What was NOISE?: UNSOUND, wrapped

Before Krakow’s annual UNSOUND festival kicked off on September 29, I sent its featured artists a deceptively simple question: “What the fuck is noise?” The query comes from an essay by Spanish sound artist and theorist Mattin, who ran one of the festival’s Noise Research Union workshops. UNSOUND organizer Mat Shulz used it to announce the festival’s 2024 theme, NOISE, and I, in turn, commandeered it for our survey.

I was thrilled with the responses we received from some of the most vital and venerated artists on UNSOUND’s roster. Chuquimamani-Condori, who released 2023’s most original album, called it “the cacophony of our first mother, the water called nowhere or mama cocha, the scream of our queer guardian, chuqi chinchay, emerging from the spring as wound or dehiscence, the first teaching.” Left-field folk legend Bill Callahan noted, more pragmatically, that “[n]oise is just two or more songs playing at the same time. It is efficient this way.”

Meanwhile, enigmatic noise god Keiji Haino shared the following: “I have become what is known as Noise. Other people want to be Noise. I would at least like Noise to be something that is overflowing from something. Just like [an] overflowing glass of water. I hate the word Noise to death.”

After attending the week-long festival, I’ve come to my own, still-half-baked conclusions about noise’s meaning: Noise is in the ear of the beholder. It lurks in unfamiliar corners, packed with the potential to revolutionize your mind. Whether it comes quietly, oozing softly into your unsuspecting brain, or jumps out and spits in your face, setting your cochlea ablaze, is of no real significance, as long as it alters even the smallest of your preconceived notions. For cynics — jaded patricians and haters of the avant garde alike — everything is noisy but nothing is noise; for the open minded, noise is everywhere.

Below, I’ve detailed the most creative interpretations of NOISE I saw at UNSOUND 2024.

Portuguese artist Rafael Toral performed his gorgeous new album Spectral Evolution in full during a “Morning Glory” session at the Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology on October 1. He played with incredible grace, letting his tapestry of sounds leak in behind his casually brilliant guitar playing. Read our full review here.

No two Mica Levi releases sound the same. From their scrappy post-post-punk inventions with Good Bad Happy Sad (fka Micachu & The Shapes) to their wild catalog of collaborations — most recently a noisy guitar record with Alpha Maid — to her film scores, her portfolio is as varied as it gets. Following Tarta Relena, Sinfonietta Cracovia took the stage to perform a suite of Levi’s compositions — short and jagged, generally minimalist but often jarring, too. Levi only joined at the end of the concert, taking the under duress to bow.

On October 3 at Kino Kijów, a massive movie theater just west of Krakow’s famed old town, Antonina Nowacka sang siren songs from her recent album, Sylphine Soporifera, accompanying herself on zither alongside Anna Pašić (harp) and Magdalena Gajdzica (flute). The music was eerily serene, like a silvery moon shining down on a dark forest.

Leeds-based “no-wave rave” artist Petronn Sphene put on one of the wildest, most visceral performances I’ve seen in some time at Kamienna 12 near midnight on October 4. She thrashed back and forth behind the boards, her pink-and-blue hair flying in all directions as her bombed-out drums and heart-attack synths grew more and more extreme.

I’ve never understood the hype around Still House Plants. I’m still not sure I do, but watching them open a stacked three-part bill at Łaźnia Nowa on the afternoon of October 4 was an interesting experience. The way each performer is siloed off in their own world until they lock in for key, cathartic moments is clearer as it plays out on stage than it is on wax. Being there live to witness the fine line they toe between being a very good band and a very bad band helped me get a better understanding of what they’re all about, although I’m still a bit confused. What good is noise, though, if it doesn’t make you think?

Yellow Swans have constructed some of the most intricate colosses of sound ever built, and they brought their improvisatory approach to UNSOUND, closing the evening at Łaźnia Nowa with one of the most obliteratingly beautiful hours of music I’ve ever had the honor of hearing.

Afro-Portuguese producer Nídia is one of the most exciting artists on the ever-interesting Príncipe label, and her latest effort — a joint album with explosive Italian percussionist Valentina Magaletti — does not disappoint. At Kamienna 12, the duo elaborated on tracks from Estradas in what was perhaps the tightest, grooviest set of the week.

There’s no band mixing traditional Irish music with big-room drone like Lankum. I’ve never fully connected with their albums, but on October 5, watching each band member perform on separate risers on the stage of the gorgeous theater at ICE Krakow, their drummer draped in the flag of Palestine, was nothing short of inspiring. The best light show of the festival — along with the massiveness of their ballads and my partiality to the hurdy-gurdy — made their set one of my favorites.