From the time he assembled an ensemble in his parents' garage in the late 1960s, Mariusz Kacarow has always been a student of the minimal music of the past. He studied ambient and drum machine music in grad school, and has since studied with the likes of Eric Minton, Marc Gann, and Charles Moffett in the field. Kacarow has also worked with Brian Eno, John Fahey, James Ferraro, and Eric Minton, but his solo work still steers the sonic continuum.

In the 1990s, he danced for a month in a Prague gallery using live instruments to test his metronome. The source material he sampled, in addition to the electronic sounds used, were from the Polish music scene of the mid-'60s, where Kacarow met Nézłaz and ąbo, and where he learned Polish by listening to the language. (It's a language he studied and learned to write in with one hand on a keyboard.)

Kacarow's newest album, "Jugband", is his first full-length in four years. The album begins with a simple, minor-key synth lead, and it continues to build from there. The album seems to be in a constant process of re-assembling itself, but when you get to the point where it is draining, it really is.

The stretching concept is one of the most visible aspects of Jugband. On "Star", there is a long, pumping majordomo that sounds like the klavier with acoustic harmonium playing and an impression of Kacarow's voice. The track is about the discovery of the lost Gagoklav music and the tourist cities that surround them.