A lovely 3cd box collecting the latest Roginski efforts on Bolt records. "An imperial person complained to Mozart that there were too many notes. A merely imperious trumpeter said pretty much the same to John Coltrane. Here’s a kind of answer. Polish guitarist Raphael Roginski, perhaps most widely known for his work with the Shofar trio, slows up and spaces out Coltrane’s music, unwinding some of those much covered test pieces – “Equinox”, “Countdown”, “Mr PC” – and taking them almost to stalling point. And yet, even in stasis he manages to find all the intensity, all the dark harmonic power of the originals.

Most Coltrane covers fail because no one can reproduce the iron-hard lip, and without that almost metallic attack working with piano wires, cymbals, bass strings, you might as well be listening to Stan Getz and a pick-up band. Roginski takes the group right out of the equation, playing his guitar solo and barely amplified. The original “Blue Train” announced itself with a few rumbles on the sleepers and rails and then came out of the tunnel in a headlong rush. Roginski takes it down to a strangely disconnected aftermath, as if we’re hearing everything settle back into silence again after the express has gone through. It’s a dazzlingly brave way to open a Coltrane tribute. Similarly “Lonnie’s Lament”, very much a group piece in the original, is recast here as a lonely herder’s or hunter’s song that sounds as if it might be transcribed from douss’ngouni or mbira. This is where the enigmatic subtitle comes in." The Wire

CD1 : Raphael Roginski plays John Coltrane and Langston Hughes African mystic music.
CD2 : Zywizna plays Zaswiec Niesiacku and other Kurpian songs.
CD3 : Populista presents Raphael Roginski plays Henry Purcell (feat. Olga Myslowska & Sebstian Witkowski).