With Unsound Adelaide now the under the umbrella of Illuminate Adelaide in recent years, this year sees a move from its former cultural home (given the Polish connections) the Dom Polski Centre to Adelaide's West End.
Live performances were conducted at Lion Arts Factory (11 July), and then Hindley Street Music Hall (12 July) before a late-night closing party of DJ sets at Ancient World.On Friday, the mononymous Afro-Portuguese Nidia commences with an electronic opening overture and instrumental preamble before being joined by Italian-British drummer/percussionist Valentina Magaletti for their collaborative take on the Angolan dance genre kuduro recorded as their debut, 'Estradas' ('roads' in Portuguese).
From the slow, rumbling beginnings, even though they're coming from different angles, there is a symbiosis in their polyrhythm, a wordless instrumental dialogue between the two. Nidia is seemingly motionless while Valentina appears to do all the heavy lifting, like a manic concert percussionist.
Their set builds over their 45-minute allotment, with a standout being 'Mata' containing the repeated sampled refrain "give me mother".
Nidia - image © Kerrie Geier
Dressed in somewhat traditional costumery, the Bolivian-American siblings Chuquimamani-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton as Los Thuthanaka have a minimalist approach, with the former on a dual-keytar rig playing simple musical motifs over the latter's wash of infinite guitar, along with the addition of distorted radio transmissions.
Within the hypnotic repetition of their set, all sense of time is lost even though after they finish it is apparent this was a slightly shorter performance.
Aya walks onstage, takes a laptop out of their backpack (which they continue to wear for at least half of the performance that follows) and hooks it up to a table.
They begin by lip syncing to the song 'Evan Perks' by hardcore punk band The Chariot, in perhaps an ironic display of self-deprecation (there is a closing repeated refrain of "disappointed, I know you are") before executing a physical, chaotic and incendiary performance of material from their sophomore album of emo electronica 'Hexed!'.
Aya owns the stage, mounting the tech table to twiddle knobs and fine tune the prerecorded output and use a mic stand as a dramatic theatrical prop like Jesus' cross.
The near, seizure-inducing lighting only heightens the tension of Aya's abrasive, rapid-fire, horror-movie soundscapes that are broken up by comedic asides ("She's Adelaidy woo – ooh – ooh she's Adelaidy. . . I've been waiting weeks to do that joke."). The thought comes to mind: this is like 'Hedwig And The Angry Inch' reimagined as hardcore techno.
Aya - image © Kerrie Geier
Reconvening their partnership after a 15-year hiatus in 2023, Yellow Swans' (Pete Swanson and Gabriel Mindel Saloman) return to live performance has been eagerly anticipated.
Their performance is a slow burn, meditative with a simple guitar riff played by Gabriel gradually processed and layered to sound somewhere between an orchestral tune and droning whale song.
Under hellish glowing lighting, as the volume intensifies, it's like the audience are lobsters in a pot and what sounds like a crackling furnace only reinforces that thought. Connector crackle threatens to mar the ambience of the performance, but the duo briefly glance at each other and then shrug it off, incorporating it into their performance.
Pete 'tunes' the evolving sounds and sways dramatically before intensely pacing back and forth as their musical output is nearly pushed into the realm of white noise or perhaps a musical grey goo.
While the first piece was like a plane taking off, their second is like a rocket, more immediately dramatic, the pure sound of the guitar lost early in the mix even though Gabriel keeps playing.
Yellow Swans - image © Kerrie Geier
Meanwhile, Pete is in the moment like a mad conductor, the patch cords and tech in front of him a pseudo-orchestra of noise, and after awhile the near white noise no longer corresponds with their movement onstage like an audio track out of sync.
The condensed line-up of three main acts on Saturday starts with the German Wolfgang Voigt and a performance under his long-term alias GAS, not quite techno but definitely referencing the influential Krautrock/ Kosmische style of his fellow countrymen forebears.
It would be fair to describe GAS as presenting an electronic suite, an initial measured groove is developed slowly as the accompanying visuals come into focus.
As the performance progresses, I feel mesmerised by the layered foliage and forestry that become a forest of disorientation, the unused onstage drum kit seemingly floating back and forth within the projected backdrop of a grey forest.
As a heartbeat-like beat becomes apparent within the ambient musical output, the trees gradually become a curtain projected onto a curtain at the back of the stage.
GAS - image © Kerrie Geier
Moin, made up of core members Joe Andrews and Tom Halstead (aka electronic duo Raime) along with drummer Valentina Magaletti (returning after having opened the festival with Nadia the night before) have collaborated on three studio albums since 2021.
Alongside the vocal samples and metronomic beats produced by Joe, the band's approach is not too dissimilar from the musical output of post-rock bands prevalent in the '90s and early 2000s, like Tortoise, that have formed in the wake of Slint.
Commencing with a seemingly improvisational exercise, the band lock into a simultaneous groove demonstrating a versatility that makes them stand apart from many others in the post-rock genre.
Valentina duels and mirrors Joe's sometimes skittering sampled beats, while Tom's muscular guitar riffs bulk the sound. The sinister slow build of 'Right Is Alright, Wrong Is To Belong' is made all the more disturbing by the repeated vocal sample "I think I went too far".
It was a set that can be appreciated both by fans of experimental music and the crossover of those in the audience there for something a little less abstract.
MOIN - image © Kerrie Geier
As the audience reconfigures and a concentrated crop of new faces appear among those who have held their positions in front of the stage since the beginning of the evening, it's obvious a big pull tonight is John Cale and his band playing the second of only two Australian tour dates.
Dressed all in black and flanked by his similarly attired regular players: Dustin Boyer on guitar, Deantoni Parks on drums, Joey Maramba on bass, John opens his set on guitar with the contemporary propulsive 'Shark-Shark' before settling at the keyboard for the prog rock-like 'Captain Hook'.
Given the recent passing of The Beach Boy's Brian Wilson, it is surprising John doesn't comment on this either before or after performing 'Mr. Wilson', and his stage banter remains limited to individual song introductions until the end when he introduces the band.
The set hangs together well with the songs chosen to be performed mostly from either ends of his career (the 1970s and the contemporary), his work from the '80s and '90s neglected on this occasion.
Occasionally there are little details that remind you how old John is (83) such as when he steps away from the keys and walks over to play guitar. However, in performance there are no deficits; his voice and playing is in good form, and during ' 'Cable Hogue' he lets loose a howl that is mimicked by some more enthusiastic members of the audience.
While there are some who were probably pining for one cover song that he has made his own that he did not play tonight (Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah'), it was another idiosyncratic cover played that stood apart from other songs in the set; a stark 'Heartbreak Hotel' with Joey accompanying him on bowed bass.
John Cale - image © Kerrie Geier
In lieu of an encore (afterwards he does return to the stage momentarily with his band in tow but then apologises for something before leaving, both the audience and the band alike confused), the last three songs have a different feel to those that came before.
The simple 'Big White Cloud' from his solo debut ('Vintage Violence') opens before another cover, former early bandmate in the Velvet Underground Nico's 'Frozen Warnings', and in an about turn musically, 'Barracuda' rendered as a funky New Orleans-styled extended improv exercise.
Although he has a history of experimental music performance early on and throughout his long career, tonight John gave a relatively straightforward performance that seems subdued when compared to the more extreme elements as displayed during performances the previous evening at the Lion Arts Centre.
Ultimately this was a satisfying conclusion to a festival that to an extent overtly defies the concept of categorisation and compartmentalisation of styles of musical output.
