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Get in. This is actually going to happen.

Most very excellent!

So I can't imagine it costing much more than £70 for flights in total. I'd have thought that accommodation is pretty affordable too, so it should all work out fine.

Unsound Festival, Krakow, October 2009

Ok, I'm going to tackle this on a day-by-day basis.

Wednesday
Arrive late afternoon in Krakow and enjoy / survive a mildly terrifying taxi ride from the airport. A short period of time is spent walking around the surrounding area of the hostel I'm staying at and chuckling at the off-licenses being called Alkoholes. Go to pick up festival passes from the Unsound HQ, which turns out to be a sofa in an unmarked bar. This is basically the only thing that annoys me for my whole stay, as while it may be fine for hyper-relaxed mainland European folks to just stumble across this place, as an ultra uptight + bad-tempered Brit I like to have google map links to within an inch of where something is going to be. This bar looks from the outside like it could've been someones flat, and what's with no sign for the premises? And why am I so FUCKING ANGRY about trivial details all the time? Why can't I just relax and be happy? Anyway, I digress. I collect my wristband. The music tonight is in a cinema, so we head on down.
GROUPER: Amazing. Straight in there from the get go with a great gig, I've seen her play once before and really enjoyed it but felt it was on at the wrong time of day + not in an ideal venue (the recent ATP, since you ask), but sitting down in a comfortable cinema with added hypnotic backing visuals, this is really fantastic.
SEBASTIAN MEISSNER + KWARTLUDIUM = SOLID STATE TRANSMITTERS: Hard one to sum up, this. It's quite interesting and even enjoyable at points, but basically by this stage the last thing I ingested was a large coffee in Stansted airport about 17 hours ago, so I can barely hear the music over my rumbling gut. Plus for some reason as they're doing SST songs I'm expecting every track to be an interpretation of My War. Not sure why. Perhaps it's because my stomach is trying to digest itself. Anyway, I watch for half an hour and then bounce to go eat.

Thursday
I don't go to any of the gigs tonight, for me it was the weak night of the festival and instead the day (and night) is spent being Doing Tourism and walking around churches (St Mary's Basilica is so trill it'd properly make me believe in god if I was a 15th century peasant living out in the sticks http://tinyurl.com/y9eld4m ) and squares, looking at the Vistula, wandering around the big castle, sampling the cuisine (if you're ever in Krakow hit this place for a bite, next level borscht + other delights http://tinyurl.com/yfdwjs8 real talk). Some friendly Polish folk teach me how to pronounce Zweic correctly, and I talk to an unbelieveably beautiful Polish girl (sexiest city in Europe? It's up there with Stockholm) whilst sat at in bar and she rolls me a sweet plum cigarette, which is utterly vile. It is basically perfect.

Friday
Epic hangover. Swear not to drink anymore Zweic. More tourism, more huge bleak awesome Soviet architecture. To the music.
BIOSPHERE: In terms of the ambient / drone side of things, this is the highlight of the festival for me. The gig is in a church (I forget the name), and it's just amazing, the sound reverberating around the space in the dark, it's totally engrossing and transcendent.
STARS OF THE LID: After Biosphere SOTL kind of pale in comparison, but it's enjoyable none the less. They're playing with with eight string players from Sinfinietta Cracovia, and at points it's pretty amazing; at other times it comes across as overly simplistic and one-dimentional. By no means bad, I really enjoyed several parts, but it's occasionally quite obvious, but maybe that's because Biosphere has just completely bossed it beforehand.
OMAR-S: To the club! Set in Krakow's riverside Japanese arts centre (called Manggha), this where all of the dance-oriented music is being put on. It's a really nice two-level space with a funny little viewing gallery seating area at the midway point, plus great visuals on three screens (when the input plug isn't falling out) and the sound is fucking decent too, loud and weighty without being in any way distorted. This dudes Fabric mix comprised of all original material from earlier this year is one of my favourites of '09 and has been on heavy rotation since it came out, but seeing him live is just awesome. I'm pretty sure he even mixed in some Drexciya (or something Drexciya-affiliated) at one point too! Fuck yes.
MARTYN: I'm sort of almost taking Martyn being consistently brilliant for granted, having listened to Great Lengths and various other 12"s of his so much, like you forget that he's made some incredible stuff as a given due to familiarity. This is first time I've seen him dj and it's no let down, flitting here, there and everywhere, just like he does on record.
MONOLAKE: They play live and kill it is the shorthand, it's a pretty damn heavy set too. Kind of irks me that so many people are obsessed with pushing to the front (Monolake are on at the other end of the room, which sees a lurch in the crowd from front to back) just to stand looking at them when ideally all participants should just be focusing on the dancefloor and getting down with their bad selves (basically), but again it's a minor a gripe and further evidence of me being a dullard.
MARCEL DETTMANN: Don't really see all much of our man Marcel's set (or Shed's, sorry pal, saw you recently at Corsica though and you very good indeed), as it's spent talking and trying to summon energy from somewhere. Eventually decide to cut my losses and head back to the yard. Stupid hangover.

Saturday
Attempt to go and see Wis?a Kraków play football only to discover that their stadium is being renovated and that they're playing home matches 200km away in another city this season! FOR FUCK'S SAKE. Krakow looks even bleaker in the lightless grey drizzle, and is all the better for it. Try Ukrainian cuisine for the first time, it's dead good (<---high-grade culinary criticism in full effect). Really enjoy how picked cucumber or gherkin is a standard feature of virtually every meal here. Georgian wine: quaffable.
2562: It might just have been that particular night, but when I saw 2562 at Corsica Studios not so long ago for his album launch I just couldn't get into it that much, which I wasn't expecting as I'm a fan of his recorded output both as 2562 and as A Made Up Sound. For whatever reason though tonight is different, it's all happening. Or maybe I'm just elated at not being cripplingly hungover anymore.
UNTOLD: Absolutely fucking incredible! I knew this was going to be great, but holy shit..just amazing. Just relentlessly brilliant the whole way through, swaggering effervescence. I know that's some totally gushing shit right there, but fuck it. 10/10.
KODE9 & THE SPACEAPE: I've not been all that into his dj sets when I've seen Mr. Hyperdub play out in the past, but tonight Steve and the Spaceape are grand. Hits a go-go! Even a wee spin of Burial. Will I ever get sick of hearing Digidesign? Hearty.
ZOMBY: Inevitably, Zomby cancels on us. Despite being one of the acts of the bill that I was most looking forward to it's strangely not that gutting, perhaps because a) it was always going to happen, and b) everyone else who's playing is so good. Stepping in as replacement are POLE, who are a distinct change of pace after the onslaught of the previous three, and I totally get into this.
IKONIKA: Wrapping things up is Ikonika, who proceeds to nonchalently play heavy hit after heavy hit whilst looking glacially cool, smoking away behind the decks. So, so good. In terms of everyone who played being at their peak, this was without doubt one off the best nights out I've ever had.

Sunday
Feet aching somewhat, it's time to eat intriguing foodstuffs in a park and then head to a cinema to see Until The Light Takes Us, a film about black metal's origins in the late 1980's and early 90's, more of which you can read about here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1014809/ if you want to. It's brilliant, and totally fucked up (and hilarious at several points). Varg is such a charming, charismatic nutcase, and Fenriz..well he just came across as a genuinely nice guy. Then it's off to this fascinating and surreal installation on the outskirts of the city centre in an old warehouse, loosely themed around the Chernobyl disaster as well as ambient found sounds. Ever seen that Tartovsky film Stalker ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(film) )? It was basically like being in the Zone in that. I thought it was wonderful. In the evening it's off to the burb of Nowa Huta ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowa_Huta ) to see Sunn 0))). What a cool place, so quiet and big. Wish I'd gone around it in the daytime really.
SUNN O))): There is NOTHING more metal than a man dressed like a fucking tree. End of discussion. Definitely the most enjoyable of all the times I've seen Sunn 0))) play. Not much else to say really, other than it felt like trying to stand upright at the bottom of the Marianna trench, and being crushed into a singularity.
THE AFTER-PARTY: We head to this, having found out earlier in the day that flipping PANTHA DU PRINCE is the special guest! Incredible scenes, the guy made one of my favourite albums ever. On the downside I'm totally knackered, but decide to give it a bash anyway. Am rewarded by more great djing as well as the sight of the members of Sunn 0))) standing around in the bar listening to funky house. Superb.

And that's that. I really doubt anyone has read all of this as it's quite boring and gracelessly written, but it was quite fun to type out a few of my thoughts on the even. Krakow is a beautiful place and I'd love to go back and visit again in the near future. Apparently the next Unsound festival is in New York in February 2010 (I'm guessing that Falty DL and Starkey will feature at this), that'd be pretty damn cool.