Review: Unsound Music Festival at Dom Polski Centre

Unsound Music Festival at Dom Polski Centre, Adelaide
Friday, July 18 & Saturday, July 19, 2024

The latest instalment of the Unsound Music Festival in Adelaide had arrived again for another wintery blast of exploratory and experimental music from around the world. The festival originated in Krakow, Poland, so it was only natural that the perfectly-suited Polish club in the Dom Polski Centre was the host venue, conveniently located in the CBD. On this Friday night, the temperatures were chilly outside and inside, as the heating did not seem to be firing on all cylinders, but at least the food stand with Polish staples such as kranskis and pierogi kept the punters warm. As part of Adelaide’s larger Illuminate Festival, Unsound featured not just the music but ample visual-based artist contributions, including decking out the venue with the signature muted fluorescent green throughout.

The first performance was a mixed music and dance piece, with Lee Gamble behind the scenes generating the music from his album Models and choreography by Spaniard Candela Capitán and dancer Virginia Martin Mateos—the focus of attention tonight. Not just any dance: she was tethered to two oversized, thick stainless-steel chains that ran from a harness around her up to the back of the ceiling. Gamble is known for his thoughtful, spacious beats and science fiction-like soundscapes, and he unspooled rolling waves of pure bass, topped with delicate melodies and the occasional synth effect, creating a contemplative, reflective atmosphere. Mateos began the performance on the floor, clutching her phone in an unbroken selfie that she held throughout her performance. She eventually rose, lifting her phone even higher so it gazed down upon her, and eventually tried to break out of the stage, but with the chains forever pulling her back. Looking towards the stage, many raised phone screens were visible with people filming the performance, echoing the scenes unfolding before them. It was a gentle, subtle performance, finally broken when Gamble emerged from behind his mixing desk and, along with Mateos, took some well-deserved bows and appreciative applause from the crowd.

Upon reflection, the festival program could be viewed as a 'loud-soft-loud' dynamic throughout. So after Gamble and Mateos’ gentle performance, it was time for Australian guitarist Marco Fusinato. He was positioned to the right of the stage in front of a wall of guitar amplifiers and one mean-looking axe. Fusinato debuted the piece Ashes of Cloud, a soundwall of shredding, shrieking guitar, all stop-start with detours into pure slabs of piercing feedback. There was a large video screen in the centre of the stage that rotated black and white images featuring such things as CCTV crime scenes, guerrilla warfare, and clips from nature documentaries: insects, fungi, and (fittingly) volcanic activity. Fusinato’s images complemented the intense sounds emanating from the guitar and amps; nevertheless, many punters edged back from the stage to grab a drink or a kranski, as the maelstrom was not for everyone, but also showcased how vastly different some of the acts in the festival were from each other.

In one of the more anticipated appearances of the festival, electro-acoustic auteurs Jim O’Rourke & Eiko Ishibashi followed up the maniacal guitar act with…a laptop jam of epic proportions. Probably the real headliners tonight, given the swollen size of the audience, O’Rourke and Ishibashi took us on an hour-long journey of throbbing circuitry and heaving waves of bass, with sound effects and synth squiggles escaping from all the laptops and gadgetry on the desk before them. Ishibashi occasionally would add live flute and some voices that added to the ingredients, stewing up a delicious gumbo of sounds. At times the music would be loud and front and centre with clear melodies and direction that brought the room together, whereas at other times the piece would meander off, following their muse as they squelched and plinked their way through the set. It was an amazingly textured, unpredictable ride, with the audience finally roaring in appreciation when they stopped and took their bows.

An aside: ultimately, Unsound is a musical party, and for the quieter passage of the laptop set, conversations and laughter were just as much a part of the mix as the music. Given the range of dynamics on offer, this occurred for many of the quieter passages from musicians during the festival, but after all, it’s all a part of the music. Indeed, at times during this performance, one couldn’t tell if some of the voices were part of the samples or happening around us. Spooky, or perhaps by design? Unsound is all about experimental music, after all; expect the unexpected.

How do you follow Jim & Eiko’s ambient-electronic jams? With a solo saxophonist, naturally, but no ordinary horn-blower. Bendik Giske is at least two things: an incredibly gifted player and one who also seeks to reimagine the saxophone by using electronics to enhance the instrument like never before. He does this by manipulating the two ways people interact with the instrument most: touch and breath. The tapping of the keys becomes a triggered percussive instrument in and of themselves, and the breath and occasional word he loops to great effect, putting some ghosts back in the machine, as it were. The pieces are positively Phillip Glass-ian, with ever-shifting loops and repetitions established, so the interest in the music is observing both the subtle and more conspicuous changes as the pieces unfold. Heavy with reverb, this lone figure on the stage filled the hall with standout tracks such as the slower-paced Void and especially Cruising. The latter already a modern classic, the mesmerising work sent chills up spines: ours, adding to the freezing temperatures inside the venue, and Bendik’s too, probably, as he wore a backless, full-length dress for his performance, cutting quite a figure.

To close out the first evening beats-styles was Chinese electronic artist 33EMYBW, accompanied by video artist Joey Holder. Both take inspiration from organic shapes and sounds (with biological inspiration emerging as an underlying theme for this festival), and this evening’s set was a blistering audio-visual feast. The music was gabba-esque, squelchy and mysterious, and simultaneously pounding, if you can imagine those elements combined. Especially impressive was a drone-like approach to bass music: absolutely pulverising bass frequencies at high volume for long spells at a time, so that your ears, or rather your whole body, became highly sensitive to the changes in the bass pressure as the tracks unfolded. A truly impressive effort that ultimately left the body and senses drained by the end of her nearly two-hour set.

Opening the second night was Yirinda (meaning 'now'), from K’Gari/Fraser Island and featuring Butchulla storyteller Fred Leone and bassist Samuel Pankhurst, accompanied by a percussionist. A full-throated Aboriginal singer combined with contemporary musicians may sound like an odd pairing at first, but they let the music do most of the talking, and it was a revelation. The passionate singing was framed by minimal bass and percussion, with occasional keys and a glockenspiel for different nuanced accents. Leone was an engaging presence, telling the stories behind the stories and drawing the audience in with his rich voice, cadence and humour, such as when he acknowledged “sorry, vegans!” while explaining a song about a dugong hunt. The music was seamlessly conjoined and powerfully rendered. Yirinda is certainly a band to watch.

Next up were Peruvian guitarist and electronic artist Ale Hop (pronounced “al-a hop”; Alejandra Cardenas) and percussionist Laura Robles. Their presences were a contrast, with Robles towering over her cajon (a box drum, her only instrument), whereas the diminutive Ale Hop was seated with an electric guitar on her lap in front of a table of masses of protruding wires, boxes with knobs, and several computer screens, which were almost the brightest thing on the dark stage. The textures and rhythms these women cranked out were wild and bewildering at times, with crazy cadences that swept you along if you let them take you. After a few busy numbers, the quieter Son De Los Diablos brought the temperature down a bit with its hushed, subtle tones. The music was propelled by Robles’ erratic, surging rhythms, with Hop riffing along but in a jerky, almost biological, time, weaving in and out of the beat. Some tracks were positively mesmerising, and when they finished, it was hard to know what to do other than applaud loudly. The set featured songs from their collaborative album from last year, Agua Dulce ('sweet water'). At the end of their set, Robles informed us that she probably spoke the best English of the two and explained what their final track, Lamento, was about: African slaves singing in the fields repetitively to remind themselves of who they are and to speak about their 'situation'. A moving, slower number, it provided a calming conclusion to Hop and Robles kinetic and highly original collection of songs.

Even with all the 'strange' music on offer this weekend, nothing turned out to be quite as bizarre as the performance by The Caretaker (Leyland Kirby). As explained in the ironically presented graphics that flashed on the screen to start his set, Kirby’s 'The Caretaker' project is one of the most streamed ambient works of the last decade. It was difficult to know what to expect from a project where Kirby takes shellac records of ballroom dance numbers from the 1920s and 30s as his source material, then loops and highly processes the sounds in reverb and other treatments to create a kind of fuzzy, hyper-nostalgic music. With this in mind, the tall, lanky Kirby appeared with oversized sunnies framed by his massive head of curly blonde hair to launch into…a lip-synched, pitched-up rendition of an Abba song, wildly gesticulating and waving his arms as the infographics let us know what the project had been about and that this is the first and last time he would ever perform as The Caretaker, at least certainly in Australia. Wow, none of us were quite expecting this!

And then—the music started, the video cranked up, and Kirby simply sat down and reclined into a large, high-backed leather chair in the middle of the audience and, well, just stared back at us as he sipped whiskey for the next half hour or so. The videos were amazing, featuring the album artwork by his friend Ivan Seal and all put together by the video artist weirdcore.tv (also Aphex Twin’s video muse in recent years). The first segment featured his more extreme, woozy processed style, where the scratches in the grooves are brought to the forefront and the music is so stretched and morphed it barely comes across as music. But then, wait! Kirby is up from his chair; it’s an intermission! He animatedly launched into Louis Armstong’s I Ain’t Got Nobody and then announced it was time to hear all your favourite hits in a best-of medley! And so, this is exactly what we got. Kirby took his seat again, but this time spun the chair around, facing away from us and facing the screen, eventually just getting up and leaving. For the final song and dance act, he came out one more time with more satirical infographics, including the concluding “the world’s fucked, see you in another life, don’t stop believing xxx,” then launched into Don’t Stop Believing, and with a final wave, he was gone. Cue confused yet rapturous applause. After all, The Caretaker is near and dear to many ambient fans, so the whole performance came across as “being in the presence of a famous ambient music-maker” rather than him actually performing any music. A head-scratching yet delightfully confounding piece de resistance of performance art, positioned perfectly in the middle of the evening. It may not have been what people were expecting, but it sure was something. The night and audience were truly open to anything next.

After the completely unexpected vaudevillian performance of The Caretaker, it was time for a set from E.Y.3. (Yamataka Eye), drummer and leader of the legendary Japanese noise-art-punk outfit, Boredoms. E.Y.3. was behind a desk full of electronics, with video artist C.O.L.O. running the visuals synched to the music. E.Y.3. was fully into his fast-paced electronic gadgetry, head-banging and whipping his long hair around like he was in Slayer. It was incredible! The tempo did not seem to stray too far from 180–200 bpm, with pounding beats and stop-start action throughout. The videos worked in parallel, with technicolour effects and whole visual worlds chopping and changing and blowing our minds seemingly every 10 seconds. To describe what we saw on the screen in less than an hour might take a whole week; it was so information-dense. Both artists demonstrated a serious case of attention deficit disorder—or was it 'order'? Within the mayhem of the beats and synths, shapes and patterns could be discerned coming and going, never staying on anything too long. In this case, sound and vision came together perfectly if you could take in the information and frenetic pace of the performance. Not to mention enjoying a little boogie, if so moved.

For the last act of the second night, Kim Gordon certainly commanded her headliner billing. And for really the first time all weekend, a proper rock band was on stage with bass, drums, guitar and voice. Showcasing many of the songs from The Collective, Kim & co. were on a mission. The sound is akin to that of an industrial goth dystopian rock band: icy and powerful, like a shiny black muscle car in the shadows rumbling menacingly. Kim sashayed and swayed while delivering her lyrics in her distinctive half-spoken, half-sung style, totally in control of the mic, with the band hammering out the rhythms with force. On some songs, she reached for her guitar to add some shredding riffs, often processed with effects. The songs from The Collective sounded sensational with this band, some highlights being The Candy House, BYE BYE, and the laugh/cringe machismo diss song, I’m A Man. In keeping with the edgy performance, she played some new numbers, for these clinging a bit closer to a teleprompter for the words but keeping it raw as these songs sounded great as well. After a full hour-long set, there were some thanks to the crowd from Kim with the band walking offstage; then, all of a sudden, for the first time all weekend, an encore! The rollicking Air BnB from No Home Record featured, along with two other epic tracks, that took the show to midnight with nobody leaving until the final curtain.

In the end, toes tapped, hips moved, heads nodded, chins were stroked, and minds were blown—many, many minds, with more styles of music than any one mind could have imagined, if that makes sense. Unsound is a rare, edgy jewel in the Australian music festival scene. Sure, the cutting edges might leave a few nicks on your auditory and visual cortex over the weekend, but if you approach it just right, there are brilliant riches on offer. This year’s line-up delivered in spades, one of their strongest ever, setting a high bar for next year’s festival. Unsound: what’s next?

PAUL DOUGHTY

Photos by Saige Prime