ICU, by Ondrej Zajac

ICU

by Ondrej Zajac

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Limited Edition Coral Red Cassette
Cassette + Digital Album
professionally duplicated cassette tapes

Includes unlimited streaming of ICU via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.	Crucified Serpent 04:04	buy track
2.	Withering 02:03	buy track
3.	Limbo Mansion 05:00	buy track
4.	Caramel 02:54	buy track
5.	Escapism 04:38	buy track
6.	Home Treatment 04:58	buy track

about

You wake up and the world is silky. The night lights are reflecting off the metal surfaces and glass. You try to remember where you are and something squeezes your shoulder. It's a blood pressure monitor, unnoticed up until now. You are connected to a heap of cables and tubes, your fingers keep finding new ones. Everything is swarming, objects overlap, you don't know what's static and what's not. Dilutions are dripping in the infusions. Your head pulsates with the sounds of machines, the roaring of the air conditioning, the quiet but fast steps of the nurses in the hallway of the Intensive Care Unit.

It's hard to tell if you're awake or dozing off, in your sleep you saw all the dreams one can ever dream, there's a foul aftertaste in your mouth. You see faces, silhouettes, the people change. Someone is talking to you as you are falling asleep. The eighth operation. Slowly, you are starting to enjoy this state, which you know is much better than the upcoming one - the one when your head becomes clean and you start feeling the pain. You've never taken a drug, but life and its effort to take yours, has taught you about many different states of mind.

Don't expect nice melodies, this music makes your head ache. It's trying to capture the state before the operation, the post-anaesthetic hazy condition, and the painful recovery. It faithfully captures a short and unexpected chapter, which left a big mark.

“Ondrej Zajac makes some of the harshest fuck*ng zen noise we’ve heard for a while…”

“ICU may at first seem off-puttingly noisy, but sticking around reveals a record which continues to explore the guitar as noise making device, and manages to crossover from punishing to blissful like a death by a thousand cuts.”

The Quietus / Spool’s Out

“Nasce da una viscerale e precisa esigenza “ICU”, un disco volutamente di non semplice ascolto con il quale Zajac tenta di trasmetterci almeno in parte le controverse e angoscianti sensazioni che hanno contraddistinto un frangente significativo della sua esistenza.“

SoWhat

“It does, however, leave a lasting mark, like a scar. These distorted blasts hide the fact that much of the noise is meant to heal. Ironically, the process of recording these very noises became part of Zajac’s emotional recovery. To hear the sudden guitar in "Caramel” is to encounter the artists’s “home mood” for the very first time: the patient behind the operation, the musician behind the tape: if not fully himself again, then at least partially so.“

A Closer Listen

credits

released March 15, 2017

© 2017 Ondrej Zajac / Attractive Coincidence Records

recorded & mixed by Ondrej Zajac
master: in-house
artwork & design by Mária Trnková

www.ondrejzajac.com
@weareACR

license

about

Ondrej Zajac Bratislava, Slovakia

a musician

discography

I Will Be Forgotten

Jul 2022
Monolith Reworks

Apr 2017
ICU

Mar 2017
Sketches

Jun 2016
Monolith

Apr 2016

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