Album Review – Nothing Lasts, Nothing’s Lost; Jakub Zytecki

With Jakub Zytecki’s new album having just dropped, I take a deep dive into his newest sonic landscape and share how I emerged the other side.

Sublime.

If I could cop out and review the album in a word, that’d be it. This release really is Jakub’s best to date. Incredibly inspired, Jakub is, clearly, incredibly musically and stylistically aware, and it comes across here as the biggest breath of fresh air I’ve taken for a good while now.

His approach to tone is incredibly unique, with guitars having great snappy attack, bass sounding full and rich, and vocals with that classic “low-fi” vibe. From the ambient soundscapes of “Somewhere Quiet” to tailor made samples in “Caught In a Cloud”, everything here is mixed incredibly, right to the slightest of detail, and it envelops the ears just beautifully.

His harmonic approach is stellar, staying largely diatonic but utilizing non-diatonic scales, only where they fit best, to really add character and keep interest. Rhythmically everything keeps interest really well. There’s some clear djent influence, such as in “Spring”, but it comes across more as groovy here thanks to the musical context it’s in. Jakub has an incredible ear for melody, as all his melodies are truly unique to him, catchy and punchy. You can tell he knows what he wants to hear, and there’s no fluff in-between ideas, everything is fully fleshed out.

This album is just so fresh. Each track is truly distinct, and it’s manic – it never goes where you think it will harmonically, rhythmically or structurally. Nothing is just tacked on for the sake of it here, it’s such an incredibly polished listening experience that this is one of the very few guitar lead albums I could easily recommend to non-guitarists.