Text by CLOT Magazine
Our friends from Unsound Festival have done it again. Full week and weekend passes for Unsound Kraków 2017 edition sold out in a few minutes when they went on sale last Monday, 29th May, coincident with the first line-up announcements.
Far from the halcyon images the FLOWER POWER theme of this edition can evoke, these announcements strengthen the idea behind the theme: music that stems in opposition to dominant forces and poise for a critical reflection of the future that’s left. FLOWER POWER marks the 50th anniversary of the famous 1967 Summer of Love, and it is, as well, a nod towards the French 19th-century poet Charles Baudelaire’s volume “The Flowers Of Evil”, a chronicle of past times full of intoxicating substances, sounds, and experiences.
Among the first acts announced, balancing between clanking forces and ethereal scents, we find Einstürzende Neubauten, Gas and the collaborative project between The Bug and JK Flesh’s ZONAL with Moor Mother, and the first b2b between DJ Bone and DJ Stingray. We are particularly excited about the collaboration between MFO (Marcel Webber) and Liz Harris (Grouper) as NIVHEK, presenting. After its own death, a commissioned project developed (in part) in Siberia.
With sets from Nina Kraviz, Umfang, Jlin, Ewa Justka, Varg and Pharmakon, the festival will try to deepen into ideas of dystopian feelings, protest, hedonism, oppression and resistance in response to the current time’s instability – as Unsound director Mat Schulz states- when all that is solid seems to melt into thin air.
We feel more than ever that this year’s theme should be multifaceted, reflecting darkness and light, growth and decay, ecological vulnerability and resourceful regeneration, he says. We are thrilled to read about a theme close to our universe and a lineup starting to shape from the liminal, moving from the shadows to reimagine a not-so-sombre future.
