The recording project of Hamburg’s Deniz Çiçek and Robert Heitmann, Kraków Loves Adana has held our attention for a number of years now. The duo spin “new wave, electro-pop and indie rock into a beguiling blend of familiar and strange” as we put it in a piece on 2018’s Songs After the Blue. Kraków Loves Adana have continued to develop and evolve this style in recent times, be it with the icy shadow of album Follow the Voice, or in collaboration with Ruth Radelet of The Chromatics for single ‘When the Storm Comes‘, which looked to push dream pop to the edges of its nostalgic potential.
With a new album set for release sometime in the new year, Kraków Loves Adana have returned with Nothing’s Set In Stone, a new EP which released last week as something of a surprise. The record is comprised of three tracks and corresponding instrumental versions which are part of a slew of new material that will also form the band’s next full-length, due for release sometime next year. When chronic pain forced Çiçek into a six month hiatus in playing guitar, she turned attention to previous recordings that hadn’t quite made the cut for albums, cherry picking three to form the new EP.
But this isn’t a random assortment of b-sides. All three songs share both a common lineage and overall atmosphere. Written on acoustic guitar, they hark back to Çiçek’s earliest forays into creating music, swapping out some of the unsettling electronic elements in favour of stripped-back instrumentation and direct lyricism. “These three songs paint a picture of hopeful melancholia,” she describes, “and also remind me of my earlier work where there was just me and my guitar.”
Nowhere is this more apparent than on the opener and title track, which exists in a kind of insular hush, a listless lonely atmosphere full of quiet uncertainty that occasionally peaks in moments of emotional clarity. The song’s video, shot and edited by Çiçek herself, accentuates these feelings, consisting mainly of close-cropped shots of the singer gazing into space, lost in her thoughts. Check it out below:
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Nothing’s Set in Stone is out now and available from the Kraków Loves Adana Bandcamp page.