Text by Rafał Księżyk

Trost Records

Since a new edition of Inne Brzmienia is starting, it is time for another installment of the series that has consistently accompanied the festival and presents the most interesting independent record labels from around the world. This year’s focus is the Trost label.

The 35-year history of the label carries an uplifting message, showing that passion and consistency can fulfill even the most unusual dreams. After all, Austria is an absolutely peripheral country when it comes to rock and jazz, and yet it is there that Trost operates, having become a globally recognized and important name in jazz — and not only jazz — avant-garde. In Vienna in the early 1990s, Konstantin Drobil, then a fan of more radical bands from the local punk scene, decided to release their music. Trost’s first releases were cassette tapes featuring furious guitar-driven sounds. In 1997, a breakthrough moment for the label occurred. Drobil’s colleagues from the noise group Alboth formed a new project called Sprawl with the legendary saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and proposed releasing their album. Drobil not only published the material, but also became fascinated by free jazz expression.

He could not have had a better introduction to this form, because Brötzmann — active since the late 1960s — is a key hero of the European free jazz scene. Following the trail of his work, Drobil reached the roots of the phenomenon and became completely absorbed. He discovered that free jazz musicians created the first independent, rebellious music scene in Central Europe, operating like an informal international network. In the 21st century, Trost and its sub-labels continue writing new chapters of this tradition, where improvised music intertwines with noise rock, post-rock, and electro-acoustic experimentation. “I release music that impresses me — genre does not matter,” Drobil said in an interview for “Down Beat.” He also emphasized that Trost remains a passionate, independent project based on friendships and mutual trust.

In the new century, Drobil’s activity expanded into several directions. In 2001, he opened the Substance record store, still one of the best places for alternative music in Vienna today. He established concert collaborations with the famous local club Flex and launched further sub-labels. Trost Jukebox is dedicated to 7-inch vinyl singles, while the Radian Series and The Thing Series document the work of the groups named in their titles. The vinyl label Cien Fuegos, founded in 2011, began releasing reissues of gems from the catalog of FMP (Free Music Production), founded by Brötzmann in 1969. This initiative placed Trost within the global community of improvised music, with records distributed throughout Europe and the United States. Among the high-profile reissues were also live recordings by Sun Ra Arkestra from across the Atlantic.

However, Trost has focused primarily on documenting new phenomena in the improvised music scene. The most important partner of the label became Mats Gustafsson, a Swedish saxophone giant and a central figure of the contemporary free jazz international network. The Vienna-based label has featured a wide range of artists from this scene, from Europe, the United States, and Japan, including Jorge Amado, John Butcher, Marilyn Crispell, Barry Guy, Keiji Haino, Sven-Åke Johansson, Joëlle Léandre, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Aki Takase, Ken Vandermark, Otomo Yoshihide, Zu. It also includes improvised collaborations involving Sonic Youth guitarists and Luc Ex, as well as a series of works by Hermann Nitsch, the last heir of the excesses of the Viennese Actionist movement.

This body of work makes Trost a true institution of contemporary avant-garde. Evidence of this will be the concerts of the label’s representatives performing in Lublin. There will be three of them, and together they represent the past, present, and future of the scene.

Sun Ra Arkestra

Formed in the mid-1950s, this ensemble is the longest continuously active music group in the world. Its leader, Sun Ra, died in 1993, but the musical collective he created decided to continue his mission and does so to this day. It is currently led by saxophonist Marshall Allen, who has been playing in the band since 1958 and, although he turned 100 in 2024, still does not leave the stage — he has only given up touring, which is why he will not appear in Lublin. In the new century, the figure of Sun Ra has gained a much broader and more enthusiastic reception than during his lifetime. He is now recognized as a pioneer of Afrofuturism and one of the key figures of African American culture. Academic and pop-cultural admiration should not, however, overshadow the fact that Sun Ra was above all a pianist and bandleader who created a unique orchestral organism. From the beginning, the Arkestra moved within a temporal continuum alternative to linear historical order. Its music fused the sounds of the golden age of swing big bands with echoes of ancient African rituals, joyful funky grooves, wild free jazz explosions, and electronic sounds from various keyboard instruments that Sun Ra passionately explored. This aggressive electronics disappeared after his death, but the rest of the ingredients remained unchanged. In concert, the Arkestra celebrates a joyful mystery that moves both spirit and body, in line with the motto from one of their finest albums: “Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy.”

Mats Gustafsson

In recent years, the Swedish saxophonist has likely been the busiest — and certainly the most omnipresent — artist on the free jazz scene. His activity forms a network connecting the most outstanding figures of free improvisation over the past decades. He has collaborated with German and British veterans as well as contemporary American musicians, often bringing them together in new configurations. His projects draw on free jazz, noise rock, psychedelia, and contemporary music. He has also been invited to collaborate by Sonic Youth and The Ex. His flagship ensembles are the trio The Thing and Fire! Orchestra, with which in 2018 he reinterpreted Krzysztof Penderecki’s free jazz score, releasing the album “Actions.” Gustafsson’s activity also extends into numerous intimate collaborations. One of them is the duo that will perform at Inne Brzmienia, opening a new path in his artistic journey. His partner will be Kimmo Pohjonen, a Finnish artist described by the media as the “Jimi Hendrix of the accordion.” Indeed, the Finn is known both for his astonishing technique and sonic innovations that modify the instrument using, among other things, custom-built pickups, as well as for his spectacular stage presence. The accordionist, who freely moves between folk and avant-garde, has collaborated with musicians such as King Crimson and the Kronos Quartet, but a meeting like this improvisational summit with Gustafsson is unprecedented in his career.

DRANK

This duo, which released its debut album “Breath in Definition” on Trost in spring last year, represents both the present and future directions of the scene’s development. The group consists of musicians from the Vienna experimental scene: classically trained pianist and composer Ingrid Schmoliner and improvising trumpeter Alex Kranabetter. The artists subject their instruments to extensive preparation, enrich their sound with unconventional rhythmic loops, and build pieces based on drones, repetition, and subterranean noise. The boundaries between composition and improvisation, acoustic and electronic sound, meditative atmosphere and raw expression are blurred here. The colorful, dense, and mysterious sonic tapestries created by DRANK do not aim at intellectual puzzles; rather, they offer a sensual immersion in sound and evocative ambiguity that stimulates the imagination.

About the author

Rafał Księżyk (born 1970) — journalist and music critic. Since the early 1990s, he has helped shape the emerging landscape of new music and pop-culture journalism. He has written about music for magazines such as “Brum,” “Machina,” and “Jazz Forum.” From 2012 to 2018 he was editor-in-chief of “Playboy” magazine. He co-authored the autobiographies of Tomasz Stańko (“Desperado,” 2010), Robert Brylewski (“Kryzys w Babilonie,” 2012), Tymon Tymański (“ADHD,” 2013), Kazik Staszewski (“Idę tam gdzie idę,” 2015), Marcin Świetlicki (“Nieprzysiadalność,” 2017), and Muniek Staszczyk (“King!,” 2019). He is also the author of essay books: “23 cięcia dla Williama S. Burroughsa” (2013), “Wywracanie kultury. O dandysach, hipsterach i mutantach” (2018), “Dzika rzecz. Polska muzyka i transformacja 1989–1993” (2020), “Śnialnia. Śląski underground” (2023), and “Fala. Rok 1984 i polski postpunk” (2025). He hosted the radio programme Nokturn on Polish Radio Program 2. He collaborates with Dwutygodnik.com.