The best curated musical festival and most courageous started yesterday with the amazing act of Iran’s Sote in Poland’s Krakow. Ata Etbekar brought the vision of solidarity to this year’s Unsound: blending the new and the old, the analog digital: the Persian folklore instruments, namely Tar and Lute, with various versions of their electronic elaborated synthesized counterparts. The beauty of Sote is also the flagship Zabte Sote label, the academic artifacts of Ata Etbekar, who teaches, leads and builds a new generation of Iranian composers in the field of electronic experimentalism.
Moor Mother presented a deeply passionate critique on the colonialist legacy of Britain and Europe together with the young spirit of London Contemporary Orchestra, another solidarity statement to inter-connectivity and respect beyond borders and passports. This year’s “Solidarity” theme additionally explores the various interconnections at ecosystem level and beings, between artists, between culture and institutions, finding ways to shape new countercultures. Beyond a romanticized version of what theme offers the Unsound festival committed to workshops that enables stronger communities in the creative and performance arts such as the Unsound Lab.
The talks started yesterday discussing “Borders, Power and Art” and continuing today with the very interested discussion on “Shaping the Future of Culture and Events in European Cities” in which the topics of curation, values, government, locals, cultural strategies and people were discussed by Małgorzata Płysa, Executive Director of Unsound, Magdalena Sroka present vice mayor of Krakow intermediated by Lisa Blanning, former editor at Wire and Electronic Beats. Beyond the cultural success of Krakow as a city of live culture, identified challenges were the relationship with the government in executing Krakow and Madrid and Barcelona’s cultural strategies as well focusing on true values and responsibility while maintaining a true ethos of curation, going beyond the hype of the great names and engaging with local Polish artists.
A fantastic festival and week to come. Today Hubert Zemler and Piotr Bukoweski’s Opla will explore Polish oberek’s dance rhythms in the 21st century within Nest. Goat from Japan follow tomorrow with amazing poly-rhythms within Gaze, before Ka Baird from New York’s RVNG will be celebrating his second solo record “Respires” with visceral vocal technique and radical notions of “body music”.
Within “Descent” on Wednesday Ilan Volkov, the renowned explorer of fusions and timbres and a long-term guest of Unsound, will be conducting Sinfonietta Cracovia’s full orchestra playing together with The Necks, the unique Australian avantgarde jazz trio. Exaltation brings a collaboration between Unsound, Roly Porter, MFO, Katarzyna Smoluk-Moczydłowska and Agatha Harz exploring technology and musical roots.
The celebration of rhythms depicting a ritual followed after a deeply personal opera from Lingua Ignota, a world of human struggles and virtues, an agonizing performance of voice as an instrument.
Day 2: The very energetic performance from the Portugheze HHY and The Macumbas joined by Uganda’s Kampala Unit inter-connected with the crowds in the first Manggha evening. A febrile odyssey of bursts, a transcending series of poly-rhythms combined with mastered dub delays of trompets and modulations.
HHY and The Macumbas joined by Uganda’s Kampala Unit
Day 3: Goat closed the second Manggha night in an elegant orchestration of poly-rhythms, a meditation on time and minimalism sensitive to the base sound material. Before, an erupting performance from Ka Baird orchestrating in time glitches and carefully constructed sound shapes, a very live cathartic live set in which breathing became an instrument.
Zvanai, a creative project build around the very talented Kamil Szuszkiewicz, performed an intimate tribute to the legacy of rhythms and playful themes inherited from Eastern Europe folklore.
Zvanai
Zvanai, a creative project build around the very talented Kamil Szuszkiewicz, performed an intimate tribute to the legacy of rhythms and playful themes inherited from Eastern Europe folklore.
Day 5: The war on music industry has been declared with drinks and brands counterculture, with media opposition, with booking strategies and telemetry shows. Most inspiring talks from Mat Dryhurst raised the need for so-called artist guilds that would inter-connect for a better art and musical ethos. The Caretaker show, co-curated with Unsound, illustrated concepts of media in a theatrical performance, a beautiful visual journey in which was joined by Weirdcore.
Eli Keszler and Nate Boyce before had an amazing “Pedagogy” presence in which sound and electronics were granularly and elegantly mastered with classical percussion and strings, a similar approach on artifact with Sote’s transformational approach.
Eli Keszler and Nate Boyce’s Pedagogy
Eli Keszler and Nate Boyce before had an amazing “Pedagogy” presence in which sound and electronics were granularly and elegantly mastered with classical percussion and strings, a similar approach on artifact with Sote’s transformational approach.
Day 6: There are indeed so many events happening during the day in Unsound, an Olympic marathon of sound energetically and time wise, a great curation of artists. A fantastic spirit of solidarity with Earth was felt yesterday within Exaltation where the ambient music of Roly Porter met the cinematic presentation of MFO exploring inter-connection and exchange with Earth and technology. Roots and fyber optics became the visual projection of music and creative voices of folklore minimalist elements from Ksiẹżyc.
Before Robert Hencke played an orchestra of 32 kbyte of RAM and 8 bit CPUs computers within CBM 8032 AV at AWF Aula, Krakow’s University of Physics. The perfect place to give tribute to Commodore computing and a statement of technology as a musical artifact. Simple frequencies and scientifically observed modulations, minimalist technology, masterfully crafted compositions in which Robert was joined by a collective of young enthusiasts programmers of graphics and code routines.
Robert Hencke’s CBM project, a fantastic spirit in Krakow University of Physics Aula
The perfect place to give tribute to Commodore computing and a statement of technology as a musical artifact. Simple frequencies and scientifically observed modulations, minimalist technology, masterfully crafted compositions in which Robert was joined by a collective of young enthusiasts programmers of graphics and code routines.
.
“Human Presence” is the new project of Christian Duka and joins an osteopath, a choreographer and amazing dancers and another sound designer, creating live moments that explore the many facets of sound living and interacting with the performers and space. Christian Duka’s sound blends generative music with high frequencies and noise in a balanced but visceral way. His last projects: “Nexus”, “The Office” and “Noise Culture” explore elements of body, mind, sensations, experience design, time and information and other factors of human presence that are being altered in the 21st century hyperconnected world.