Friday Morning, Moving Without Rush — Michał Urbaniak’s Ecstasy
Movement before thought
By Rafi Mercer
There are some mornings when the body knows before the mind does. The coffee is still cooling, the room is quiet, but something in you wants motion — not speed, not noise, just lift. Today, that sound comes from Michał Urbaniak and his 1978 album Ecstasy.
This is a dancing album in the best sense of the word. Not nightclub dancing. Not performance dancing. But that private, early-morning movement where the shoulders loosen and the day opens up a fraction wider. Urbaniak understood that groove doesn’t have to flatten intelligence. His electric violin glides rather than shreds, riding funk rhythms with a jazzman’s restraint. Nothing is forced. Nothing is overplayed.
Ecstasy sits in that late-’70s space where jazz briefly remembered that the body matters. The basslines are warm and human. The rhythms feel conversational. Even the title track doesn’t chase its own name — it circles it, patiently, letting repetition do the work. This is music that trusts you to meet it halfway.
What I love most is its optimism. Not naïve optimism, but physical optimism — the sense that movement itself is a form of clarity. You don’t analyse this record; you let it nudge you into a better posture, a lighter step, a slightly better mood than the one you woke up with.
On a Friday morning, that’s more than enough. No manifesto. No grand meaning. Just a reminder that listening can be joyful, and joy doesn’t have to be loud to be real.
Sometimes the best way into the day is not through thought, but through rhythm.
Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters.
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