Real Life (180g)

LPA

1. Fast Life
2. Unfollower
3. Who Cares
4. Island

LPB

1. Not Real
2. Swimming in the Sky
3. The Friend You Call
4. That Right There
5. Sadness Does Not Last Forever

Recorded with GRAMMY® Award-winning engineer/mixer Nic Hard (Snarky Puppy, Charlie Hunter, Ute Lemper) in multiple sessions during winter 2022-23 at League’s Estudi Vint in Catalonia, Spain, Real Life marks Kinga Głyk’s first new album in more than four years as well as the most distinctive work of her still-evolving career. The 26-year-old, Poland/France-based musician – who affirmed herself as a generational talent with international live performances along with millions of YouTube views for viral bass covers of Eric Clapton, Bruno Mars, Vulfpeck, and more – endeavored to create something utterly her own, a one of-a-kind strain of contemporary instrumental songcraft inspired by jazz and funk but uniquely original in arrangement and aesthetic approach.

“In my first conversation with Michael, he asked me what I wanted to say through the music,” Kinga Glyk says. “I told him, I want to lead with the bass but I don’t want people to think this is just a bassist’s album. The idea was creating beautiful songs. Music can be interesting and strong enough itself to touch your heart even if there are no lyrics. I love to use music to describe my feelings and to make beautiful songs that can touch someone’s heart. You don’t necessarily think, oh, it must be a bass player who made this. It’s more about telling stories through music.”

Głyk is joined by such like-minded musicians as aerophonist Casey Benjamin (Robert Glasper Experiment, Stefon Harris) and drummer Robert “Sput” Searight (Snarky Puppy, Kirk Franklin, Ghost-Note), as well as a cadre of crack keyboardists including Caleb McCampbell (Beyoncé, Michael Bublé), Julian Pollack (Marcus Miller, David Sanborn, Joe Lovano), Nicholas Semrad (Miss Lauryn Hill, Talib Kweli, Bootsy Collins), and longtime collaborator Brett Williams (Marcus Miller, Mumford and Sons, Stevie Wonder). League, a fellow bassist, contributes additional keyboards, plus electric guitar, electric sitar, and fretless baritone electric guitar. As co-producer, League helped place Glyk’s compositional gifts at the forefront, her virtuoso bass playing providing an ideal foundation for the group’s spatial interaction and forward motion. Though wordless, tracks like “Unfollower” and the vibrant “Swimming In The Sky” are fueled by deeply personal storytelling and exceedingly focused conceptual ideas, her emotionally charged approach to her instrument remarkable in its idiosyncratic movement between lead and rhythm, indelible melody, and elastic groove.