After originating in the Polish city of Krakow in 2003, the Unsound festival has slowly graduated internationally, having first arrived in Adelaide under the aegis of David Sefton while Artist Director of the Adelaide Festival over a decade ago.
Once again it was appropriately housed in the familiar environs of the Dom Polski Centre 19-20 July.It's fitting that a performance of the songs of the traditional owners and custodians of Australia leads off the proceedings of the second night of the festival, the duo of Yirinda, consisting of Butchulla songman Fred Leone and producer instrumentalist Samuel Pankhurst supplemented on this occasion by additional percussion.
A present-day musical approach is employed utilising both traditional western and Indigenous instrumentation of double bass, keys, yidaki and boomerang sticks to bring these stories into the present day producing elements heretofore unheard.
Alternately lullaby-like and with contrasting bursts of free-jazz-styled improvisation and occasional nursery rhyme instrumentation, their set ends with a pounding, pulsing schizophrenic performance of 'Guyu' from their recent self-titled album.
Similarly, but in their own vein, German-based Peruvian duo Ale Hop and Laura Robles give a performance of songs from their collaborative album 'Agua Dulce'.
Alejandra Cárdenas is mostly on electronics and treated guitar creating somewhat improvised soundscapes alongside repurposed traditional Afro-Peruvian rhythms performed by Laura on the traditional cajón box drum. Occasionally taking to the mic to contextualise the material, Laura explains this is their version of those rhythms reclaimed from the patriarchy.
Occasional smoke machine output gradually envelops the duo as their performances of layered squeals, hums and drones, skittering percussion, and squelching guitar skronk increase to a hectic pace as though Alejandra's tech set up is overheating.
Their performance nears to a close with a pinging, drone-squealing dynamic performance accompanied by an appropriate hellish red glow of lighting piercing the ever-present artificial smoke.
An assembled, swelling audience eager for The Caretaker's exclusive performance are treated to the deceptive, energetic bombast and fanfare of Leyland Kirby's lip-synched chipmunk vocal pounding performance of ABBA's 'The Winner Takes It All', an unplugged mic lead whipping around behind him as he moves from one side of the stage to the other.
Afterwards, he proceeds to sit on a lounge chair onstage to sip whiskey, while a soundtrack of crackle and hiss of aged vinyl and treated 1920s big band ballroom swing recordings (reworked out of their retro context) play accompanied by corresponding treated imagery borrowed from Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining'.
Elsewhere, an expectant audience stand idle passively bemused by this antic but taking it all in respectively, patiently waiting for something to actually happen. This is perhaps indicative of Kirby's subversive prankster methodology, there being no pretence in this 'performance' that is seemingly more of an art installation at this early stage.
The use of footage of Lana Del Rey's recent Coachella appearance is entirely fitting given her use of The Caretaker track 'It's A Burning Memory' at that festival and her penchant for lifting musical and lyrical motifs from others; this hints at a kindred-ship between the two artists, although their output is most definitely poles apart.
The Caretaker's passive, take it-all-in set is broken up by a second contrasting energetic lip-synched performance of 'Just A Gigolo' following a brief intermission announced onscreen and a joke referencing the quite recent Microsoft internet outage, before regular programming resumes although this time Kirby turns the armchair so his back is to the audience.
To round things out, Kirby completes his time onstage with yet another lip-synched performance, Journey's 'Don't Stop Believin''.
The contrast between The Caretaker's perplexing performance and what follows is startling as Boredoms' Yamataka Eye's (as he is currently known, although promoted as ∈Y∋ on this occasion) DJ/live performance is an extreme audio and visual assault veering from industrial house to pure noise, the exponentially increased BPM and intense, amped up cacophonic near-hour onstage with accompanying near-seizure-inducing representative visuals, a veritable feat of endurance that may have been all too much for some.
Arguably the festival drawcard, Kim Gordon's arrival onstage was worth the wait. Backed by drummer Madi Vogt, bassist Camilla Charlesworth and guitarist Sarah Register, Kim's set begins as near run-through of her 'The Collective' album although exchanging 'Tree House' for an exercise in improvisation named as 'Cigarette'–drone on the set list.
The jarring hip hop beats of the recorded versions are allowed to breathe in this live context. 'I'm A Man' is transformed into a rumbling wall of noise while 'Trophies' call to arms has a more distinct immediacy. Kim only plays guitar for a handful of songs, otherwise maintaining an epitome of cool, wandering the stage to leer and lord over the delighted audience.
Less in the pulsing Suicide-style as rendered on record, 'Dream Dollar' is performed more in a traditional rock & roll style and completes the performance of 'The Collective', the band leaving the stage momentarily before returning for a five-song encore of selections mostly from Kim's solo debut album 'No Home Record'.
The groove-based 'Paprika Pony' has nearly everybody moving before an abstract 'Cookie Butter', during which Sarah employs the use a screwdriver in her playing while each band member goes off on their own tangents before coming back for the climax.
'Hungry Baby' is performed as a Detroit City-styled Stooges rocker, the pounding intensity of the instrumentation all but drowning out Kim's vocals until she gives a series of primal howls in competition.
Up until now, Kim had only given simple thanks and an ironic "oops" after knocking over a mic stand and water bottle, letting the music be its own thing, but in her intro to final song 'Grass Jeans' she reveals the song to have been inspired by the misogyny of government control of women's bodies, a fitting final sentiment given the female-oriented dominance onstage at Unsound on this Saturday.
The Unsound manifesto in simple terms to present 'emerging, experimental and leftfield' music is a valiant attempt to categorise the uncategorisable, to describe something to another that is unique and only bares passing similarity.
However, these terms are not able to encompass the breadth of performance experienced tonight, not wide enough to describe the arch through which the audience have passed in the previous hours.
Although there may have only been a low numbered subset of the audience that embraced everything on show tonight, it is more than likely that the evening may not have contained everything for everyone but there was certainly something for everyone.
