Text by CLOT Magazine
Kraków has long been the city where Unsound festival unfolds its complex cartographies of experimental sound, and this October 7 to 12, it returns with a new theme: WEB. If last year’s Noise edition was about rupture and abrasion, this year shifts the focus toward entanglement, mapping how artists, genres, geographies, and histories intersect in unpredictable, often fragile ways.
The announced lineup is a carefully woven structure. At its centre lie collaborative commissions that resist easy categorisation. Actress and Suzanne Ciani meet under the banner Concrète Waves, a transgenerational dialogue between UK bass abstraction and the pioneering spirit of West Coast modular synthesis. Japanese sound artist FUJI|||||||||||TA joins Ka Baird in a ritualistic exploration of voice, breath and organ pipes, while Chicago footwork originator RP Boo entangles his kinetically charged rhythms with the live drumming of Kraków’s Gary Gwadera. These pairings embody the WEB ethos: strands of practice that might never intersect in daily life, brought together in temporary yet potent proximity.
Equally striking is Unsound’s ongoing integration of classical and orchestral vocabularies into its fabric. Sinfonietta Cracovia, Kraków’s adventurous string ensemble, reappears in multiple projects: in Drift, an expansion of the hallucinatory world built by Harry Górski-Brown and Wojciech Rusin; and in the Providenza Ensemble, a cross-residency project featuring Kelman Duran, Loraine James and Puce Mary. These encounters suggest a porousness between so-called “high” and “underground” cultures, expanding the reach of both.
The program stretches far beyond music into cinema, performance and theatre. Matthew Barney’s monumental River of Fundament is to be re-staged with live scoring by Jonathan Bepler and Adam Gołębiewski, an act of revisiting that folds cinema into the liveness of festival temporality. Aleksandra Słyż and Alex Freiheit’s GHSTING merges concert, spoken word and movement into a spectral meditation on embodiment.
And then, the biggest and most unexpected news of the Unsound year: the return of Hotel Forum. After years in the wilderness, the venue reopens to host late-night events from October 9 to 11. This last-minute shift resets a legendary site in Unsound’s history, restoring not only the cavernous main hall but also the beloved third room, 89 aka The Secret Lodge. The Forum program promises heavyweight encounters, with names like A Guy Called Gerald, the bug & the warrior Queen, Nazar, Dj Haram, an Unsound-commissioned collaboration between Poland’s 2K88, Bianca Scout, Lauren Duffus and Rainy Miller, born from the Unsound x Selector After Dark Residency in Gdańsk with support from the British Council.
If late nights are Unsound’s pulse, mornings offer their counterpoint. The always delicious morning glories, this year with French guitarist Nina Garcia (Wednesday), Japanese bamboo flute (shinboue) maestro Rai Tateishi (Thurs), and two free ambient brunches at Hotel PURO invite audiences to recalibrate: FOQL (Friday) and Whatever The Weather, the ambient alias of Loraine James (Saturday). On the closing Sunday, there will be an afternoon set by Japanese DJ 1729 (fka Iryoku), fresh from a revelatory Unsound Osaka performance, unfolding at Cricoteka.
The Discourse Program is equally ambitious, mapping webs of thought that mirror the sonic curations. Jaya Klara Brekke interrogates the political exploitation of “the network” as metaphor; Emile Frankel imagines the uncanny world of Heaven Banned, an online censorship regime of AI adoration; while Kate Devlin, Ania Malinowska and Aga Kozak explore intimacy and sexuality in the age of chatbots and robots.
Conversations also bring artists closer to their audiences. A Guy Called Gerald reflects on the 30th anniversary of Black Secret Technology; Jim O’Rourke joins Philip Sherburne for a wide-ranging discussion on a career spanning noise, pop and improv; and Sherburne also moderates a panel on collective creativity with Abdullah Miniawy, Daniel Martin-McCormick and Aleksandra Słyż. Other discussions address genre agnosticism (gyrofield, Kara-Lis Coverdale, Puce Mary, Simo Cell), Western soft power and its unravelling (with Gosia Płysa, Pavel Niakhayeu, Rabih Beaini), and the shifting terrain of music journalism in the age of reels and memes (led by RA’s Chloe Lula, Cat Zhang and others).
The discourse strand broadens further into politics and care. Antony Loewenstein’s The Palestine Laboratory is discussed with Ala Qandil and Nina Michnik; Marta Rawłuszko moderates a conversation on joy and burnout between Akwugo Emejulu and Hannah Proctor; and a panel on migration challenges fearmongering around Poland’s borders. Ada Omylak’s embroidery workshop proposes stitching as a practice of dissent and solidarity.
The week closes with a screening of 2000 Meters to Andriivka, Mstyslav Chernov’s searing documentary on Ukrainian soldiers, scored by Unsound regular Sam Slater. The final Saturday also hosts the independent record label fair at Klub Betel, a reminder of the grassroots economy that sustains these networks.
What emerges from this year’s announcements is Unsound’s curation approach as an ecology: one where late-night delights, morning decompression, political discourse and communal care are interwoven. The web is about connection — connection with knots, frays and tensions intact. In an era where festivals risk becoming branding exercises, Unsound continues to thrive as a living network: fragile, complex, and radiant in its intricacy.
