Unsound 2024 Turned Noise Inside Out

It began in silence, peaked—multiple times—with various shades of maelstrom, and concluded with one of the most beautiful performances I have ever heard. In between, over the course of its weeklong marathon, Unsound pushed in every conceivable direction: deconstructed bagpipes and Afro-Portuguese batida, Catalan folk and South American cumbia, guitar shredding and jazz piano. It was never a grab bag, though, but rather a continuum, arranging ideas in such a way that, for example, the ethereal a cappella reveries of 12th-century abbess and mystic Hildegard von Bingen existed on the same plane as the harrowing, minute-long scream of Polish-Belarusian activist Jana Shostak. Any seeming oppositions, the programming suggested, were really sides of a single coin—one that the festival was determined to dissolve, over and over, into a molten totality.

This was my 16th year at Krakow’s Unsound festival; I began coming in 2007 and have missed only 2008, which coincided with my move to Berlin, and 2020, when the pandemic scuppered the proceedings. It’s hard to compare individual editions. Memory has never been my strong suit; individual moments stay with me, but the feel of any given year is difficult to retrieve. Nevertheless, this felt like a particularly strong edition, and a particularly coherent one, in which a surprising number of discrete performances seemed to join in a dynamic and occasionally anarchic conversation with each other.

This year’s theme, “Noise,” could easily have been too restrictive or proscriptive, but what was striking was how little conventional “noise music” found its way onto the program—and when it did, it was almost always in a way that complicated matters, breaking familiar contexts wide open. One early-in-the-week night began with a bagpipe performance from Harry Górski-Brown, who ran his pipes through Ableton, fracturing familiar drones into splinters and shards. At Wednesday night’s opening party for the club program, Chuquimamani-Condori layered cumbia tracks, radio FX, and Andean folk melodies into an overdriven and overwhelming midrange slurry. On Saturday afternoon, Marco Fusinato’s DESASTRES (a three-and-a-half-hour miniature of his 200-day performance at the Venice Biennale) used doom-metal guitars to trigger a disorienting cascade of black-and-white images projected across the screen of the Kino Kijow; millisecond-long snippets of art-historical imagery, landscapes, animals (mostly dead), and images of war sprayed out in a firehose that was both hypnotic and anxiety-inducing. 

Was Ka Baird’s Saturday-night performance a noise show? It wasn’t particularly loud; there was more silence than sound. Yet the majority of the sounds they produced—mostly via a single microphone run through processing, augmented by processed horn, violin, and double bass—were cracks and snaps and rippling baths of static. Baird’s set was part dance, part performance, often unsettling but also charged with a slyly inscrutable sense of humor. (My favorite moment was when they slumped over the edge of the stage, dangling the mic cord to the floor below, like an exhausted mannequin, and held the pose for a minute or more; only after a nervous peal of applause did they, finally, return to their feet and resume playing.) Keiji Haino’s Saturday club-night intervention, on the other hand, was noise in its purest form, a 20-minute conflagration of feedback-soaked guitar abuse that intentionally took the wind out of Room 1’s rhythm-fueled sails, replacing beats with squalls of pure chaos.

There was no shortage of moments of beauty, among them Antonina Nowacka’s wonderfully ethereal set opening for Bill Callahan, accompanied by Anna Pašić’s harp, Magdalena Gajdzica’s flute, and dreamy visuals from Weronika Izdebska. (I wish I could offer more detail, but her performance was so lovely that I drifted in and out of consciousness for the duration, in the nicest way possible.) The most astonishingly gorgeous show was the collaboration between Ukrainian composer Heinali (Oleh Shpudeiko) and his compatriot Yasia Saienko. Appearing as part of the Morning Glory program in the surgical theater of a former medical college, they offered highly unusual interpretations of Hildegard von Bingen’s music, with Heinali sculpting pedal tones on his modular rig and Saienko vocalizing over the top, barefoot and eyes closed, and tapping into melodic lines that seemed to span not just millennia but light years, cosmic to the core. For long portions when she was not singing—and they only played three tracks over the course of an hour or so—she would walk to the back of the room and lean against the doors, flanked by chalkboard and sink, staring into space. Even in this most contemplative of performances, noise found a way of breaking through; in the second piece, Heinali’s synth gradually grew from an ostinato drone to a furious geyser of arpeggios. They closed with what I’m told was a traditional Ukrainian lament, and while I don’t know what she was singing, the emotions she channeled—grief, defiance, unquenchable rapture—were unmistakable and irresistible. 

Other personal highlights ran the gamut. I loved Rafael Toral’s solo performance of his great 2024 album Spectral Evolution, which he performed seated with his guitar and surrounded by pedals, and concluded with a brief Theremin solo. (Since the album is a studio creation, he told me, he was forced to use backing tapes, a choice he was visibly uncomfortable with, but from my perspective, the compromise was worth it, just to be able to experience the piece on a powerful soundsystem.) Italian drummer Valentina Magaletti turned up in two of my favorite sets: first with Dutch electronic musician Upsammy, in a burbling, vividly textured duo configuration that frequently reminded me of Mouse on Mars, then alongside Portuguese producer Nídia, performing songs from their collaborative album Estradas. Upsammy played twice as well, turning up again to roll out 160 BPM grooves at the Wednesday opening party, a clean-lined contrast with Chuquimamani-Condori’s swollen waves.

By and large, I was less frequently moved by what I saw at the club nights, just as a function of personal taste and limited stamina. (I’d love to have seen CCL go B2B with Lee Gamble, for instance, but no way was I capable of staying up until 4:30 for it.) But standout club sets included Actress & Skee Mask’s blistering 160 BPM B2B, a more groove-heavy bass-music B2B from Poland’s 2K88 and Morocco’s ojoo, and aya’s genially unhinged assault of contorted beats and sardonic asides. Though they performed at the club venue, and frequently unleashed crushing volleys of beats and bass, Saint Abdullah, Eomac, and Rebecca’s audiovisual show wasn’t really a “club set,” given its lengthy pauses and lack of interest in maintaining any particular flow. But I loved it all the same, particularly for its visual element, which drew upon home videos from the Saint Abdullah brothers’ childhood, and dealt in frank, probing ways with questions of identity, migration, and belonging. (“I went out west and realized it wasn’t for me,” said one particularly potent text that flashed across the screen. Another read, “Feeling more connected when you’re far away.”) I was left with more questions than answers, and a keen desire to speak to them about the project, because it’s clear that they’re moving into new territory.

Another artwork about identity, migration, and belonging turned up in the form of Under the Volcano, a new Polish film, directed by Damian Kocur, that tells the story of a Ukrainian family of four that finds itself stuck on vacation in the Canary Islands when Russia invades. It’s an understated but tense film shot through with claustrophobia, balancing its minimal plot—what kind of narrative can there be, after all, when your life is stuck on pause?—with convincing moodscapes. It’s a sharp, moving, and effective film, all the more so for the way it incorporates a subplot around sub-Saharan immigrants who are granted none of the privileges the Ukrainian family receives. See it if you get the chance.

Whether through good luck, smart programming, or a combination of both, many of the festival’s best performances took place alongside other standouts, in two- or three-act sequences that felt far more substantial than the sum of their (already exceptional) parts. The first of these came on Monday night. First Chris Watson and Izabela Dłużyk presented an immersive, multi-channel piece stitched together from field recordings the two made in Puszcza Białowieska, a primeval forest along the border between Belarus and Poland, in which the purely sensuous sounds of winds and critters lead down more ominous pathways toward distant shouting and even a gunshot—harrowing sounds for a zone traveled by migrants trying to enter the EU, and sometimes dying in the attempt. Next up came ML Buch, playing a minimalist solo set of voice, guitar, and sparing synthesizer; its open harmonies and warmness of spirit were the opposite of Watson and Dłużyk’s claustrophobic soundscapes. (I’d seen her play a few years before, at Pitchfork Paris, before I knew anything about her, and what I loved this time was that she barely seems to have scaled up her stage show; you might as well be sitting in the passenger seat of her SUV while she reamps guitar parts through the car stereo. I really can’t overstate how wonderful the set was; it was the first of several times last week that I found myself becoming teary-eyed in the audience.) Yet before anyone could get too comfortable or blissfully sentimental, Lasse Marhaug painstakingly shaped machinic scrapes and crackles into a fist-pumping climax of pure noise. As a whole, the course of the night felt like a Moebius strip perched on a lion’s lip.

These arc-like shapes occurred again and again. Tarta Relena’s stark, nearly a cappella folk songs led naturally to Mica Levi’s bracing, austere symphonic compositions. Kali Malone’s organ pieces found an unexpected throughline in the hurdy gurdy and resonant drones of Lankum. Perhaps the single most engrossing show of the week was a triple-header featuring Still House Plants, the Body & Dis Fig, and Yellow Swans. I wasn’t deeply familiar with Still House Plants; I thought of them as one of those newish UK post-post-punk bands, maybe a bit talky, like Dry Cleaning, but how wrong I was—a trio of secret virtuosi, they hammered out strange, beguiling, hypnotic songs that seemed to lead ever deeper into the vortex. The Body & Dis Fig followed with a corrosive blast of industrial, metal, and noise, centered around vocals that could shift from incantation to screech. Yellow Swans brought the night to a triumphantly apocalyptic close: On the surface it seemed like textbook noise, but once you began to peel back the layers, it swarmed with hidden energies and secret rhythms (one of my favorite images of the night: Pete Swanson fist-pumping to a pulse that seemingly only he could hear). It was an astonishing show, the kind that stays with you for years to come. 

One more triptych that deserves special mention: the closing concert. First came Raphael Rogiński, of whom Futurism Restated readers will know that I am a devoted fan. His renditions of pieces from Plays John Coltrane & Langston Hughes were, as is his wont, mostly unrecognizable from the album versions, but that was just part of what made them so captivating. Amirtha Kidambi sang the vocal parts, and supplied organ accompaniment on one song, offering a breathtakingly beautiful counterpoint to Rogiński’s knotty playing. Pulitzer winner Raven Chacon—the first Native American artist to win the prize—wiped the slate clean with a noise set incorporating tape recorder, directional mics, and literal bells and whistles, utilizing field recordings of windswept landscapes to turn the grand, gold-filigreed theater inside out, sensorially speaking. I had previously seen him play in a rural chapel at Stephen O’Malley’s You Origin event in Carnac, France, last year, and while some of the techniques were similar, the scale of the thing was massive this time, compared to the intimacy of that appearance. 

Finally, once he had shaken the building to its foundations, Laurel Halo and Leila Bordreuil took to the foggy stage to give a completely entrancing performance of Halo’s Atlas. I’d seen them do the same show at Sónar last year, but—maybe it was just the context of this regal, opulent theater—this set had a magnetism that the other one hadn’t, much as I had liked it. (Backstage, I remarked that it felt like the show had developed over the past year and change; they laughed and told me that this was the first time they’d played together since Sónar.) I still don’t understand how they manage to give such a faithful-feeling live rendition of a fundamentally studio-based album; Halo’s carefully controlled, deeply expressive piano playing is the heart of the thing, shot through time- and space-bending effects that never eclipse her playing or wear out their welcome, and Bordrueil’s cello playing is the perfect complement—sparing, quietly inventive, drawing furtive lines of flight through the foggy expanse of Halo’s composition. You can hear them listening to each other intently. It felt like inhabiting a dream. (More prosaically, it made me think that they really deserve a spot on ECM; Manfred Eicher, if you’re reading this, signing them would be a no-brainer.) Unsound’s closing concert is often a special event—I still remember Matmos’ Plastic Anniversary performance in the same theater, a few years back—but having Laurel Halo’s Atlas as the final piece of music at the festival seemed especially well chosen. As I’ve written before, she’s operating at a level far beyond most of her peers; this slot felt like a long-overdue recognition of the extent of her talents.

One final highlight I have to mention: Bill Callahan. I won’t go into what it was like to conduct a public interview with him, beyond saying that it was A) an honor and B) nerve-wracking. (“It went OK,” Callahan told director Mat Schulz, when asked how the talk had gone. “This guy”—pointing at me—“was a little nervous at first, so that made me nervous, but then it smoothed out.” Go ahead, carve it into my tombstone.) But it’s his solo show that will really stay with me. He played alone in the Kino, just him and his guitar, and a pedal-controlled kick drum, and some looping tapes (including one of what I’m guessing is one of his kids, murmuring “Hush little baby, don’t wake up”

This wasn’t a set for casual BC fans; it was one for the heads. He played mostly material from YTI​⅃​A​Ǝ​Я, at least at first—“Pigeons,” “Everyway,” “Coyotes,” “Bowevil,” “Partition,” plus Gold Record’s “Cowboy”; his playing was spiky and a little hard-scrabble, jabbing dissonantly at the strings occasionally. Sometimes he’d step away from the mic and dance a little jig. He played a newish song, “Lifeboat,” that sounds a lot like a kind of midlife-reckoning song, possibly about stepping away from music (which struck terror into my heart, given that in the talk he said he was experimenting with “not writing songs” right now—even though he also said that he had part of a title picked out for his next record, so who knows what that might mean). Then, unexpectedly, we time traveled with him. He pulled out “Rock Bottom Riser” and “Say Valley Maker,” both from Smog’s A River Ain’t Too Much to Love. He played Apocalypse’s “One Fine Morning,” albeit over a completely different set of chords. He did a particularly haunted “In the Pines,” from the same song, fleshed out with streaks of feedback and harmonica. 

Then, finally, after a seemingly interminable period in which he re-tuned his guitar and asked the audience, with seemingly genuine confusion, how long he was supposed to play—he’d neglected to reset his watch after the UK, he explained, and wasn’t sure how long he’d been onstage for (a sentiment Yellow Swans would later echo: “That was either 10 minutes or an hour,” one of them joked after their second song)—he gave us Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle’s “Jim Cain,” one of the bittersweetest songs in his catalog. (“In case things go poorly and I not return/Remember the good things I’ve done,” goes the chorus.) It was a stunning finale to a strange, scraggly set—a return to simple beauty after more than an hour of far more mercurial choices. Talking to people after the show, I learned that Callahan’s set had been divisive, but to me it was messy in the best way. Whether or not intentionally, its oblong loops, cryptic tangents, and general refusal to play nice felt like a nod to noise—both the theme of the festival and the roots of Callahan’s career as a home-taping mischief-maker. I love Callahan in sentimental mode, but it was refreshing to hear him grinding the rails, too. Throwing sparks and savoring the friction, he was simply doing what Unsound has always done, and what keeps me coming back year after year.

Which brings us, in a sort of postscript, back to the silence that I mentioned at the beginning. The festival kicked off, the day before its official opening, with a sound walk led by festival director Mat Schulz, passing by numerous venues the event has used over the years that are no longer available, due to the ceaseless juggernaut of urban development, mass tourism, and gentrification that has altered Krakow so profoundly over the past 20 years. About 40 of us walked in silence—past the old tobacco warehouse where I’d seen Tim Hecker and Greg Fox play; into the basement of club Re, where I’d had my mind blown to Sza/Za and Fuckhead back in the late 2000s; into the lobby of the Hotel Forum, the Communist-era brutalist hotel that had once served as the locus of the festival’s club programming, and was now a faux-opulent complex of bars and restaurants, with an unctuous, new-money/mafia-money sheen to it. Room 3, the infamous “Kitchen” where I had seen aya and so many other acts in the most intimate, unvarnished setting possible, was now a food court with stands for ramen and tacos. We drifted silently through the venue, trading amazed stares, contemplating a future in which there were no more venues left, in which all the possible concert halls and underground clubs had been bulldozed and turned into condos or overpriced commercial emporia. After the walk, we stood on the banks of the Vistula, looking up at the building’s mossy façade. Mat turned to me. “Walking through there,” he said, “I felt like we were ghosts.”