Martyna Basta: Winged in Collapse
The Polish experimental composer's new album was inspired by auto-tuned pop and baroque harpsichord music
The machine is designed to keep our minds busy. Its constant avalanche of stimuli keeps us from dreaming, from turning our focus inwards. As we’re all forced to live in the machine, our everyday lives increasingly lack magic and enchantment.
Music and the arts are exclaves where, theoretically, magical moments could still happen, but these days, a lot of music is actually part of the machine. I’m not just talking about ‘functional’ capitalist productivity music. All artists are pressured to overcommunicate and feed our voyeurism with constant social media presence and hyper-specific, literal lyrics to inject that ‘first-person energy’ into our lives.
On the other end of the spectrum, you will find the spellbinding, mystical, enigmatic music that Polish artist-composer Martyna Basta has been making and releasing throughout the last five years. In that time frame, her style morphed organically from ambient collages of samples, field recordings and wordless vocalizations, to a unique vision of art pop influenced by chamber folk and electroacoustic composition.
On her stunning new album Winged in Collapse, Martyna draws from auto-tuned pop as much as from baroque harpsichord music; she’s also invited contributions from artists as diverse as medieval folk duo LEYA, UK drill experimentalist Rainy Miller, sound explorer Felisha Ledesma and trip-hop magician james K.
In our conversation below, Martyna quickly jumps from references to early music and renaissance paintings to her love of Addison Rae to memories of her family’s garden in the Polish countryside. Her ephemeral answers seem to mirror her instinctive approach to music-making. Breaking free from the machine, this music refuses to spell things out and instead turns towards the elusive, the ambiguous and the unknown, capturing transitory in-between states and drawing strength from uncertainty.
After formative releases on small DIY labels like Warm Winters or Stroom, the new record comes out on 7K, a slightly bigger but still an independent operation. “I was excited that they contacted me, as they seemed interested in building a new direction for the label, which was first marked by Lyra Pramuk’s Hymnal”, Martyna says. “It felt nice to think we could enter this new territory together.”
What kind of music did you grow up on, Martyna?
Given that I was in music school from the age of 7, I think the daily sound of people practising all around me was something I associate very strongly with that time. These repetitive passages, often played clumsily when work on a piece had only just started. Even now, when I walk through a city and pass a music school and hear it, it still touches me somehow.
My mom always played classical music at home, and my dad introduced me to psychedelic and indie rock when we were in the car together. Outside of music school I also attended a girls’ choir from the age of 10 until 18. It’s nice to think that I often catch myself somewhere in the middle of all of this.
Did you actually grow up in Kraków? I remember that you spoke about a family home in the countryside that you were going back to a few months ago.
I was born and grew up in Tarnów, a smaller town nearby, but it’s Kraków that I associate with home. My mother and father studied there too. It’s also closer to where my family lives right now. Basically, they built a house in the countryside, right next to the one my mother grew up in. There is a big, now abandoned garden that once was so full of life…
As a child I used to spend my whole holidays there. My mother and her siblings used to play there when they were children as well. I think coming back there, and seeing this place now overgrown, feels so important, especially in times when everything feels so replaceable and disposable. Even observing this place vanishing lifts my heart up in a strange way. Like I know this house stood there for 150 years and will collapse sometime soon, and I’m grateful it will return to nature. The house is surrounded by trees that almost form a natural fence around it.
I always liked how you can enter the garden freely, between the trees. Not so long ago I wrote down the line: “between the trees I am and I dissolve”, and I think that holds the feeling a lot.
When I spoke to Maya Shenfeld, another classically trained guitarist who’s moved towards experimental composition, she told me that she was always the only woman in most of her classes and in all guitar ensembles. Did you have a similar experience?
Luckily, I found myself in a pretty egalitarian environment. Maybe after the rigidity of a music school upbringing you don’t have too many expectations? (laughs)
Honestly, I find that pattern more in sound engineering. I’ve gone through some soundchecks where I felt completely disrespected… And once it happened at a pretty renowned festival, so maybe don’t hire ten sound guys because they’re worse than one… (laughs)
But honestly, talking to fellow musicians I realize it’s a pretty common experience. Every time there is a woman doing my soundcheck, my heart is full and the experience is usually the best.
In 2021, you released Making Eye Contact With Solitude – the first time I encountered and got enchanted by your music. Can you describe the circumstances in which this music was made and the concept behind it?
I love being asked that question! When I go back to the time of making this record, I get pretty nostalgic about how beautifully naive my approach to music-making was. I had the instrumental skills but basically zero knowledge of DAWs and how to compose music.
I was so tired of relying on my skills, it felt like a burden I wanted to lift off myself, and all that was left was intuition. So I started extensively gathering field recordings, because that felt like the kind of material I craved to work with, taken just from the life itself.
The production side of this album is quite simple: stretching, warping, pitching, sample cutting, and a few core effects. Composing it felt very organic and linear, originally it was a 30-minute long form piece that was later cut into six tracks. I really like this way of composing, where the ending of one track naturally evolves into the beginning of another.
I remember being consumed by loneliness and frustration at the time, and I found comfort in domesticity, rituals, and repetitive patterns. The draft of this composition reflects that. The recordings are multiplied, creating a piece that feels like a collection of loops. The overwhelming feeling of constantly moving in circles eventually led me back to the starting point, until I realized that this can also be a place of continuous return, and, following that line of thought, a point of perpetual beginning.
Leaving your classical training behind, how did you find your way back to a different, maybe more intuitive way of using your instrument?
I wanted to play electric guitar forever… but when I finally got one, I struggled to give it a role in my compositions. So I decided to approach it very gently at first, as if it was my first time. I wanted to move away from the virtuosity and perfection I was used to. The result of my first attempts is the track “Slowly Forgetting, Barely Remembering”. It’s such a simple riff that I initially thought it wasn’t even worth releasing.
I really wanted to keep the guitar just as a layer, not something dominant, more like a cloud wrapping around the other elements. Once, after a concert, a man told me my guitar should be louder and more present… he had no idea it was intentional. People are used to reading the guitar as something that should take over the room.
The standalone single “Flame After Flame” foreshadowed the artistic direction of the new album. Was it a kind of barrier to break through in your development to sing actual lyrics?
Previously there was a lot of vocalization in my work, or sometimes single words. But I wanted to try opening up a bit more and see what would happen. I never wanted to force it, so I guess I waited for a moment when I felt bold enough to put something like that out there.
I feel like over time I expand the boundaries I find myself within, but I also think those boundaries were important. People often tell you “don’t limit yourself”, but my experience is the opposite: limitation is good. It helps you focus and make more conscious choices. Too many possibilities can be overwhelming.
I like to let things happen and let life dictate what I gather and what I use. It’s similar with instruments: I often record samples and treat them as a library of sound. For example, I have around 30 violin sounds, which are pretty ugly, since I can’t play violin. But in post-production I can create this kind of strange orchestra of strings that goes beyond the instrument’s acoustic limitations.
Was there an actual difference in the writing and recording process for Winged in Collapse compared to previous works?
I felt inspired by a wider range of music, and influences seemed to come from everywhere, even from something like a random track played in a gym. I think it’s quite an eclectic record, but that’s because I often found myself at the edge of what’s known and what isn’t. Sometimes I stepped into territory that didn’t feel familiar, and those were moments where I initially felt vulnerable.
From the beginning of making music, I’ve appreciated following intuition and gut feeling. It’s hard to explain in a way that doesn’t sound vague, but for me it’s essential that the music feels authentic when it’s released. That’s also why I often don’t fully remember the recording process of certain tracks, or what exactly led to specific layers. Most of it is intuitive and comes from unconscious places. Maybe that’s why I sometimes feel quite detached from my own work.
It’s the first time that you’ve worked with guest features rather than just musical collaborators. How were they actually chosen?
The main motivation was curiosity, what would happen if I worked in a slightly different way than usual. Echoing the spirit of the album, I wanted to create some kind of clash or contrast. There were moments when I felt I was stepping into unfamiliar terrain, and in those moments it felt natural that someone else could help carry the narrative forward.
The most surprising feature to me was Rainy Miller, a UK rapper and producer who’s been making waves with a very experimental mix of drill and noise. How did you meet him and how did you learn of his work?
We still haven’t met in person! I first discovered his music through his collaborative album with Space Afrika. There was something in his work that deeply resonated with me at the time, especially in relation to the album’s themes, a vulnerability he’s not afraid to show, but also a certain strength that comes with it.
I worked on a sketch, and as it started to take shape I realized it needed his voice to feel complete. I reached out, and Rainy sent me a recording of a poem that had been sitting around for some time, waiting for the right moment. It attached itself to the draft like a missing puzzle piece.
Explain the idea of attaching the “echoed version” of the james K song please. It feels reminiscent of the current slowed + reverb trend but maybe there’s another idea.
Ah, that’s a nice question! The track was originally longer, but due to vinyl constraints I had to shorten it. I couldn’t let go of the longer version, so we decided to make it a bonus track.
The shorter version works well, the longer one is basically a doubled verse. But I really like how repetition in the original makes it feel wider and more immersive.
I love the slowed + reverb trend though. Have you heard the Justin Bieber one? Obsessed!
Would you get very angry if someone called this your pop album?
Oh, absolutely not! I’d be like… you got the inspiration! I love pop music, can’t get Addison Rae out of my head lately. (laughs) I draw a lot of influence from pop, and it had quite a big impact on the album’s creation. I’d never call it a pop album though. Maybe… pop-adjacent?
You know that great website Every Noise at Once? There are 516 kinds of pop music, so maybe I fit somewhere in there…
I’d be curious to learn about works of art that influenced the new album on an artistic level.
Following what I said before, the influences were very broad, not only musical, but artistic in general. A lot of them only fully revealed themselves once I started building the visual layer of the project, which opened up a different way of thinking about structure and symbolism. The sound and imagery constantly fed into each other, almost as if they were shaping the same emotional language from different angles.
There was a fascination with earlier forms of notation and visual language, like medieval neumes, where music exists as gesture and contour rather than precise notation. I was also drawn to the idea of ornament as expressive rather than purely decorative. Baroque music, especially its intricate ornamentation and melodic excess. Renaissance painting, in contrast, felt like a study in attention and precision, obsessive care for detail, where every element is held with equal intensity.
Musically, inspiration came from both baroque harpsichord and new forms of auto-tune experimentation. I find it fascinating how structures from past eras reappear in modern sound, for example, heavily ornamented auto-tuned vocals like Babyxsosa uses.
Generally, I feel very drawn to Aby Warburg and his idea that symbols and images are not fixed in time but travel through history, resurfacing in new contexts while carrying traces of their previous lives. I see my own fascinations in a similar way: ornament, fragmentation, repetition, and distortion as something that accumulates over time.
These poems seems to be talking about loss and grief. What was the general mindstate in which you wrote and recorded the album?
I think the album came from a place of trying to hold two emotional realities at once. A lot of the writing circled around the tension between tenderness and devastation, wanting to comfort something while also mourning it. The title itself reflects that duality as well.
There was definitely a sense of grief throughout the process, a feeling of watching parts of the world become unfamiliar or slowly disappear, and trying to make sense of that emotionally. Sonically and lyrically, I was drawn to contrasts: sharp, abrasive textures folding into softer moments.
A big part of the record was exploring vulnerability not as weakness, but as its own kind of quiet strength. Fragility can still carry resilience. Even in the heavier moments, I never wanted the album to feel hopeless. There are still glimpses of warmth and possibility. Songs like “Come With Me” lean toward imagining something beyond collapse, while “Say It Closely” feels much more intimate, almost like speaking softly to someone you love in the middle of noise. The album exists in those spaces where opposites meet: softness and sharpness, fragility and resilience, collapse and flight.
Do you think that a general feeling of overwhelm and anxiety played a role too, maybe in regards to world politics?
Definitely, even if it was never something I wanted to address directly or literally. There was a constant underlying feeling of instability during the writing process, like the world was becoming harder to recognise or emotionally process in real time.
A lot of the anxiety on the record comes from that atmosphere, from feeling emotionally overloaded by everything happening around us, and trying to exist inside that without becoming completely numb.
Was there a certain aesthetic world you had in mind in terms of the overall sound design and instrumentation? Could you try to describe it?
I was drawn to a sonic world built on contrast and tension, where things coexist in a fragile balance. I wanted the sound design to feel tactile and almost physical, as if it could be touched, with a constant pull between softness and sharpness.
A lot of the record lives in that in-between space: fragile vocal lines and chamber-like arrangements sit alongside sharper, more industrial edges that cut through unexpectedly. I was especially interested in how intimate, lullaby-like moments can quietly shift into something more uneasy.
There’s also a dialogue between old and new forms – classical sensibilities and ornamented details interacting with more contemporary, sometimes distorted or synthetic elements. I kept returning to the idea of beauty carrying traces of decay or disruption too.
I’m a subscriber and a fan of your diaristic writings on Substack. I was deeply moved by this passage for example: “Too often it seems a better option to contribute silence to this world, or to keep something a secret in times of such voyeurism and exposure.” Can you expand on this thought, which seems so counterintuitive for an artist, especially in the attention economy?
Oh, I have such a hard time being online lately… There was a period not too long ago when I was able to cut down my screen time and only rarely visit social media, but not anymore since the album campaign started. I just want to reach people with my work, and apparently there’s no other way than being online and present, trying to please algorithms so you get visibility. You even have to fight for your friends to see your content, it’s really wild where we are right now.
I think it was around ten years ago when I set up a Tumblr account and used it as a kind of online secret diary. It sounds silly, trying to stay a secret in the internet, but it was really appealing to me as a concept. Funnily enough, I came back to it recently because I felt I can’t share too freely on Substack…
Tumblr has something that can’t really be replicated elsewhere. There are people there I’ve been observing and reading for years. Recently I read that blogging should be considered a kind of literature, and honestly, I absolutely agree!
In another post you wrote: “I still think it’s always a good day to hide and it’s still my favorite thing. Quietly observing things from afar.” I can relate to this feeling so much. How does it reflect in your work?
I often find myself in two opposite states: one where I’m outside, physically and emotionally – traveling, being busy – and another where I’m inside, both in space and within myself. I think it’s quite natural in the rhythm of my work, but it also depends on the seasons. I tend to fall deeply into isolation, and sometimes it’s hard to leave that state once I’ve fully settled into it.
Sometimes it becomes too difficult to confront the world, so you create your own, slightly illusionary one. It can be comforting, but it also makes communication harder afterwards. That’s partly why I started making music in the first place. There was something in my chest I wanted to release, and I felt it could only be done through sound.
Between sharing and oversharing, hiding and observing, there’s also the aspect of mystery and enigma that a lot of contemporary music lacks. Searching for that is a process which I want to call the re-enchantment of the world – is this a thought you can relate to?
That’s a lovely term! I used to overshare on social media when I was younger. Sometimes it felt like being present only mattered if I could share it online. When I saw something beautiful, I had to post it immediately, almost as if it wouldn’t matter otherwise.
Only a few years ago I started treating my privacy as something sacred, and now it’s almost the opposite. I want to keep things for myself, or for the person I share the moment with. In current times that feels like such a luxury. I really love when I meet someone and we spend hours together with no phones, and what we experience belongs only to us.
Martyna Basta’s new album Winged in Collapse is out now on 7K.