paszka — estoy chillando

paszka’s debut on LOM, estoy chillando, is a non-ambient album for ambient listening in its original sense—meant to be heard in the periphery of awareness. Moving through an atmosphere that oscillates from safety and relaxation to anxiety-inducing loops, the tracks offer brief glimpses into fleeting sonic-tastings that leave the listener craving for more.

This is wild and engrossing. The sonic clarity throughout estoy chillando is hypnotic. Each detail unfurls into its own fully formed sound world. Vocals are splashed across aqueous shapeshifters, electronics bubbling in a wire-wrapped cauldron that brews raw electricity from a dancing elemental stew. It’s frenzied and melodic all at once, with paszka steering the rhythmic chaos into ever-shifting sonic terrain. Every piece feels like a whimsical, radical charm dangling from an infinite bracelet. Twinkling timbres blur into swampy bass hallucinations. Meditative motifs glitch and stumble into strange, beautiful matrices. All the rules are none of the rules, and estoy chillando pulses restlessly, vibrating just beneath the surface, almost hoping not to be seen. —Brad Rose, Foxy Digitalis

The description of estoy chillando as “non-ambient album for ambient listening” is somewhat misleading given that paszka shifts mood with nearly every track. Compared to the frolicsome glitchcore of 2023’s lapton, which felt like Nyege Nyege rhythms relocated to a Slavic funfair, estoy chillando tends towards slower tempos and ambient drift, as on “18”, a collaboration with Warsaw based artist Stas Czekalski. As with everything paszka does, it’s mainly an exercise in digital delirium, provoking in the listener a strange blend of anxiety, laughter and relaxation. The album constantly shuttles between states, but paszka manages to carve some unusually emotional tracks – notably “3” – from overused sample packs, inducing a melancholy feel comparable to that of Boards Of Canada. —Miloš Hroch, The Wire #497