04 / 16
Be
THE BLACK ELEMENT
[Ar] 4s²
▌ INDEPENDENT RECORD LABEL · WARSAW · POLAND

The Black
Element.

An independent label working across indie rock, experimental electronics, contemporary classical reinterpretation, and spatial audio art. The complete catalogues of Happy Pills (since 1997) and Silver Rocket (since 2002) have been acquired by the label, alongside new releases from Mariusz Szypura and )))echo~echo(((. Songs made of dissonances and melodies.

BASE · WARSAW · POLAND
CATALOGUE · 16 RELEASES
ROSTER · 04 ELEMENTS
LATEST · CHOPIN RESIDUE
▌ READING THE TABLE · KEY
04
Be
ATOMIC NO.
BE CATALOGUE INDEX
SYMBOL
ARTIST CODE
MASS
YEAR SPAN
[Ar]
4s²
CONFIG
RELEASE COUNT
/01
ELEMENTS · THE ROSTER
04 ARTISTS
16
Ms
Mariusz Szypura
[ 2025 — ]
[Be] 1s¹
07—15
Sr
Silver Rocket
[ 2002 — 2024 ]
[Be] 7s⁵
03—14
Hp
Happy Pills
[ 1997 — 2023 ]
[Be] 8s³
UP
Ee
)))echo~echo(((
[ FORTHCOMING ]
[Be] tbd
/02
CATALOGUE · ISOTOPE LEDGER
CLICK TO EXPAND
AT.
SYMBOL
ARTIST
TITLE
YEAR
FORMAT
17
Ee·tbd
)))ECHO~ECHO(((
NOIZU ノイズ
TBA
TBA
[ COVER · TBA ]

NOIZU ノイズ

SYMBOL · Ee₁₇ · )))ECHO~ECHO(((

The forthcoming release from )))echo~echo((( — the long-running guitar and ambient duo of Mariusz Szypura and Paweł Krawczyk. After years of installation and live performance work — including the stereoscopic anaglyph piece êkhos at Lincoln Center during Unsound Festival NYC — the duo finally commits their layered guitar-and-feedback language to record.

The album takes its title from the Japanese transliteration of noise, but treats the concept through the ancient Greek lens of ekhos — resonance, sonic residue, the echo as a thing rather than an effect. Expect long-form pieces built from prepared guitars, granular textures, field recordings, and slow-moving harmonic clouds.

Status
In production
Element
Ee · Echo Echo
Artists
M. Szypura · P. Krawczyk
16
Ms·25
MARIUSZ SZYPURA
CHOPIN RESIDUE
2025
2LP / 2CD / 2MC / DIG
Ms·16
Chopin Residue cover

CHOPIN RESIDUE

COMPOUND · Ms₁₆ · 2025 · feat. 25 contributors

A reinterpretation of Fryderyk Chopin's preludes that begins by removing the piano entirely. What remains — tonal fragments, harmonic ghosts, the latent emotional pressure of the original score — becomes raw material for twenty-five collaborators drawn from experimental electronics, ambient, post-jazz, and avant-garde.

Contributors include Adrian Utley (Portishead), Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), Joey Waronker (Beck, Atoms For Peace, R.E.M.), Gail Ann Dorsey (David Bowie), John McEntire (Tortoise, The Sea And Cake), Masayoshi Fujita, Christine Ott, Christian Fennesz, Abul Mogard, Carolina Eyck, Nailah Hunter, and others. Mastering by Jacek Gawłowski in three formats simultaneously — stereo lacquer, Dolby Atmos, and lathe-cut residue.

Released as a triple-format object that doubles as a sculptural cycle: the Nonaptych — Prelude Op. 28 No. 20 at Pałac Wilanów (Warsaw), nine vinyl-thread paintings produced from the very lathe-cut waste material of the album. The first entry in the catalogue to combine recorded music, installation, and material residue into one coherent gesture.

Released
2025-11-28
Tracks
18 (9 + 9)
Format
2LP · 2CD · 2MC · DIG · Atmos
Genre
Experimental · Contemporary Classical
Mastering
Jacek Gawłowski
15
Sr·24
SILVER ROCKET
INFINITY FIDELITY [P1+2]
2024
2LP / 2CD / 2MC / ATMOS
Sr·15

INFINITY FIDELITY

COMPOUND · Sr₁₅ · 2024

A double album designed to be played on two record players simultaneously — each disc carrying half of the composition. The full experience exists only in the room where both needles drop at once, the two sides phasing against each other in real space. A conceptual return to the physical room as the final mix stage.

Released in three parallel forms: the full [Part 1 & 2] object for simultaneous playback, and two standalone halves ([Part 1], [Part 2]) that function as albums in their own right. The Dolby Atmos mix translates the spatial premise into a single-listener immersive format. Awarded European Design Awards 2025 Gold in the Music & Film Cover category.

Released in partnership with Warner Music Poland. Silver Rocket's most ambitious record to date and a benchmark for how a release can encode its own playback ritual.

Released
2024-02-29
Tracks
16 (8 + 8)
Format
2LP · 2CD · 2MC · DIG · Atmos
Award
ED-Awards 2025 Gold
14
Hp·23
HAPPY PILLS
SOMETHING INDEFINITELY GOOD
2023
LP / CD / MC / DIG
Hp·14

SOMETHING INDEFINITELY GOOD

COMPOUND · Hp₁₄ · 2023

The seventh full-length from Happy Pills — and the first in nearly a decade. Eleven tracks of indie guitar reverberation from one of Poland's longest-running underground bands, returning with their voice intact but their palette widened. The arrangements draw on everything the band has accumulated since the late nineties: jangle, fuzz, lo-fi tape warmth, and the patient melodic instinct that has always been their signature.

Tracks move between the introspective and the propulsive, with new room for keys and texture alongside the familiar guitar interplay. A late-career record that reads less as a comeback and more as a steady continuation — a band picking up where it left off without nostalgia.

Released
2023-06-09
Tracks
11
Format
LP · CD · DIG
13
Hp·15
HAPPY PILLS
HAPPY PILLS EP
2015
CD / DIG
Hp·13

HAPPY PILLS EP

COMPOUND · Hp₁₃ · 2015

A six-track return EP after a long period of dormancy. The first sign of new life from Happy Pills following the Retrosexual era, recorded as a deliberately compact statement rather than a full album.

The EP keeps the band's foundational guitar interplay and pop instinct intact, but threads in cleaner production, sharper rhythm-section arrangements, and a slightly more spacious sound. A bridge release that closes one chapter and opens the path toward Something Indefinitely Good nearly a decade later.

Released
2015-08-21
Tracks
6
12
Hp·10
HAPPY PILLS
RETROSEXUAL
2010
LP / CD / DIG
Hp·12

RETROSEXUAL

COMPOUND · Hp₁₂ · 2010

The fifth Happy Pills full-length — and the band's most fully realised pop statement up to this point. Fifteen tracks of guitar-driven indie rock that consolidate the lessons of the previous decade into something more confident: hookier arrangements, more ambitious production, and a writing style that leans into melody without losing the band's restless edge.

The album lives in the tension between nostalgia and forward motion — the title functions as both wink and manifesto. Recorded in Warsaw with the core lineup of the era. A record that maps cleanly onto the band's commercial peak and remains a fan favourite from the 2000s catalogue.

Released
2010-04-13
Tracks
15
11
Sr·08
SILVER ROCKET
TESLA
2008
LP / CD / DIG
Sr·11

TESLA

COMPOUND · Sr₁₁ · 2008

Silver Rocket's third full-length and the album where the band fully commits to its hybrid identity — somewhere between post-rock, electronic music, and crafted sound design. Nine tracks of layered guitars, programmed rhythms, and slowly unfolding atmospheres.

Named after the Serbian-American inventor whose work runs as a recurring thematic thread through the band's discography, Tesla develops their signature interest in electricity and resonance as both subject and method. A pivotal record that sets the stage for everything Silver Rocket would do across the following decade, including the eventual conceptual leap of Infinity Fidelity.

Released
2008-09-15
Tracks
9
10
Hp·06
HAPPY PILLS
17 SONGS
2006
CD / DIG
Hp·10

17 SONGS

COMPOUND · Hp₁₀ · 2006

A seventeen-track collection that functions as both album and statement. The title is the concept: an unfiltered batch of songs from the band's mid-decade writing period, presented as a single body of work without the editorial culling typical of LP sequencing.

Stylistically the record moves across the full Happy Pills spectrum — jangle pop, melancholy mid-tempo, scrappier garage moments — and treats the album as a sketchbook rather than a tightly curated statement. A document of the band as a continuously running engine of songs, where the gesture of releasing seventeen at once becomes its own kind of position.

Released
2006-09-09
Tracks
17
09
Sr·06
SILVER ROCKET
UNHAPPY SONGS
2006
LP / CD / DIG
Sr·09

UNHAPPY SONGS

COMPOUND · Sr₀₉ · 2006

Silver Rocket's second full-length — eleven tracks that mark the band's move from instrumental electronics into something more song-shaped. The title sets the emotional temperature: melodic but downcast, with vocals appearing alongside the band's signature programmed rhythms and treated guitars.

Released in the same year as Happy Pills' 17 Songs, the album captures a particular mid-2000s moment in Polish independent music when post-rock, electronica, and indie rock were being braided together by a small group of Warsaw-based artists. A record that points directly toward Tesla two years later.

Released
2006-01-31
Tracks
11
08
Sr·03
SILVER ROCKET
ASTRONAUT'S DIARY
2003
LP / CD / DIG
Sr·08

ASTRONAUT'S DIARY

COMPOUND · Sr₀₈ · 2003

A four-track EP — Silver Rocket's first proper follow-up to Electronics For Dogs. Short, exploratory, and conceptually framed as field notes from a hypothetical orbit: each piece a self-contained transmission rather than a movement of a longer work.

The release marks the band moving away from purely instrumental electronica and toward longer-form composition, with extended track lengths and more obvious narrative arc. A small but pivotal release in the discography — the moment when Silver Rocket starts thinking in cinematic scale.

Released
2003-04-28
Tracks
4
07
Sr·02
SILVER ROCKET
ELECTRONICS FOR DOGS
2002
LP / CD / DIG
Sr·07

ELECTRONICS FOR DOGS

COMPOUND · Sr₀₇ · 2002

Silver Rocket's debut album — eight tracks of programmed electronica and treated instrumentation that introduce the band's foundational vocabulary. Sequencers, drum machines, guitar feedback, and prepared samples woven into instrumental compositions that read as half-electronic, half-organic.

The cheeky title belies the seriousness of the project: a thesis statement about machines and listeners, about whether sound designed for one species can reach another. Recorded in Warsaw, released in the early 2000s wave of Polish electronic experimentation — the first chapter of a discography that would unfold over more than two decades.

Released
2002-10-28
Tracks
8
06
Hp·01
HAPPY PILLS
SMILE
2001
LP / CD / MC / DIG
Hp·06

SMILE

COMPOUND · Hp₀₆ · 2001

Ten tracks released at the turn of the new millennium — Happy Pills entering their second decade as a band with a fuller, more confident sound. The album leans into brighter melodic territory than the lo-fi material of the late nineties, while preserving the close-quarters intimacy that defined the early records.

A document of a band in the process of widening its sonic palette without abandoning its core instincts. Recorded as the Warsaw indie scene was consolidating into a distinct generation, Smile stands as one of the records that helped define what Polish guitar pop could sound like in the post-90s era.

Released
2001-05-20
Tracks
10
05
Hp·00
HAPPY PILLS
HAPPY PILLS MEET SCHNEIDER
2000
LP / CD / MC / DIG
Hp·05

HAPPY PILLS MEET SCHNEIDER

COMPOUND · Hp₀₅ · 2000

An eight-track collaboration released at the close of the band's first decade. The Schneider project enters as both producer and partner — adding production sheen, sample-based arrangement, and a more electronic flavour to the Happy Pills core sound.

The record sits as an interesting outlier in the discography: not quite a Happy Pills album in the conventional sense, not quite an external collaboration. The result is one of the more textured releases of the era, with the band's pop instincts filtered through a more studio-conscious production lens. A turn-of-the-millennium document of indie rock learning to work with electronic processes.

Released
2000-12-31
Tracks
8
04
Hp·98
HAPPY PILLS
LO-FI
1998
LP / CD / MC / DIG
Hp·04

LO-FI

COMPOUND · Hp₀₄ · 1998

Twelve tracks recorded with the deliberate roughness suggested by the title. Lo-Fi codifies the band's late-nineties identity: tape hiss, bedroom production, distorted guitars sitting next to delicate melody. A record that embraces the limitations of its making as part of its character.

Released in the second year of the band's run, the album captures the moment when Happy Pills moved from being a promising debut act into a working, self-defining unit. Stands as one of the cornerstone releases of the Polish lo-fi pop tradition from the period — a reference point that subsequent generations of Warsaw guitar bands would point back to.

Released
1998-11-16
Tracks
12
03
Hp·97
HAPPY PILLS
SOFT
1997
LP / CD / MC / DIG
Hp·03

SOFT

COMPOUND · Hp₀₃ · 1997

The foundation. Nine tracks of indie guitar from 1997 — the first entry in the catalogue and the moment the lineage begins. Recorded with the kind of room-tone intimacy specific to mid-nineties independent rock: short songs, soft dynamics, careful melodies sitting close to the microphone.

As Happy Pills' debut, the album doubles as an origin document for a strand of Polish indie that would unfold across the following twenty-five years through this same catalogue. Everything that follows — the lo-fi experiments, the early-2000s pop turn, the eventual return on Something Indefinitely Good — extends from the language proposed on this record.

Released
1997-07-28
Tracks
9

▌ ATOMIC NUMBERS = CATALOGUE INDEX · COMPOUND = ELEMENT·YEAR · PROVISIONAL NOMENCLATURE

/03
REACTIONS · SUBMISSIONS
DE · WR · SY
REACTION · 001
De

DEMOS

We accept demo submissions on physical and digital formats. Lossless or .wav preferred. Listen first, judge slow.

demos@theblackelementlabel.com
REACTION · 002
Wr

WRITE

Curators, venues, festivals, press — drop a line if you would like to collaborate, license, or commission new work.

label@theblackelementlabel.com
REACTION · 003
Sy

SYNC

Music for film, advertising, gallery, installation? Catalogue is cleared for sync — we will handle the rest.

sync@theblackelementlabel.com
/04
DISTRIBUTION · LICENCES
WORLDWIDE
Bc

BANDCAMP

DIGITAL · VINYL · CD · MC · DIRECT FROM LABEL
Et

ECHO TAPES

WORLDWIDE VINYL DISTRIBUTION
Wm

WARNER MUSIC POLAND

LICENSING PARTNER · INFINITY FIDELITY
Cr

CLEOPATRA RECORDS

LICENSING PARTNER · INTERNATIONAL
/05
CONTACT · LABORATORY
WARSAW · POLAND
GENERAL · LICENSING
label@theblackelementlabel.com
DEMOS · SUBMISSIONS
demos@theblackelementlabel.com
SYNC · LICENSING
sync@theblackelementlabel.com
▌ BEL · PERIODIC-TABLE · ACTIVE © THE BLACK ELEMENT