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Events: Unsound Festival

Category: Krakow Festivals

Krakow Unsound Music Festival

 

Going to a concert with one's own sleeping bag is no strange thing for the regular festival-goers, but being encouraged to sleep not between, but during the gigs – that's another thing. And what about listening to live music performances in clubs as well as art galleries, churches and factories? And if the music is more-alternative-than-anything-you-ever-heard and it's hard to say if its classical or electronic or club or all in one?

Well, Krakow always attracted the weird, the strange and the alternative – so no wonder Poland's perhaps most avant-garde music festival – the Unsound Festival – is organized under the Wawel hill. Not that Cracow can't bear a regular pop festival (like the Coke Live Music), it just prefers to make people feel... well, unsound.

The idea of the Unsound Festival in Krakow was to confront performers of different music styles, from avant-garde classical music to ambient or alternative electronic music, presenting different approaches to their art. The Unsound festival's main focus is to promote the new, the innovative and the surprising in today's music.

The first Unsound Festival was organized in 2003, and it quickly grew and its 6th edition in 2008 was a week-long event that took place in mid-October in different spots such as the power plant in Podgorze, the Pod Baranami Cinema, Manggha Centre of Japanese Art and Technology or the Gothic church of St. Catherine's.

The stars of the 6th Unsound Festival were Michael Nyman, Fuck Buttons and Xiu Xiu, presenting dubstep music, a popular genre of club music. Other interesting concerts included Coleen, Pan American and Ben Frost, performing music of different genres, from delicate electronic music to noise rock, all in an interior used to hearing music that's totally different – one of the oldest Krakow churches.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the 2008 Unsound Festival was dedicated to Andy Warhol's mute movies, with live music played by different groups. The longest concert of this part of the Unsound lasted for eight nighttime hours, and the listeners were encouraged to sleep to boost the experience.

Date

Date: October 2009