2025 marks ten years of activity for the Łódź, Poland headquartered Pointless Geometry label. During that time it has focused on releasing music by artists from across Poland, embracing the plurality of underground music communities in the country. Working with radical beat makers, autodidact producers, formally trained composers, and instrumentalists from the country’s jazz, improvisation and experimental rock scenes, the label has staunchly evaded sticking to one aesthetic while striving to break the distinctions between high and low culture. Alongside traditional music media, the third release by the audiovisual project WIDT, sisters Antonina Nowacka and Bogumiła Piotrowska, was a VHS tape – a format Pointless Geometry has occasionally returned to throughout its history.

Pointless Geometry was founded by Darek Pietraszewski. In 2017, Justyna Banaszczyk joined him in running the label. They say they strive to archive vital moments and movements in Polish underground music. “We focus on the abstract feeling we get when we listen to a release, when it resonates with us, and it resonates with the moment in time,” says Banaszczyk.

FOQL
“Black Market Goods”
from Black Market Goods (2015)

Pointless Geometry’s first release came from Banaszczyk’s project FOQL. In the texture of its title track, it’s possible to hear hints of sounds that would come to define the label over the subsequent decade. An off-kilter loop of warped and smudged brass bends into shuffling hi-hats, metallic sounds and synthetic percussion. Beats skip and twist but never settle. While centered on degraded samples, the music never sounds nostalgic or retro-facing for a second.

Arma Agharta
“Little Life – Big Dream”
from Insects (2016)

While Pointless Geometry now focuses on the Polish underground, early on they occasionally released music by kindred spirits from further afield, such as Lithuanian sound and performance artist Arma Agharta, active since the late 90s. Insects is among Agharta’s most cohesive work. It comes across like a dadaist prefiguration of the kind of spaces explored by German/Finnish duo Grykë Pyje, but with a more analogue grounding. “Little Life – Big Dream” equally evokes alien dialects and a soundtrack to a particularly manic platformer.

Aleksandra Słyż
“MG II”
from Human Glory (2020)

Aleksandra Słyż’s debut album Human Glory provides a curious lens to view her current work. It’s split between three tracks made using movement sensors (prefixed “BG”), and three focusing on droning synthesizers (prefixed “MG”). The “MG” tracks are closest to her recent longform compositions, the fractured ascent of “MG II” a blissful highlight. However, there’s a sense you can’t fully trace the layered temporalities of her later music without considering it as also stemming from the more haptic pulses of Human Glory’s “BG” tracks.

julek ploski
“My True Life”
from Human Sapiens EP (2020)

julek ploski’s Human Sapiens EP was a response to homophobic attacks in his home city. He explains: “You make music as ecstatic, as colourful, as fast and as physical as you can, but it’s not enough. You’re still a non human being so you make this music even faster, samples sharper and kicks louder.” The sound is joyful, with an intensity precision-crafted to alienate conservative minds. Occasionally evoking a Hi-NRG hijacking of baroque music, “My True Life” is the sound of ploski gleefully asserting his humanity against an environment hostile to it.

Pimpon
“balans”
from Pozdrawiam (2022)

Containing possibly the most addictive earworm in the entire Pointless Geometry catalogue, “balans” is the third track on Pimpon aka Szymon Gąsioreks’s Pozdrawiam. For all its incessant catchiness and apparent hints towards Eurotrance, on “balans” Gąsiorek excels at expanding narrow confines. Powered by little more than synth bass, voice and percussion, Gąsiorek still finds room for invention and exploration without ever interrupting the pulse. It's an oddly anthemic moment in a richly layered album built from the drums as a starting point.

OPLA
“LOP”
from GTI (2023)

OPLA’s GTI marked a surprising left turn for Pointless Geometry. The duo of percussionist Hubert Zemler and guitarist Piotr Bukowski reinterpret the oberek, a traditional Polish dance built on triplet rhythms. Through an effects laden guitar and a wide range of synthetic and acoustic percussion, their music creates a palimpsest where exploratory electronics creep through traditional structures and vice versa. It’s most acute on “LOP”, where folky guitar phrases glitch and dance over liquid percussion to suggest a surreal ouroboros between past and present.

Bakblivv
“Attention Loop”
from Piece Of Stone (2023)

Bakblivv, aka Ernest Borowski, is an intermedia artist who explores theoretical ideas around queer and new materialist practices. A sense that alternative narratives are possible is written into the very form of the tracks on Piece Of Stone, a strand of post-club music which suggests something constructive in its deconstruction. “Attention Loop” showcases this exploratory composition to spellbinding effect. A looping melody underpins transitions from ominous to euphoric, austere to mesmerising, as multiple worlds sprout from the same musical anchor.

Strzał w kolano
“6 ćwiczeń przeciwko inflacji”
from Strzał w kolano (2024)

Strzał w kolano translates as ‘shot in the knee’. It’s the solo project of guitarist Jakub Majchrzak, and for this self-titled album he plays a classical guitar tuned to quarter tones and fed into multiple amplifiers. On “6 ćwiczeń przeciwko inflacji” (“6 anti-inflationary drills”), riffs equal parts snaking and menacing spark and erupt as they’re fed through different amplifiers and effects. Majchrzak’s ragged energy is magnified as his acoustic guitar splits through different signal chains to fill the space of a full band.

Read Daryl Worthington’s full Unlimited Editions report on Pointless Geometry in The Wire 493. Wire subscribers can also read the article online via the digital magazine library.