The Polish record label Lynx Music not only promotes the more established progressive rock acts from Poland such as Millenium, Loonypark or The Adekaem. But also thanks to this label the more unknown progressive rock acts from Poland are getting a chance to present themselves to an audience that is into this musical genre. Bands such as Screaming Earth, RAM Zero, Stick N Stones, Haasta, Strange Pop and Noibla I probably would not have known without the help of this label. And still new acts are coming to the surface. Let See Thin is one of them. At the start of 2025 they presented their second album Machine Called Life. The follow up to their debut 2Years 2Late released December 2020. Let See Thin is a quintet from Łódź. They were formed in 2018 and are nowadays consisting of Łukasz Woszczyński (vocals), Przemek Kaźmierski (drums, percussion), Michał Dziomdziora (bass), Paweł Wężyk (keyboards) and Maciej Włodarczyk (guitars). Together they came up with a nice sounding concept album on which they are playing rock/art rock/ progrock, spiced up with electronic accents. The eight tracks are all worth listening and are lyric wise a compilation of eight stories about life, death, and the perspective on a rapidly changing world. Music wise they manage to entertain the listener rather well on those 8 tracks which have a total time of almost 45 minutes of music. It is certainly progressive rock which the band presents on Machine Called Life. But they do it in a rather catchy way with songs which are easy to remember and to sing-a-long with. They do this most of all on a rhythm which is created by a drummer and bassist which most of the time have a sequencer or electronic bass synthesizer running along with. It is most of all the guitarist who makes sure you are still in progressive rock territories. His solos and riffs are very well played and have sometimes excellent emotional parts as you can hear on Story Of My Life, Sleeping On A Cloud, Would it Be? and Sailors. However don't forget the keyboard player. He also makes sure that a musical background is provided which moves the music to a progressive rock style as well. A good example is Divisions. The album is music wise very well balanced with epic soundscapes next to ballad-like songs and more dynamic up tempo parts. If you would name musical references and influences it is easy that next to the progressive rock influences of bands such as Riverside also the melodic New Wave and art rock from the 80s should be mentioned. Or maybe a style such as New Romantic. Because the way they used the electronic parts on the album made me sometimes think about acts such as Ultravox, Devo, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark and Simple Minds. Acts that belonged to the mentioned musical styles. However! Don't get me wrong, the songs the band wrote hardly sound like those acts. They only might have influenced them! In summary, it can be concluded that Machine Called Life represents a good mixture of contemporary modern progressive rock mixed with influences drawn from the New Wave of the eighties. If you are into this special mix you certainly have to listen to what Let See Thin provide music wise on Machine Called Life. I had some good times listening to this album I must confess ! *** Henri Strik (edited by Tracy van Os van den Abeelen) Where to buy? |
