Ja niby jestem tutaj
Ale nie ma mnie
Marzę o powrocie
I nie rozpoznasz mnie —
Belgrado’s Bezsenność (Insomnia) opens its doors at the hour when sleep has already failed. The body remains still, but the mind refuses rest, pacing through unfinished thoughts and half-remembered sensations. What unfolds is not escape but suspension: a held breath stretched across bass pressure, measured percussion, and guitar lines that feel carefully rationed. Time slackens. Attention drifts. Awareness fractures into repetition.
Within that suspended state, Bezsenność (Insomnia) aligns itself with a lineage of inward-facing coldwave and post-punk—private, precise, and emotionally exacting. Echoes of Martin Dupont’s interior focus surface alongside the controlled distance of Xmal Deutschland, while the song’s modern restraint recalls Automatic. At its core lies a quiet estrangement: the sensation of occupying one’s body while drifting elsewhere, paired with a muted desire to recover a former self that feels just out of reach.
Recorded largely at home, with bass captured by Christian Songstore at Analog Drive-In Studio and mixed and mastered by Jonah Falco in London, the production keeps its lines clean and intentional. Nothing crowds the frame. Each element occupies its own narrow corridor, reinforcing the sense of interior confinement. The track moves forward with restraint, letting repetition act as pressure rather than release, mirroring the circular logic of sleepless thought.
Patrycja Proniewska’s effervescent Polish-language vocals circle dislocation: being here without quite being oneself, awareness fractured by constant mental motion, recognition deferred. Identity feels provisional, as if it might return if addressed correctly. There’s a quiet plea embedded in the phrasing – to be seen again, named again, steadied by another voice. The delivery remains taut, lucid, and exposed, allowing the tension to do its work without adornment.
The astonishing video extends this state through visual language steeped in art-school disquiet. Its nods to the Bauhaus school spirit, Magritte’s sly logic, and ’80s avant-garde videos (such as The Vels and Les Rita Mitsouko) surface through stylized theatrical sets and muted tones. Scenes unfold against a seaside backdrop that feels both staged and estranged, playful and unsettling in equal measure. Allegory replaces explanation. The result recalls the visual poetry of The Color of Pomegranates: symbolic, odd, and unmoored from any single decade, postmodern without irony.
Watch Bezsenność (Insomnia) below:
Formed in Barcelona around 2010, Belgrado have long operated within this tension between motion and stasis. Anchored by Proniewska alongside Fernando “Fergu” Márquez, Jonathan Sirit, and shifting collaborators, the band draws from coldwave and early post-punk without sanding down their edges. Bezsenność feels like a distillation of that lineage: disciplined, uneasy, and alert to the strange clarity that arrives when rest refuses to come.
Listen to Bezsenność below and pre-order El Encuentro here.
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