Review: Unsound Music Festival, Adelaide
Unsound Music Festival at Lions Arts Factory and Hindley Street Music Hall, Adelaide
Friday, July 11 and Saturday, July 12, 2025
Another winter in Adelaide, another time to prepare for one of Australia’s premier underground music festivals: Unsound Adelaide. This year saw a shift to different venues for the Friday and Saturday nights. Friday night’s events were held at the more clubby-feeling Lions Arts Factory, whereas the big Saturday night acts were at the more salubrious and spacious Hindley Street Music Hall. This spatial dynamic worked well, with each night being comfortably jammed with punters wanting to hear those wild sounds.
To kick things off, Nidia (Portugal) & Valentina Magaletti (Italy) presented a set of innovative electronics and live percussion. Both are masters of their craft, with Magaletti tending to riff off of Nidia’s loops and squirrely synth lines. Tonight’s set featured many of the tracks from last year’s brilliant Estradas. They were slow to start out, with organic tendrils of sound emanating from Nidia’s bank of electronics. The tunes were spacious and exploratory, with hidden melodies amidst the squiggles and clatter of the percussion.
As the set progressed, Nidia served up heavier sounds with shuddering basslines, while Magaletti pounded her drums, approaching a veritable thudathon. For their set, the lighting was dark, dark—with minimal beams of pixels from the background screen and a few strategically placed red lights, glinting some cymbals, necklaces and hair. The crowd was down with the primal sounds—Unsound: game on!
Coming out in resplendent sapphire cowboy attire, Los Thuthanaka got stuck straight into their miasmic Andean jams. They consist of the sibling duo Chuquimamani-Condori (also known as Elysia Crampton) and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton. They began with an easy entry, mellow noise mulch, then progressed all the way to bashed-out grooves with submerged, warbling melodies sprinkled with shredding guitar riffs on top.
With heavily processed guitar and pedals, keyboards and loops, and even a keytar, they got the dance floor moving with their gooey, treacly mix of sounds. Although it was usually hard to discern what instrument was making what sound (a theme with all tonight’s artists), the music lurched along to get the packed floor moving.
One of the most anticipated performances of the evening was UK sound-noise artist aya performing tunes from her latest LP, hexed! Calmly plugging in her laptop before the set, she announced to the crowd, “This one’s not mine, but it gets me going,” followed by a blistering, squally noise track as she paced around the mixing table a few times, jerking her head up and down to the music. The crowd was primed, too. aya’s tracks were maelstroms of harsh electronic beats; the maximalist approach meant there was little space inside the tracks, such that the compositions revealed themselves through the negative space of the melodic gaps in the barrage of sound. Strobes flashed along to the music, with more use of the background screen throwing up unrecognisable shapes to mirror the sounds.
She whirled, danced histrionically, narrated mid-song, told some bad jokes, clambered onto the mixing desk a few times, and generally blew our minds. Tracks like Heat Death and her “unfinished gabber track” were highlights in a set that was one non-stop highlight. aya’s set punctuated the evening with her commanding “rock star” presence, coming across a bit like a comic book supervillain with howls of maniacal laughter and screaming emanating from underneath the cowls of her oversized red hoodie. Fantastic.
Yellow Swans (from left-leaning Portland, U.S.A.) began when Gabriel Saloman (guitar, electronics) spoke to the audience about the current state of the U.S.A. and suggested that their music was an attempt to deal with it. And with that, he joined Peter Swanson (loops, effects) for two long tracks that grew and wandered down paths unknown. The music was comprised of heavily processed drones that slowly morphed and twisted in slow motion to mesmerising effect. It was a head-down, knob-twiddly performance that featured a massively throbbing beat below minced-up vocals, static, and whatever other sounds they looped and stretched. The second track featured guitar notes that were recognisable as such, culminating in a wash of static that faded out to hearty applause. A truly sublime performance.
For the second night of Unsound on Saturday, the three acts were shifted to the more salubrious Hindley Street Music Hall, featuring its massive chandelier. A bigger venue, combined with fewer artists, meant that each act could stretch their creative legs a bit more with a longer set time.
GAS is the electronic music project of Wolfgang Voigt. Similar to last year’s The Caretaker, which spun an entire career out of the haunted ballroom scene from The Shining, GAS’s inspiration was singularly derived from Voigt’s teenage LSD trips in his local forest in Germany. And tonight, he certainly took us there. Part of the GAS experience live is the kaleidoscopic forest-themed visuals by Petra Hollenbach. The venue’s massive screen, positioned behind Voigt’s relatively small electronic setup, was perfect for experiencing this music and sights.
Starting slowly with, well, vaporous synths, he gently shifted the sounds throughout his transitionless set, as if walking slowly through a forest, pausing occasionally for a closer view, then moving off. At times, a pulsing beat would permeate the music, giving it a loose “techno” feel, but overall, the sounds were more sensed and felt than starkly defined. Strings would occasionally enter and fade just as imperceptibly. When the last sounds faded away, Voigt took his bows to loud applause from a gracious audience. An unforgettable, unique musical experience.
The final two acts featured proper bands, with guitar, bass, and drums, and, of course, a whole lot of electronics. Moin is a kind of supergroup, comprised of the electronic duo Raine (who also provided a DJ set on Friday night) and virtuoso drummer Valentina Magaletti. Unlike acts like Pendulum and the Beastie Boys, who started out as punk and ended up in drum and bass and hip-hop, Raine has gone the other way by collaborating with Magaletti, putting down their electronics (mostly), and picking up the guitar and bass. The resulting experiment has been a runaway success, as we witnessed tonight.
One additional musician was brought on for sampling and voice, and the quartet post-rocked out over the course of their set. Most of the tracks from the highly acclaimed You Never End were reimagined live with differently framed structures, so it took a while to recognise the tracks. Samples of poet Sophia Al-Maria’s voice—a star in the making—were played on top of the rhythms, including a great new number that featured her. Indeed, some of the new tracks Moin played received the loudest applause, a testament to how rapidly this band’s sound is evolving. A highlight of the weekend, Moin’s set delivered post-punk rapture to festival-goers.
The headliner of the festival, John Cale, drew a significantly different demographic compared to the previous night. Think: more denim and greying pates, fewer piercings. John Cale’s appearance on the bill represents one of Unsound’s most “overground” artists to date. Cale’s credentials as co-founder of The Velvet Underground and his restless output of avant-garde music are second to none. His set featured an excellent backing group, with Cale usually sitting at an electric piano but also picking up a guitar for a few numbers.
Songs from his recent POPtical Illusion album were featured, along with other songs from his extensive back catalogue. The large video screen often displayed the original videos of some songs or animated sequences that moved in sync with the music. While Cale’s set, like Moin’s, was comprised of more conventionally arranged songs, it was a perfect way to send off Unsound Adelaide for this year.
Overall, 2025’s version of Unsound Adelaide maintained its high standard of experimental and underground music, further cementing its reputation as an essential music festival on the Australian circuit.
PAUL DOUGHTY
Photos provided by Unsound Music Festival
