Waste Mail 023: Unsound Festival special 🔥

All of the great music from 8 (!) days of Unsound Festival

Nov 07, 2024

Welcome to Waste Mail, the newsletter that’s dedicated to cutting-edge club music and is written by Seb Wheeler for Tropical Waste 🔥

Hey crew. Something different this month: a report from a musically fulfilling week at Unsound festival, which took place in Krakow a few weeks ago. I’ve divided the write-up into different sections for ease, and included links to music from all of the artists mentioned so you can get straight to digging.

Waste Mail will go back to its usual form next issue, compiling the best cutting-edge club music releases released across Oct/Nov and then it’s into the final month of the year. You’ll get both an End Of Year list as well as a December round up to close out 2024.

Hello to my new subscribers! Hope you enjoy the mailers; they’re a place to dig through all this brilliant new club and electronic music that’s coming out. Shout out everyone who’s journeyed over from Surusinghe and Cali’s Drifting stack… I’m really excited to be curating a party with them in London at the end of the month. We’ve got Surusinghe, Mun Sing (live), Simo Cell and Sarra Wild at Ormside – it’ll be the very first Drifting party and the final Tropical Waste event of the year. Hopefully see you there.

Special thanks to my new paid subscriber who took out a yearly sub! You’re under no obligation, but every paid subscription is incredibly appreciated and helps keep Waste Mail a monthly resource of underground music. Respect!

So on to Unsound… The theme of the festival was Noise and I got the chance to be out in Krakow for the week. It was a lot of fun to see friends, family and revel in so much great music. Made all the more special by playing the Offsound opening, closing out the entire festival (!) b2b my homie Hermeneia and taking part in a panel on tinnitus. Out to the whole Unsound team and the international Unsound Ultras… Enjoy the highlights below <3

Photo: Hermeneia in the mix at Unsound Closing Party, in the basement of Alchemia, autumn ‘24

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What is Noise? 🔊

Noise as a curatorial theme is ripe with potential, from the literal definition through to more playful and philosophical ones. Cult duo Yellow Swans nail the quintessential sound of noise, unfurling waves of intense, transcendental static. On the other hand, Mika Levi’s work with the Sinfonietta Cracovia, which plays out across a series of dramatic, angular moments, proves that noise is nothing without the suspense of silence. In The Club, ZULI throws down a DJ set so frenetic that it sounds like he’s rewiring an MPC live on stage, Yousuke Yukimatsu blends death metal with EDM and Polish producer/composer ZAMILSKA lets rip on dark, horror movie-esque techno. There are plenty of times when ‘noise’ is flipped and inverted, like DJ E’s selection of chopped ‘n screwed folk music from Cuba, Argentinia and the Andes, mixed in a celebratory, psychedelic haze and punctuated by smashed glass and explosion sound FX. Unsound’s discourse programme goes further in examining the concept of noise and I take part in a fascinating discussion about tinnitus alongside Mack Hagood and Marie Thompson, two researchers who approach the condition in ways that bring tinnitus rehabilitation out of institutions and into the community.

Noise / Nature 🍃

One of the most poignant examples of noise comes during the very first set of the festival, a collage of field recordings from Puszcza Białowieska, which is Europe’s last remaining primeval forest and lies on the border of Poland and Belarus. It’s performed by field recordists Chris Watson and Izabela Dłużyk in complete darkness and is a powerful deep listening experience. Dłużyk, who is blind, has said that “through recording the natural world, I try to capture its beauty, its subtle music, its gentle voice. I try to understand its mystery: the mystery of life.” Puszcza Białowieska is a deliberate setting for the artists to explore the ancient beauty – and pain – of our existence. The forest is a UNESCO World Heritage site that has come under threat from logging and is also a zone where migrants try to enter Europe from Belarus, with many dying in the forest while making the journey.

I’ve always thought upsammy’s music sounds ecological, like a the roots of a plant revelling in fertile soil before growing up and out toward the light. A live collaboration with Valentina Magaletti sees squelchy, exploratory electronics joined by crackling live percussion, like when moss meets wood. Footage of soil and roots flashes on screen during a typically visceral live show from bela, which is aided by visuals from Theresa Baumgartner and Lukas Feigelfeld. A camera attached to 6ela’s mic beams images of the artist and crowd before cutting to brief, earthy cross sections, perhaps referencing the ephemerality of the moment.

Return Of The Riff 🤟

The riffs have returned to Unsound. This year’s edition feels dynamic thanks to so many bands joining the bill, reflecting a renewed interest in guitar music across the wider weirdo scene and tapping into one of the true Unsound traditions. I had been yearning to see something as gargantuan as The Body & Dis Fig on the post-lockdown line-ups and here it is, a juggernaut of doom metal that’s truly immense. We also get the math-y, punk-y, organised mess of Mopcut, one of the few bands I’ve seen/heard recently who really match up to the glory years of alt rock and ATP; the angular theatrics of Still House Plants; Lankum’s epic post-folk and, during Unsound’s infamous closing party, the no wave antics of Concentration, who blend the vodka surrealism of Krakow with Basquiat-era downtown New York.

The Waste List 🚨

The Waste List playlist includes all of the artists that are featured here and is updated every month alongside each new issue of Waste Mail

The Club ✨

And so we come to the bit about dancing. Unsound nights out begin (officially) on the Wednesday and get later – and blurrier – until the closing on Sunday. The nighttime programme is great this year, fully leaning into peak-time live shows and brilliant early morning DJ sets. Live premieres are delivered by Rainy Miller, whose deconstructed autotune rap comes with a layer of scuzzed-out guitar and is set against the backdrop of a monochrome short film; AKA Hex, the new project from Aïsha Devi and Slikback which deals in totemic walls of bass; and Nídia and Valentina Magaletti performing their phenomenal collab album that landed in September (pretty sure this was a live debut - someone correct me if I’m wrong).

The DJ line-up is stacked: DJ/rupture – who laid the foundation for cross-genre DJing, epic blends and avant garde selecting – plays frenetic blends of jungle, footwork and breakcore to an audience who definitely appreciates the ‘bucket list DJ set’ moment; Heavee proves that everyone still wants/needs/loves footwork; TAYHANA juggles fast, spanky techno; Waste Mail faves Safety Trance and Manuka Honey tear the roof off with industrial reggaeton, percussive club and some harder, faster styles (as well as a big Coki moment); Assyouti rolls out visceral and brooding low-end club music; Dj Anderson do Paraiso conjures an hour of soft, sensual Brazilian funk that has everyone dancing in the palm of his hand and Surusinghe and TSVI trade cutting-edge club that sounds right at home on Unsound’s warehouse dancefloor.

Poles Do It Better 🇵🇱

Maybe it was my babcia turning 94, maybe it was my unending love of Krakow, maybe it was Unsound remaining a beacon of next-level music despite the parameters of running such an event changing more frequently as time goes on – or maybe it was just the actual music, but Polish artists c r u s h e d it this year. Dogheadsurigeri reps for hard, fast and trancey dance music; SSRI suspends their audience in gloopy dub; Antonina Nowacka beams ambient down from the heavens above; wh0wh0 gets physical with rhythm; Raphael Rogiński’s Polish primitive guitar playing sounds as gorgeous live as cut to wax for the Unsound label; the soundboy 2k88 detonates a much-talked about b2b with ojoo and Chino and Olivia, two Unsound OGs, close out this year’s opening party.

Shouts also to my b2b partner Hermeneia. We got the chance to play the final set of the festival this year (!) and I had no idea what we were going to play until Hermeneia stepped up and set the tempo to 160bpm. We were meant to play for 90 mins but ended up laying down three hours of footwork, juke, halftime bass and mutant 160 which was really, really special.

Honorary Mentions 🫡

Minds got totally fried by Lechuga Zafiro’s closing set on Saturday night, as the Uruguayan artist spun hypnotic rhythms until sun up. I knew I should have stayed out but had to get at least a little sleep before the final push for the closing party… Will review Lechuga’s album next issue. Out to the Offsound crew who threw the first unofficial Unsound opening party at this great little dive bar/club Święta Krowa (as well as an epic afters later in the week). Was a lovely moment to play footwork and juke to a smoke-filled room of heads at 7.30pm on a Sunday in the neighbourhood where my mum grew up. I just missed TFT’s live hardware set which smoked the room even further; gonna review his new tape next issue too. Big up everyone in the room for the tinnitus panel too and props to Unsound for making the space for such a thoughtful discussion around a topic that clearly needs more attention in the music scene/industry.

With Love from Tropical Waste ✌️

Next party on Saturday Nov 30 with Surusinghe, Mun Sing (live), Simo Cell and Sarra Wild. Final Waste of the year. See you down the front!
160 Unity should be back next February and April. If you’re in the UK and love footwork/juke, stay alert 👀
We made a 160 Unity double tape pack and zine! Proper labour of love… Edition of 50… No digital… Rave artefact with recordings, graphic design, club photography. First physical Waste item… Check it on Bandcamp
Check the ‘Ambient to 160’ warm-up mix if you need a juke/footwork set to keep you hot as winter approaches