The Polish festival took place from 30 September to 6 October, with co-curations from Le Guess Who?, reworks and Berlin Atonal.

Under the theme NOISE, Unsound Kraków brought together for one week more than 100 artists working in adventurous music. Heavy rhythms met haunting melodies, with dark, cinematic energy to ethereal, dreamlike textures.

Unsound also hosted TIMES’ performance ‘The Crossing‘.

The Crossing Chapter 1: ‘Białowieża’

This new sound installation is a work by the legendary field recordist Chris Watson, who is working with Izabela Dłużyk, a blind Polish sound recordist celebrated for her profound connection to nature’s acoustics and recognized as one of the BBC’s 100 Most Influential Women in 2023 for her expertise in bird sound recording.

Together, they went to Białowieża Forest, which stretches across Poland and Belarus. It is the last mainland part of the primeval forest that once stretched across Europe and is still largely untouched by humans. For more than two years, migrants from the Middle East, Africa and South Asia have attempted to cross through this forest into Poland and the EU – and have been pushed back by Polish guards. This has resulted in migrants being trapped and dying. A metal wall has been constructed, dividing the forest, which has become a symbol of wider geopolitical tensions.

Their field recordings were presented in Łaźnia Nowa Theatre, in total darkness in multichannel audio.

The Crossing Chapter 2: ‘A Forbidden Distance’

Saint Abdullah, Eomac, and Rebecca Salvadori

‘A Forbidden Distance‘ is a new work that is jointly produced by Iranian-Canadian brothers Mohammad and Mehdi (Saint Abdullah), Irish sound-designer and musician Ian McDonnell (Eomac), and London-based Italo-Australian video artist and filmmaker Rebecca Salvadori. The project is an exploration of the sense of self in relation to processes of displacement. Their collaborative audio-visual work reflects on the nature of stories and fragmented experiences, both collectively and individually.

The Crossing is a collaborative curatorial project, commissioned by Berlin Atonal, Semibreve, Sónar and Unsound, and supported by TIMES.

Co-curated with Le Guess Who?:
CRYSTALLMESS + OXHY
DJ Anderson Do Paraíso

One of the club scene’s most uncompromising figures, French producer, DJ, writer, curator and visual artist Crystallmess is devoted to dance music in all its forms. She’s as likely to play zouk or dancehall as she is footwork or hardcore rap, and her eclectic productions – best witnessed on 2018’s Mere Noises or her PAN-released split with Toxe – whittle these ideas into a razor-sharp point. At this year’s Unsound Kraków, Crystallmess premiered her new live show with OXHY.

Dedicated to his iconic grandmother Muthoni wa Kirima, the only woman to earn the rank of Field Marshal during Kenya’s Mau Mau uprising against British colonists, Lord Spikeheart‘s long-awaited solo debut The Adept is an album that seethes with revolutionary energy. He’s a unique vocalist and enigmatic storyteller who’s found his niche in the space between genres, freely mangling elements of death metal and grindcore with rap, mystical folkloric incantations and ear-splitting techno in his unrelenting search for peak sonic intensity. Screaming, growling and rhyming in Kikuyu, Kiswahili and English, he cuts an idiosyncratic shape into the cultural landscape, shining a spotlight on the African continent’s hardest, heaviest music.

One of the UK’s most singular electronic musicians, Darren Cunningham, aka Actress, has been sculpting his distinctive sound since 2004, when he released the eccentric No Tricks on his own Werk Discs imprint. In time, his hybridization of galaxy-brain Detroit techno, British bass music and noisy dub extended in widescreen across a series of acclaimed full-lengths, such as 2010’s woozy Splazsh and its darker, conceptually-driven follow-up R.I.P.. His latest album Statik, released on the Norwegian label Smalltown Supersound, is his most ethereal to date, a reflecting pool of liquified beats and buoyant Drexciyan synths.

Mysterious Munich-based producer and DJ Skee Mask looks back to move forward. His music, a knowledgeable blend of dusty breakbeats and euphoric synths, takes its cues from the ’90s backroom canon – Chain Reaction, Warp Records and Counterbalance, for example – but revitalizes the formula, ignoring nostalgia in favor of constant innovation. The method is best exemplified on his 2018 breakout Compro, released on the Ilian Tape label to wide acclaim; dripping with vintage rave energy, it’s familiar but staggeringly varied. And as a DJ he’s just as versatile, slipping through genres to create a groove, not a repetition.