Martyna Basta

Polish composer, producer and singer Martyna Basta develops music that sits between art pop, chamber folk and electroacoustic composition. Initially trained in classical guitar, she moved away from it to build a more personal language based on transforming recordings, instrumental samples and reworked acoustic motifs. Her voice, often near a whisper, features in intimate pieces where song blends with fragile soundscapes, pronounced silences and diffuse electronics. Martyna Basta works around themes such as memory, vulnerability and lack, with concise writing that retains something of a personal diary. Her aesthetic combines suspended melodies, granular textures and timbres from instruments like guitar, zither or harpsichord, balancing sparseness, ambient, experimental song and a sensibility that may recall shoegaze as well as certain forms of baroque music. On stage she has presented this repertoire in contexts linked to experimental and contemporary music — notably CTM, Unsound and Cafe OTO — and her trajectory also includes collaborations with james K, LEYA, claire rousay and Pavel Milyakov.