The Last Decade of Unsound - A Summary

Heading into the 2020s, we wanted to take a look back over the past 10 years of Unsound, during which the festival transformed in many ways. 

2010 was the first year that we built an entire edition around a theme - Horror, The Pleasure of Fear and Unease - exploring darkness in sound and music. 2010 also marked the first edition of Unsound New York. Coupled together, these two events made a statement that we tried to carry throughout the next 10 years, by exploring a wide range of themes, as well as taking Unsound around the world.

Few festivals have encompassed such a geographically diverse range of cities, consciously bending ideas of center and periphery in the process. The aim was to develop Unsound as an amorphous creative force, in geographical as well as musical and artistic terms. And so we worked with amazing organisers and curators to create festivals in:

New York (6 editions); Adelaide (6 editions); Toronto (3 editions); London (2 editions); Tbilisi; Batumi; Yerevan; Baku; Almaty; Bishkek; Dushanbe; Vladivostok; Murmansk; Kazan; Minsk; Lviv; and Barcelona. 

A massive thank you to anyone and everyone involved in making these events a reality.

Meanwhile, in Krakow, over the last decade Unsound has expanded in ways we’d never anticipated, becoming much more than “just” a music festival. Rather than trying to build the event in terms of size, we’ve developed Unsound in other ways, expanding the discourse and film program. We’ve also commissioned, produced and toured many projects, thinking of the festival as a platform for creation and collaboration.

And while we started out the decade focused on darkness, our Krakow events have become more colourful, dynamic and multi-dimensional, with artists from around the globe presenting electronic music we couldn’t have dreamt of 10 years ago. We ended the decade with the theme of Solidarity, exploring what the concept means in today’s world and in relation to our festival. The reflection it inspired still resonates for us, most of all for the way it explored ideas related to community. 

Slipping into 2020, we’d like to thank the many artists involved in these editions, as well as our audience. Without your trust we wouldn’t be able to program the festival in the way we do today. It still blows us away that thousands of people gather in Krakow each October to hear weird and wonderful sounds. We never take it for granted!

The dates for Unsound Krakow 2020 have already been marked, between 4 - 11 October. You can sign up as attending our event on Facebook.

On a final note, we’ve released the first Unsound podcast of the year, part of a treasure trove of recordings from the 2019 festival. This time it’s Betty b2b Teki Latex, a blazing late night set from The Chandelier Room at Hotel Forum. You can check out a large number of other podcasts released over the years at our Soundcloud page, stretching back to 2008. Enjoy!