Piotr Budniak Essential Group - Homeland (2022)

"Immanuel Kant claimed that the subject is the cognitive condition of the object, which a few years later, discovering the Observer Effect, was in a sense proved by the physicist - Thomas Young. This concept made me, constantly looking for answers to questions that have bothered me for years, decide to go back to time to first of all look at myself - to understand the "subject" and the "observer". The invaluable companion of this journey was the poetry of artists associated with my hometown - Zielona Góra. Its rhythm, expression and eclecticism helped me in self-reflection, from which the concept of and music included on this album." Piotr Budniak

HOMELAND is a journey. A journey deep into yourself, a journey to the roots. It is a story about facing one's identity and the sum of cultural, family and educational conditions that leave their mark for years. On the one hand, it is a fight, escape and denial, on the other - an attempt to accept and extract values that over the years still, although perhaps redefined, remain valid for us.

The music on the album is inspired by the works of poets associated with Zielona Góra. There are references to the works of Janusz Koniusz, Eugeniusz Wachowiak, Czesław Sobkowiak, Izabela Witucka-Sakowska, Elżbieta Cipora, Jacek Katos, and the fictitious Mikołaj Jaska, known from the work of the "Sky Piastowskie" film group. Budniak also refers to his poetic attempts, which he undertook in his high school and college years. Some compositions contain fragments of poems, others draw heavily on rhythm, phrasing, expression, themes and the level of abstraction and eclecticism of Zielona Góra artists at the level of composition and concept.