Unsound Releases First Artist and Discourse Program Names For Unsound Kraków 2025. Weekly and Long Weekend Passes on Sale Today at 3pm CEST
LINEUP SO FAR:
2K88 + Bianca Scout + Lauren Duffus + Rainy Miller (PL/UK) / A Guy Called Gerald presents Black Secret Technology (UK) / Actress & Suzanne Ciani present Concrète Waves (US/UK) / Artur Rumiński (PL) / Assyouti b2b OKO DJ (EG/FR) / billy woods (US) / caroline (UK) / dBridge b2b gyrofield (UK/HK) / DJ Haram (US) / Djrum (UK) / Evicshen (US) / FUJI|||||||||||TA & Ka Baird (JP/US) / Harry Górski-Brown & Wojciech Rusin present Drift with Sinfonietta Cracovia (UK/PL) / Iftll (EG) / Jim O’Rourke & Eiko Ishibashi (US/JP) / Joan La Barbara (US) / Julek Ploski & Kat Zavada present Omega Secret Society (PL) / KAVARI (UK) / Kia (AU) / Matthew Barney and Jonathan Bepler’s film River of Fundament with live scoring by Bepler feat. Adam Gołębiewski / Moin (UK) / Nazar (AO/NL) / NEW YORK (EE/US) / Nexus (B4MBA & Mooki6) (ES/SN/FR/GP) / Nina Garcia (FR) / Paszka (PL) / Rai Tateishi (live processing by Koshiro Hino) (JP) / RP Boo & Gary Gwadera (US/PL) / Smerz (NO) / Tashi Dorji (BT) / Tracey (UK) / YHWH Nailgun (US) / Yvu (BZ) + MORE TO BE ANNOUNCED
Unsound 2025 lands again in Kraków from 7th until 12th of October, this year built around the theme WEB. Passes are on sale today at 3pm via Resident Advisor priced at PLN 790 (Weekly) and PLN 670 (Long Weekend). After this, Unsound Club Passes and individual tickets will go on sale following the second announcement. (Info on announcements for events in Osaka and New York – also part of WEB – can be found at the bottom of this news.)
Special projects at Unsound 2025 include River of Fundament, the operatic experimental film by American artist Matthew Barney and composer Jonathan Bepler. Tracing the seven states of incarnation from death to rebirth, this six-hour film made in 2014 will be presented, for the first time ever, with layers of live scoring by Bepler featuring improvisational percussionist Adam Gołębiewski and other Polish musicians to be announced. Tickets for this event go on sale soon.
Commissioned projects will build webs across borders, including Polish producer 2K88 joining forces with rising UK artists Lauren Duffus, Bianca Scout and Rainy Miller. Japanese sound artist FUJI|||||||||||TA and American experimentalist Ka Baird perform together at Unsound Kraków and Osaka for the first time, as will legendary footwork producer RP Boo with Polish drummer Gary Gwadera. For a piece titled Drift, Scottish bagpipe player Harry Górski-Brown and Polish composer Wojciech Rusin will refine and expand their recent Ephemera show in Warsaw, to include strings from Sinfonietta Cracovia.
Unsound: WEB will also present numerous pioneers, tracing their influence on today’s music, such as Jim O’Rourke – since the early ’90s a leading force in everything from indie rock to drone to noise – who teams up with Japan’s Eiko Ishibashi. Suzanne Ciani and Actress will present their new collaborative show titled Concrète Waves. Vocalist and composer Joan La Barbara will weave interlaced vocals, while A Guy Called Gerald celebrates 30 years of his groundbreaking album Black Secret Technology. Cult US rapper billy woods, meanwhile, shepherds us through the past, present and future of underground hip-hop.
Bands feature prominently this year, including those with acclaimed new releases: UK 8-piece caroline with caroline 2; American experimental rock outlet YHWH Nailgun with 45 Pounds; Norway’s Smerz with their Big City Life; and Moin – the fruitful collaboration of Valentina Magaletti and Raime (longtime Unsound attendees may remember they played their first-ever show together at Unsound, and Raime’s live debut was also at the festival – way back in 2010).
While Unsound’s 2024 NOISE edition was heavy on drums, WEB will highlight solo guitar, and include: Nina Garcia, with her tonal and textural experiments; the minimalist work of Polish metal guitarist Artur Rumiński; and Bhutanese improviser Tashi Dorji whose performances teeter between “chaos and control, terror and beauty” (Pitchfork). Meanwhile, Japanese musician Rai Tateishi transcends the limits of ancient traditional flutes with live processing from fellow-goat(jp) member Koshiro Hino, while noise artist and instrument maker Evicshen makes radical physical electroacoustic music.
Over Unsound’s history in Kraków, as the city has gentrified, the festival has been forced to relocate from one adapted space to another in search of late-night venues. In 2025, we thought we’d finally run out of options, but after months of searching we have a new home within the Henryk Reyman Municipal Stadium, of all places, where we’ll bring in a soundsystem, lighting and set to create a temporary multi-room club. The program will include live shows, experimental interventions, and as always an array of club music from around the globe.
The first of many names is Angolan producer Nazar, who recently released the album Demilitarize on Hyperdub. Franco/Guadeloupean artist Mooki6 teams up with Senegalese/Hispanic DJ and producer B4MBA to form the industrial dancehall and jungle project Nexus. Forms of experimental pop that trace the past into the future come from deadpan yet danceable Estonian/US “performance project” NEW YORK, as well as London duo Tracey, who blend warped R&B, hyperpop, trip-hop and chamber pop. Further sets come from Glasgow-based KAVARI, Kraków’s Paszka and Egyptian producer Itfll, who will present a live show ahead of the release of his EP on Zuli’s influential irsh label.
As for DJ sets, Unsound continues its tradition of booking exciting back-to-backs. Legendary drum & bass producer dBridge will pair with the iconoclastic new-gen club alchemist gyrofield for the first time, and Egyptian DJ and beatmaker Assyouti will connect with OKO DJ, a French artist unafraid of blending nu-metal, gabber and noise with more approachable dance music. Solo DJ sets come from New Jersey-born DJ Haram; Djrum, who dissects and rebuilds club music on his 4 deck set-up; Australian DJ Kia, who's been garnering well-deserved attention after a slew of high-quality mixes; and Yvu, a Brazilian artist and founder of the Acta label.
Unsound’s daytime discourse program will untangle connections between culture, technological systems, geopolitics and sonic economies. Liz Pelly joins the lineup to present Mood Machine, her new book on how Spotify and platform capitalism has reshaped our relationships with music. Australian journalist Antony Loewenstein – author of The Palestine Laboratory – and Polish-Palestinian reporter Ala Qandil will trace a global web of complicity woven through Israel’s export and import of surveillance technology and weapons – tools honed on Palestinians in the genocide in Gaza. Multimedia artist and writer Steven Warwick (aka Heatsick) will present a talk and lead a two-day workshop based on Notes on Evil, his book exploring how the idea of “evil” is constructed across culture, politics, and media.
Researcher and artist Martina Raponi will premiere her forthcoming book Psofotopias. Noise: Sounding Out the Unheard, a speculative theory of sonic perception touching on deaf sound art practices, algorithmic music recommendation, dreams, and paranoid listening. She’ll be joined in conversation by researcher and media theorist Florian Cramer. Jeremy D. Larson – music critic and Deputy Director at Pitchfork – will present (Dis)Influence, a lecture on how media and social platforms turn taste into a set of micro-economies where preference is packaged and sold. Artist and composer Julek Płoski will team up with digital culture researcher and artist Kat Zavada to create Omega Secret Society, a speculative, semi-live, hyper-paranoid mockumentary event combining music, essayistic performance and glitchy cinema.
Thanks to everyone who submitted proposals to the Unsound open call, this year dedicated to the discourse program. You will hear from us this month, and those selected will be included in our next announcement.
Unsound WEB includes Unsound Osaka from 5th to 7th September – the first artist announcement and tickets go on sale at the start of July. The Unsound New York announcement follows soon after. Remember that we also have Unsound Adelaide coming next month, on July 11th and 12th. Stay tuned for more info.