped me a lot during the process. It contained more people. Of course, I had experience with working with other people, as when I made a joint album Languoria (2022, Mondoj/Unsound) with Sofie Birch. But my solo music was always more private and intimate. It also applies to Sylphine Soporifera, but I invited more people to appear on the recording. For example, Oskar Karski played on the flute in “Nite Vision” and “Field Vision”, Catia Lanfranchi organs on the first track “Moth Spins”. The vaster process also informed the composition. I could think about it, and get used to the material much more.

Did the collaborative part of the work enable you to distance yourself from your perspective, and revalue some of your previous approaches to music making?

I don't know. I think it is still mainly my project regarding my taste and a surreal aesthetic in music. For me it isn't strict music, but the narration. It's like writing a book with the help of different mediums.

Jennifer Lucy Allen, who has been reporting on your work for The Quietus for some time, wrote in the press release for your new album that you were inspired by the Italian landscape, as well as Peru's Paracas and Scotland's Outer Hebrides. In your work, you have worked for a long time with the sonic character of different places and natural spaces, with an emphasis on their metaphysical dimension. What connection do you have this time with these “airy spaces of all the amazing vast landscapes,” as you wrote on socials?

I was mainly inspired by Peru's deserts. When I stayed there, I experienced a state close to ecstasy. For a long time, I felt I wanted to record the album, but I had no vision. For the last two years, I focused on a few ideas, tried them, and then let them go, because it wasn't the thing. After this adventure, I instantly knew the concept I wanted the album to revolve around, and I scheduled sessions with Adam. I didn't make any notes and did no sketches on the spot. This place engulfed me in a way.

What brought you to Peru in the first place?

In the past, I stayed in Mexico and traveled across it. It is also an experience that was very important for me. I started to listen a lot to cumbia music and met some people that got me into it and the world of old recordings. In Mexico, I found out that there are cheap flights to Peru. It was a rather dangerous time in Peru, because of the civil war. I didn't think that much about it, and I just flew. I was looking for the cumbia recordings because someone advised me that in Lima you enter some small shop hidden around the corner. There are stocks of free-laying recordings, with cumbia music among them. While staying there, I walked around the shops collecting the specific cumbia pieces and learned surfing. I spent some time there and finally decided I wanted to leave.

Generally, in Lima, there is a very dry climate despite the ocean. When you go a bit further from Lima, the desert starts. I spotted a Paracas on the map and just went there blindly. I stayed there for a while and went through the ecstasies. It's such an otherworldly place, a never ending desert next to the never ending ocean. The extreme opposites of the wet and dry landscapes combine into an utterly surreal space. I don't know if it is caused by the water, but the light falling onto the desert is incomprehensible. I couldn't believe what I saw, and I didn't believe it existed. It was a psychedelic state like being transported to a different planet. Later on, I decided I had to see other surrounding deserts, and I went to Ica. Somebody also told me about the Chilean Atacama, so I continued to Chile. The desert was mesmerizing, like I landed on the Moon. It was full of strange forms and it was covered with the salt dust from the salt lakes.  

You mentioned the cumbia recordings. Are these the same ones that you played in your sonic-fiction Radio Kapitał selection?

Yes. I was a guest on Adam Radź's show and made a special mix of these tracks. Later I did some DJ sets on vinyl found in Mexico and Peru. I still have the collection. I like this music because my work is very meditative and expansive. Cumbia doesn't fit into my world at all, but it has a happy, colorful, and vivid appeal. In Mexico, cumbia is everywhere. You go to a street party and people dance to it. It is also present in bars and live gigs. I love the non-pretentious energy of it.

Do you consciously seek out music that doesn't match the aesthetic of your work in your free time?

In a way, yes. Of course, I have no intentions to do cumbia music (laughs).

Could you describe how you compose your music in relation to the sonic qualities of a place? For me, listening to Sylphine Soporifera is like fiction about a place, which consists of motifs that can be associated with a particular audiosphere, but is not a description of it. I understand that it is more your transposed experience of the place without references to more or less existing structures and rhythms...

Definitely. I try to run away from the descriptive, verbal information. When I sing, I never sing with words. I don't want to do that. Sometimes, I only do it for special commissions.

I was aiming more toward the topic of cultural references. Because on the recording you work with instruments like Italian ocarinas, Mexican zither and Nepalese flutes. They have their cultural context and set of significance, but they are never exploited.

I would say that my approach is very naive. I don't need to do an album titled All Around the World, the first track is Mexico, the second one is India. Everywhere I travel, the music is still present and I search for it at each place. During my encounters, I am fascinated with the easy things. In Nepal, I was in a shop with instruments, where a stock of bamboo flutes was laying. Each of the flutes sounded different and had a specific tuning. I spent like half an hour looking for the flute with a specific tuning. I bought two of them and used them later during the concerts with Sophie. There I had to do a part on keys. I am fond of easy, minimalistic solutions. They gave me a big keyboard and I thought it's unnecessary to have such a sizable instrument when I had to play only three keys. Nonsense. I started to play the flute and made sure it fits. Later I started to use it often.

With ocarinas, now I live in Italy and my friend called me once about the project they did in the north Italian town of Budrio. I found out that in Budrio there is a master of ocarinas, whose name is Fabio Menaglio. We went to his studio and he showed us the instruments. We also found out that in the town there is a band called Gruppo Ocarinistico Budriese.

There is also a funny story about the Mexican zither. I went to an old pyramid in Mexico City. On the road, many people were selling strange things. I met a vendor who sold whistles. You use the whistle by blowing into the bottom of an odd creature and the sound comes out of its mouth. Various types imitate the sounds of a tiger or other animals. Next to the guy the other one was standing and selling beautiful, very simply-designed zithers. You used a big key to tune the zither via large screws. Something was captivating about that man, he appeared peculiar. A few days before I talked with one friend and told him about the zither I borrowed from one of my acquaintances. I was sad I didn't have it anymore, since I was very fond of it. I guess it was a sign from above to meet this vendor just after this talk. So all of these instruments are connected to homely stories collected with my aim to find the music of the place I am in.

Was your decision to add these instruments to your last release caused by these encounters or you were aiming for the inclusion of instrumental textures for a longer time?

It was more of the vision that isn't solely a vocal, but also instrumental. I saw this narration in my head that revolved around a bit of the desert, a bit of the oriental and tropical atmosphere. It was something between jungle and desert aliens. I am not really into aliens, but I am fond of the sounds associated with sci-fi and extraterrestrials. It's hard to describe, so I put it into music (laughs). You could say it's futuristic, world music, but it isn't from our world.

I'm glad you say that because it connects with the fact that before I addressed your aesthetic as sci-fi. I spent a lot of time with your album, listening to it by the sea in the middle of nowhere, while also reading a few of Ursula K. Le Guin's early novels. Back then, it came to me that your general approach to the material on Sylphine Soporifera reminded me of this ethnographical advance toward the alien words she's describing. Shortly after, in one of your Radio Kapitał mixes I found out one of the tracks she did on the Music & Poetry of the Kesh (1985) with Todd Barton, which came as a fantasy folklore soundtrack for her novel ‘Always Coming Home’. I guess I use a lot of words right now to describe this detective work, but I was struck by it for a moment...

I'm glad you mentioned it because this attitude is very close to mine. It's also hard to describe it correctly, because as I said it isn't the world music, but the music belonging to a different world and space constructed from the material from our world.

How has your approach to the instrument of vocals, which were the centre piece of your previous work, changed over time and as you worked on your other projects?

I feel that my voice is always changing. It differs a lot from the way I sang a few years ago. I am fascinated with the observation of my voice's transformation, and it always gets informed by the things I encounter over time. I let it freely evolve in directions I do not anticipate. I see it as an instrumental standpoint referring to melody and sound, but also the reflection of my inner doings.

Can you also elaborate on a way it is informed by the other instruments on the album in terms of the decentralization of the vocals?

I still think that the vocals on the main tracks are upfront. I felt a need to make my voice stark. On my previous release Lamunan the voice is engulfed with reverb and has this ghastly trait. On Sylphine Soporifera it should be close to the listener. But still, I didn't want it to be a recording by a vocalist about vocals, because the narration I followed also demanded the other sounds. Voice for me is still the most important element. My live performances revolve around it and I also see it as a most enjoyable way to express myself at these moments.

Could you share something about any of your upcoming projects?

I need to work a bit today, because I have to do some recordings for a sound composition, which will be played in space. It's for Krakow’s Cricoteka, where I will perform during the premiere of an installation. I would love to do a composition only for voice. At the place where I live, there is a church where I go for exercise and recordings.

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