Two things happened this weekend: I started replaying “Cyberpunk 2077” and got sucked down a musical vortex of nostalgia. Combining these two dots made me think: would it be possible to come up with a playlist of Polish songs that would share the vibe of the original cyberpunk genre of the 1980s?
Here is a modest attempt. If you’re into cyberpunk but don’t know much about Polish music, I hope you’re in for a treat. I’ve subjectively ranked them from 10 to 1 – feel free to disagree, or add your ideas, using any of my socials below.
- Kat – Czarne zastępy (Black hosts), 1987
This version is taken from “38 Minutes of Life”, a live recording of Kat’s 1987 concert in their (and my) home town, Katowice. They were opening for Metallica. No biggie. The energy in this distorted recording is undeniable.
- Maanam – Oddech szczura (Rat breath), 1980
All the Joy Division vibes, plus Kora’s unique energy and dark humour. The song’s message is about rats, and of course it’s not about rats at all – lyrically, think Pearl Jam’s “Rats” and you’ll be in the same rodent/human ballpark. I could have picked “Szare miraże” (Gray mirages) from the same album, for a slightly more cheery, humanist message. So of course I didn’t.
- Kombi – Cyfrowa gra (Digital game), 1983
The one myth I most despise about 1980s Poland is that we were somehow isolated from what was going on around the world, poor and backward. There will be plenty of counter-arguments on this playlist. This is one of them. Kombi, and their keyboard composer Sławomir Łosowski, were definitely running circles around many Western counterparts when it came to fresh vibes and creativity.
- Martyna Jakubowicz – W domach z betonu nie ma wolnej miłości (There is no free love in houses of concrete), 1986
Not everything on my cyberpunk playlist has to sound high tech, or be a story about tech. This song deserves to be here for another reason: it’s a story of isolation and connection, seeing and being seen, big housing estates and small acts of recognition. This may not be what 1980s Polish cyberpunk would have sounded like, but if you woke up horny enough, it sure as hell is what it must have felt like.
- Aya RL – Unikaj zdjęć (Keep out of shot), 1985
I thought of Dire Straits’ “Private Investigations” almost immediately upon hearing this. But lyrically, and musically, Aya RL brings a much more despondent and paranoid vibe to the scene. Listing ways of avoiding detection, increasingly desperate – let’s just say that stakes for investigations in 1980s Poland were a bit higher than marital infidelities.
- Marek Biliński – Dom w dolinie mgieł (House in the foggy valley), 1983
Listen to this, then check the date again. I’m listening to this in 2025, and keep finding fresh ideas. Forty years earlier, heard on a Polish radio or on a tape you borrowed from your mate – it must have been mind-boggingly new. I could probably have picked nine more pieces by Biliński, and they would work well on any cyberpunk playlist, and give the likes of Jean-Michel Jarre a run for their money.
- Republika – System nerwowy (The nervous system), 1983
An English version of this song exists (look for it on Republika’s “1984” album). I’m sticking with Polish here. GC’s delivery is what makes the difference: in Polish, this staccato account of information overload and effects of endless communication technology is delivered with more unhinged energy. The stutters, false starts, exclamations, they all matter. From the same album, many more songs I could pick (”Prąd”, “Current”, is very similar).
- Lombard – Szklana pogoda (Glass weather), 1983
Imagine a huge, concrete housing estate, like the one from the song at #7. Now, unlike at #7, imagine that 99% of the people who live there aren’t busy putting on sexy shows for each other, but instead tune into the same one or two TV channels every night. Imagine the blue TV glare above the estate on a rainy evening. This is what the phrase “glass weather” came to mean in Polish. I don’t know if the phrase or this song came first, and by now I no longer care: we had our “sky the colour of television” one year before Gibson’s Neuromancer. What a song, too.
- Halina Frąckowiak – Papierowy Księżyc (Paper moon), 1986
I’m bound to get a few raised eyebrows for this one, and it’s also the trickiest one to explain. The song – and the video – managed, for me, to perfectly blend nostalgia and yearning for the future, retro and new-tech visions. Frąckowiak sings of an old-fashioned love story gone wrong, but also of the desire to make her future days matter – and of video, San Francisco, and Yokohama. Her persona in the music video could be from the 1980s, 1930s, or 2050s. It’s cool, it’s catchy, it’s well-written, and to me, it’s one of the most cyberpunk songs written in Poland, and you can’t change my mind.
- Kult – Arahja, 1988
It had to be Kult – possibly the most unflinching, uncompromising musical witnesses to everything that’s been going on in Poland for nearly fifty years now. And, really, it had to be “Arahja”. The lyrics describe a divided city, a street with a wall cutting it in half, with a partitioned home inhabited by someone who feels divided himself. There’s the half of the street, lit with neons, that never sleeps – and there’s the half that never wakes up. Read what you want into all this, and into the driving, unforgettable riff, and into the toll of the church bells that starts and ends the song. For me, cyberpunk has always been political – a story of “a future that’s not evenly distributed”, be it Tokyo, Warsaw, or Berlin – and “Arahja” will always be a song describing the mental and societal rifts and ruptures that come with such division.
Vic Kostrzewski (cost-chef-ski, he/him) is a Learning Designer, Translator and Project Manager based in South Wales. To discuss a new project, email anytime: vic@cost-chef.ski
(photo credit: Photo by Ryunosuke Kikuno on Unsplash)
