the label committed to the best in “bad music”

(Credits: Far Out / Syf Records)

Tue 11 February 2025 23:00, UK

Is the Oder River water OK? Something very wrong is happening in Poland‘s North West seaport city, where a peruse through its bustling musical underground comes fraught with pig and slasher-faced miscreants abusing their cheap synthesizers, anonymised post-punks dripping their skeletal garage rock in bubbling vats of sticky psych, and a masked oddball with a disconcerting smiley face stays put wallowing in a lo-fi fetor of disembowelled tape fuckery. Since their first release back in 2021, Szczecin’s Syf Records has collated a vast litany of the deepest, darkest weird that lurks on Bandcamp’s fringes.

Polish slang for dirt, mess, and/or disorder, Syf wear their love for music at its most discordant and tarnished on their sleeves. Founded as many creative ventures were during the depths of the Pandemic, the natural congregation of like-minded punks and experimentalists unwittingly birthed a banner to platform their combined, feverish output.

“These were social gatherings that quickly turned into casual, laid-back music playing. There were people who have been part of the Szczecin independent scene for years, some who have been playing in bands, some who had never played before,” key label honcho Igi said. “That’s when the idea came up — hey, let’s create Syf. Let’s show this shit to people. We had a lot of fun with it. So, at first, it was a kind of online performance, a bit of a joke.”

The “joke” never got old. Amassing over 50 tapes and EPs before 2021 was out was an easy task when considering the prolifically inventive rogues gallery on the Syf roster. “We got into the swing of things, and soon there were solo projects, duos, various bands, some ephemeral, some acting like a ‘real band’,” Igi revealed. “That’s how Süty, Kiløff, Szlauch, Bzdet or Brenda and Funky were formed. Everything started to take off, and today, I can say that we operate like a full-fledged label, albeit with a loose approach…”

The elusive Kiløff still stands as the label’s core artist. Steadily dropping a plethora of tapes, including collaborative efforts with fellow Syfs, their radiated new wave hasn’t lost its bite, last year’s Kici Kici with Ici Chien Chien another glorious blast of cavernous garage rock with its nerves on display. Other Syf fixtures include Bzdet, who crafts thoroughly degraded bedroom punk with discoloured psychedelia, and the horror-masked Szlauch’s underground sets are as much squalid raves as they are gigs, a grubby mirror flashing at Berlin’s techno Mecca 90 miles across the German border.

Syf seeks to hoover up kindred mutoid punks from beyond Szczecin too, as well as branching out into further sonic reaches. “A great artist is Cool Sorcery from Brazil, who we connected with in 2022. Initially, it was a solo project of Marcos Assis. Today, it’s a band that played a big tour of Europe in 2024, including in our city, so we had the opportunity to meet. We collaborate with Marcos on many releases because he is a very talented producer. There’s also a band called Raut from Warsaw, whose music I would describe as egg-wave, a mix of egg punk and more obscure cold wave.”

Igi maintains that Syf Records will always be indebted to and rooted in Szczecin’s special creative underground despite their broadening horizons. Following the example set by the previous bands of the region, such as Pogondo, Kristen, and Hey, plus soaking up the egg punk and weirdo garage from the likes of Australians Billiam and Warttmann Inc, Syf are set on a label that’s authentically pulling the world’s punk vanguard while staying put in their beloved city: “We love our DIY scene, we feel part of it and want to support its development! In our collective, there are people who have been forming important bands for Szczecin for many years, like Vespa, Marszałek, Zdrajca, Wszy, Moto and many more. We feel connected to this city, not only to the music scene but to the entire underground community. Szczecin has a long tradition of psychedelic, garage or strictly punk music.”

A healthy dose of irreverence and embrace of music at its knottiest and unwell still stands as Syf’s minimal criteria, a label with scant boxes that need ticking: “Something strange, disturbing or unbearable…,” Igi noted. “We’re totally open-minded. All it takes is for that kind of ‘click’ to appear. I love the imperfect music, the lo-fi essentials, not taking everything so seriously. I’m lucky that the people we work with share this perspective. It’s just music. Don’t shit your pants in pursuit of praise or an effect that will prove something to you or others. Let’s just have fun.”

There’s no slowing down at Syf HQ. Imminent releases include Przypau’s broken jazz, further minimal synth cuts are to be conjured by Brenda and Funky, and naturally, Kiløff has more tapes ready to be unleashed. In true Syf fashion, Igi promises “that a lot more ‘bad music’ will come out under our banner”. Teased as a warning as much as an excited taster of what’s to come, Syf Records and his weird crew show no signs of slowing down, offering up the punk world plenty more dirt yet.

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