Non-linear Connections: Decoding the Unsound Ecosystem

instrumenty-braci-Baschetow-A9200932-fot-Yoshikazu-Inoue.jpg, default, The Baschet Brotehrs instruments, Unsound Festival, Osaka, photo: Yoshikazu Inoue / courtesy of the Unsound Festival

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If you tried to map Unsound Festival, you’d quickly end up with a puzzle: Kraków, Osaka, New York, Brussels, Minsk, Bishkek – a chain of places that looks less like a touring schedule than a secret network. That is precisely the point. Unsound has spent two decades turning experimental music into a platform for unlikely encounters, and in the process has become something bigger, stranger and more resilient than a festival.

I needed some sort of catchy opening. I was looking for a way to start an article about Kraków’s Unsound Festival and its local and global offshoots. Perhaps, I thought, that AI search engine that had already helped me a few times in tracking down interesting and obscure sources could provide an appropriate metaphor. So I loaded it up and typed in the names of the dozen or so cities across four continents where Unsound has taken place.

‘These are cities that have hosted Marian Sobula – an outstanding Polish pianist,’ the machine replies self confidently. ‘They were characterised by a shared concert repertoire: he performed there the classic trinity of Polish composers – Fryderyk Chopin, Ignacy Jan Paderewski and Karol Szymanowski.’

The concert career of this professor at the Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music in Kraków is indeed impressive – he has performed in 38 countries on five continents – but he wasn’t what I was looking for. Besides, the AI suggests that all of the cities, apart from Adelaide in Australia, lie within a relatively narrow band of the Northern Hemisphere (between 34°N and 53°N). One of the values of the Kraków festival, however, is that you don’t just hear artists representing the northern half of the globe there. So I decided I’ll just have to make peace with the fact that this text won’t be beginning in bravura fashion.

But perhaps this algorithmic flop is the best clue of all. Artificial intelligence search-es for safe, repeatable patterns – geographical or repertoire based ones. Unsound, by con-trast, has always fed on uncertainty, pushing into places where logic would advise retreat. Mat Schulz, the festival’s director, remembers all too well the moments when no data set could guarantee success:

The early Unsound Minsk events between 2007 and 2009 were difficult, due to the political situation – Belarus was then called ‘the last dictatorship in Europe’. It wasn't even clear the 2007 event would go ahead until the last moment. But at the same time, Unsound felt vital there as a result, as Minsk was a very isolated city and Unsound had wider signifi-cance in these terms.

A map without borders & Lost in Translation

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Keiji Haino, Unsound Festival, Osaka, photo: Yoshikazu Inoue / courtesy of the Unsound Festival

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This very vitality in isolated places turned out to be Unsound’s hallmark. In the second decade of the 21st century, it became a global phenomenon. The festival began appearing in New York (where it now returns regularly), London and Adelaide. As part of the Unsound Dislocation programme, it travelled to cities in the Caucasus, Central Asia, Russia and Ukraine – an itinerary that would be impossible in today’s geopolitical reality – from Almaty through Batumi, Bishkek, Dushanbe and Lviv to Murmansk and Vladivostok.

In 2025, Unsound took place in Brussels (within the framework of Poland’s presidency of the EU Council), Kraków, Osaka (during the Polish Culture Week at EXPO 2025) and New York. The Japanese edition in particular, organised outside the EXPO zone, became a fascinating case study: a collision between Kraków’s creative chaos and Japanese perfectionism.

For Gosia Płysa, the festival’s curator and executive director, Osaka was an experiment on many levels. Japan, although crucial to the history of the avant‑garde, is not famous for a festival culture in the European sense of the term. The local scene is fragmented into very small pockets.

‘If someone listens to footwork, they only listen to footwork. If it’s jazz, they won’t go to anything else,’ Płysa explains. ‘Convincing partners to combine these genres on one stage – something that seems obvious to us – took time there.’

So the programme was built on contrasts, but also on respect for the local context. The first day at the VS. Museum (designed by Tadao Ando) referred back to the history of EXPO 1970, which also took place in Osaka. Keiji Haino – a legend of the Japanese avant‑garde, born in 1952, co‑founder of the psychedelic‑rock band Fushitsusha and active in free improvisation, noise and minimalism – performed on historic sound sculptures created more than half a century ago for the Japanese world’s fair by brothers François (1920–2014) and Bernard (1917–2025) Baschet. They were artists and inventors, designers of unconventional musical instruments. Their most famous creation is the Cristal Baschet, modelled on the glass harmonica – a structure consisting of 56 chromatically tuned glass rods, played by rubbing them with moistened fingertips. At EXPO 1970, they presented their works in the foyer of the Japanese Steel Federation Pavilion, in a collaboration initiated by Tōru Takemitsu, a giant of 20th‑century Japanese contemporary music, widely known for his film scores, including the music for Akira Kurosawa’s Ran.

The second part of the opening programme of the Japanese Unsound showcased reinterpreta-tions of the work of Włodzimierz Kotoński, the composer of Study for One Cymbal Stroke, the first Polish electronic piece. The output of this composer, associated with the Polish Radio Experimental Studio in Warsaw, was taken on by Jim O’Rourke, an American composer and guitarist living in Japan, and Eiko Ishibashi – a singer and producer of experimental electronics, author of the score for the award winning film Drive My Car directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi. Robin Fox, in turn, presented a programme that paid homage to Stanisław Ostoja Kotkowski (1922–1994) – a Polish multimedia artist and pioneer of laser art.

Despite concerns over attendance (in Japan, even star concerts can sometimes attract just a handful of people), Unsound Osaka proved a success. And not only among tourists, but above all among the local Japanese audience, which revealed a surprisingly enthusiastic face – perhaps even more so than the slightly jaded listeners in Europe.

The second day of Unsound in Osaka moved to the post‑industrial Namura shipyard, and the finale took place in a traditional Noh theatre, where Raphael Rogiński was among the performers. The rest of the programme unfolded in local underground clubs.

As Mat Schulz comments: ‘Raphael Rogiński’s show in that context was particularly memorable – the stage was more or less a wooden resonance box, and it sounded wondrous. I've been told that only in Osaka could we use a NOH Theatre for music. The locals are more open‑minded, known for their eccentricity and humour – it's much more laid back than Tokyo.’

Behind the curtains of this successful production, however, scenes looked like frames from Lost in Translation.

‘There were moments when we weren’t sure whether the event would happen at all, or whether everyone knew what was going on. Things were happening in some zone that was just lost in translation,’ Płysa recalls. ‘And then suddenly everything would come together, and the sound quality was perfect. Even in small clubs, the sound was better than at many a commercial festival in Europe. That’s a Japanese trademark: if someone does something, they do it properly – even if they never say they will.’

A categorisation error

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Senyawa, Unsound Festival, photo: courtesy of the Unsound Festival

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If artificial intelligence has trouble finding a geographical pattern for Unsound, it is no surprise that it also gets lost when it comes to defining the very format of the event. For years, the autumn Kraków gathering has been labelled as an ‘electronic music festival’ and, in more colloquial terms, simply a techno party. That is yet another pigeonhole that turns out to be too tight.

‘At the beginning we were a festival, but now we prefer the term “platform” because our activities reach far beyond organising events within a short slice of time,’ explains Gosia Płysa.

This escape from an ‘industrial’ understanding of music is crucial. In a world dominated by streaming‑service algorithms that feed listeners more of what they already like, Unsound positions itself as a counter‑force. Instead of confirming the audience in its habits, it tries to destabilise them.

‘There’s still a lingering conviction that Unsound is a festival with lots of techno. In reality, we are moving further and further away from that,’ the curator adds. ‘We try to look for genres that are only just budding, emerging outside the mainstream circuit. It’s niche music, but aimed at the widest possible audience.’

Key roles are played in the festival programme not only by artists from Poland and Central and Eastern Europe, but also by a growing representation from the so‑called Global South. The line‑up is regularly filled by artists from the Middle East, Africa, South America and Asia.

Born in Kraków

To understand the evolution of this platform, we need to go back to the source. Unsound was born in 2003 in Kraków. It was a thoroughly local festival, even thought it was brought to life by an Australian expat. The damp basements of Kraków’s clubs initially attracted a small handful of enthusiasts, gradually drawing audiences from other countries into their orbit.

Today’s Kraków is a city perfectly adapted to tourism; it could even be seen as a textbook example of overtourism. At the beginning of the 21st century, however, the urban fabric was completely different. Kazimierz – the former Jewish district, now heaving with trendy bars, food trucks and Airbnb apartments – was a raw, partly empty and at times unsafe place.

It was in this setting that Unsound’s identity crystallised. The lack of professional concert halls forced creativity. The music had to resonate with the architecture, had to enter into dialogue with spaces that were often never meant for it. Mat Schulz stresses that the choice of venues is both a matter of logistics and an element of dramaturgy:

‘I think a lot about architecture, the space, and how it connects with what’s being presented. [...] I’m a big believer in contrast, but carefully considered – for example, an experimental or noise show in the middle of a club night.’

A laboratory of connections

It is hardly surprising that a significant part of the audience converging on Kraków for the festival consists of musicians, DJs, curators and journalists. Kraków’s Unsound has become one of the centres of international networking for exploratory music. Out of this dense web of connections, an informal structure emerges that the organisers sometimes call the ‘Unsound Family’. It includes artists such as Ben Frost, Robin Fox, Piotr Kurek and Antonina Nowacka, who not only regularly appear in the programme, but have effectively grown up alongside the event, presenting successive stages of their evolution there. It is this trust that allows the artistic directors to make bold curatorial moves – such as commissioning works created specifically for the festival. Asked about his favourite collaborations initiated by Unsound, Mat Schulz points to projects that would probably never have come into being without that curatorial impulse:

There have been so many that I find it hard to name a few favourites, but definitely Sólaris, created by Ben Frost and Daníel Bjarnason with Sinfonietta Cracovia, with visuals by Brian Eno and Nick Robertson. The music was released as an album, and I think it's an underappreciated classic of experimental / ambient music.

The list of ‘exotic’ collisions does not end there. Other unusual – though only at first glance – projects include the collaboration between British producer felicity and the Śląsk Song and Dance Ensemble. Or an even less obvious duo: Piotr ‘Gary’ Gwarda and RP Boo. The former is a drummer rooted in the rock‑and‑improv scene, who here played on a dżaz – a traditional folk drum kit from rural Poland. The latter is a Chicago pioneer of footwork. Their meeting led to the archaic motor rhythms of the Polish countryside intertwining with the futuristic beat of the American underground.

Horror, Future Shock & summer school

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Sunn O))), Unsound Festival, photo: courtesy of the Unsound Festival

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The festival’s narrative is built not only with sound, but also with words. Since 2010, each edition of Unsound has had its own theme, which functions like a lens focusing attention on a specific phenomenon. It began with the slogan ‘Horror, the Pleasure of Fear and Unease’. Later themes have included ‘Future Shock’, ‘The End’, ‘The Dream’, ‘Presence’ and ‘Solidarity’.

Concerts and club nights are accompanied by an exceptionally extensive discursive programme, co‑created, among others, by Michał Gulik. This is where the festival most clearly moves beyond the frame of music, entering the territory of philosophy, technology and the social sciences. Running parallel to the performative programme is a debate about the artistic and political context in which we function.

This need to broaden the context gave rise to the idea of the Unsound Lab Summer School, held in Sokołowsko – a former German spa town immortalised by Olga Tokarczuk in The Empusium. It is a kind of summer school, a dream of creating a closed, safe educational space which, as Gosia Płysa notes, resembles an artists’ camp. Participants meet mentors and break down barriers typical of ‘star-fan’ or ‘lecturer-student’ relationships.

‘We want, in this way, to counter the idea of gatekeeping. We open up the festival and industry space to people who want to be part of it,’ Płysa explains.

Interestingly, the profile of the lab’s participants is evolving. Initially the programme was aimed at newcomers, but today it increasingly supports people mid‑career: artists who want to start a label, or musicians who see themselves in curatorial roles. In a world where formal music education often lags behind the realities of the market, Unsound Lab offers knowledge about how to survive in the industry – not only in a managerial sense, but also in a creative one.

Nerves of steel

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Osaka and the successes of the educational programme show that Unsound still has the ability to open locks for which others have no keys. But looking at the map from the perspective of 2026, it is clear that the world in which the festival began its global expansion no longer exists. The windows that once allowed ideas to flow freely between East and West have slammed shut in many places. This poses new challenges for the organisers.

Unsound’s roots also reach Warsaw. Since 2021, the city has hosted a summer iteration of the project under the name Ephemera. This time the curatorial focus is on performative practices. Although music remains central, it primarily accompanies choreography, dance and theatre. ‘It works a little in counterpoint to Unsound, which has already become a global behemoth,’ says Gosia Płysa. ‘Ephemera is meant to be a platform at the intersection of different fields, emphasising interdisciplinarity.’

Since 2021, Unsound has also been running publishing activities. The first project was an artistic response to the pandemic – an album called Intermissions consisting of 15 tracks that form a sonic commentary on a year of fear and isolation. It features compositions by the likes of Bastarda Trio, Lutto Lento, Moor Mother, SOPHIE and Ben Frost. The record was accompanied by a book of more than 300 pages, containing essays by Polish and international authors. The volume’s crux is an analysis of reality in times of plague: from the psychology of isolation and digital intimacy, through the perception of sound in solitude, to the symbolism of masks. Equally important are articles devoted to race and identity, complemented by critiques of the contemporary music ecosystem and reflections on technology.

Unsound’s albums are pressed on vinyl but also released on streaming platforms. The label’s catalogue includes records by artists closely tied to the festival – many of them are projects created as commissioned works for this growing platform. Among the releases worth mentioning are albums by Piotr Kurek, the duo of Antonina Nowacka and Sofie Birch, Raphael Rogiński and a record by the Japanese band KAKUHAN recorded with the percussionist Adam Gołębiewski. Each of these artists also appeared in the Unsound’s Osaka programme.

Running a platform like this in times of fragmentation and crisis demands not only passion, but also – as Mat Schulz puts it – a tough character:

We started Unsound as a small underground DIY event, so the very idea of creating a festival on this scale, with events around the world – that was not something I could have even fathomed. [...] Bigger scale means all problems are magnified, and honestly I would never have started, had I known what was coming. You have to have nerves of steel. I've developed that, my capacity to deal with stress and unexpected problems – but this is not my natural inclination. Before Unsound, I was sitting in a room writing novels!

Perhaps, however, this change is not quite as radical as the director thinks. Unsound – with its non-linear narrative, multiple storylines and gallery of colourful characters – still resembles a novel. Except that instead of on paper, it’s being written in real time, across a dozen cities around the world, in defiance of algorithms, language barriers and geopolitics.

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