The Polish Ambassador Has Gone Phishing

The Polish Ambassador, aka David Sugalski, moved to Chicago after graduating the University of Colorado Boulder in 2006. Working a job that gave him little satisfaction, he turned to video games and making music to put the smile back on his face.

“I released my first album in 2006,” recalls Sugalski. “I played a lot of video games back then and was playing Mario Kart with my buds every evening. The whole impetus for me to make music was to make music that sounded like a 16-bit video-game console. I just thought it was cool music.”

Enter Diplomatic Immunity, the first release by the man now known as The Polish Ambassador. “I started making nerdy video game music for me and my friends,” Sugalski continues. “Then I put an album out online and a bunch of video game nerds like me started downloading it. Then I looked at my bank account one day and I had like 500 extra dollars. Back then, I was pretty much tracking things down to the dollar. That’s when I realized folks were buying my music on iTunes.”

Sugalski never set out to be a musician; he was just creating something for fun, as therapy. And it spun into a career that has lasted twenty years so far.

The Polish Ambassador’s catalog is wildly diverse. He doesn’t have a “sound,” but rather a path. And that path leads Sugalski in many directions. Like his most recent creation, “Polish Phish.”

The Polish Ambassador is not someone who has been “into” Phish for a long time. While growing up near Philadelphia and then at CU, his tastes were more underground hip-hop: The Roots, Dilated Peoples, Jurassic 5, Cut Chemist and Beat Junkies.

But he always loved the people who went to Phish shows. So when he moved back to Colorado last year, after spending nearly two decades in California, Sugalski decided to attend his first Phish show, at Folsom Field. “I made a post about going to my first Phish show and asked what song I should remix,” says Sugalski. “I decided to remix ‘Ghost.’ Once I put it up — it exploded. I think there were over 300,000 views the first day or something.”

Over the course of a month, he created five or six more remixes, releasing little snippets. Fans asked for the tracks to be put on Spotify, and wanted to know if he would be playing the Phish remixes at “normal” Polish Ambassador shows.

“I didn’t want to alienate the fans that were coming to hear my fully original productions,” says Sugalski. “So I decided to do these Polish Phish shows separately from my regular gigs.”

When Ophelia’s announced the first Polish Phish show, it sold out within 48 hours. So, the venue added a second night. That sold out the next day as well, and a third night was added. While a few tickets are still left for that show, given how much Colorado loves both the Polish Ambassador and Phish, it wouldn’t be surprising if it sold out as well

What did the Polish Ambassador think of his first Phish show? “I loved it!” exclaims Sugalski. “I had a pocket of like twenty-to-thirty homies. I think going to my first Phish show was indescribable, in the same way as someone who goes to Burning Man for the first time. Or the Oregon Country Fair. A Phish show is a cultural phenomenon that you have to go and experience to get it. I could try to put words to it, but I almost don’t want to. I’d just tell people to go for themselves. Go experience it.”

There are lots of smiles at Phish shows. And a monumental amount of energy. According to Sugalski, that energy isn’t finite or confined to the show itself. “The energy that is created at those shows trickles out through everyone that attends once they leave,” he says. “It feeds people in an ongoing way throughout their daily lives.”

The Polish Ambassador took a deep dive into this Phish material. He created new instrumental creations and put all the songs in the same key. He had to really study and understand interesting time signatures to get the bass lines right. And in some cases, he had to shift the lyrics out of their original position in order for them to make sense with the electronic music.

“I didn’t extract any instrumentation from any Phish song — just lyrics,” reveals Sugalski. “I turned ‘Roggae’ into a dark trance song. ‘Free’ is more of an electro funk song. ‘Birds of a Feather’ is a drum and bass song.”

Based on the eclectic catalog the Polish Ambassador has amassed over two decades, these Polish Phish shows are sure to be wildly unique. And just like Sugalski’s career, organic and straight from the hip.

The Polish Ambassador will present “Polish Phish” at three shows running Friday, February 20, through Sunday, February 22, at Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox, 1215 20th Street; most tickets are gone, but try the Ophelia’s website.

NEED TAG