There are festivals, and then there’s Unsound. While so much in electronic music programming walks the line between club accessibility and more adventurous experimentation, some time falling over one side or the other of that divide, Unsound consistently hits the center of the bullseye with some of the most creative, imaginative music around. It’s just smart music. You can catch Unsound in its home city of Krakow, Poland, or you can find it as it pulls an international roster of artist to the metropolis New York City. And, at the moment, you can enjoy it from the comfort of wherever you call home, thanks to a nice stream from Hype Machine and Unsound that hops to the top of our must-listen queue for Monday.

Who’s in store? Alongside Polish animation and other goodness, expect a night of ladies whose names begin with the letter J working with experimental sounds (LA’s Julia Holter, Norway’s Jenny Hval, New York’s Julia Kent), a reimagining of Herbie Hancock by Poland’s LXMP, Germany’s wonderful Pole and the ongoing tour of Monolake’s visual-sonic masterwork, England’s Demdike Stare, New York’s own ambient imagineer Zemi17, and bass mainstays like Sepalcure and 2562. There are talks on history, explorations of music technique and particularly performance, and even a tribute to (too-often unsung) Manhattan minimal pioneer La Monte Young. (That great herald of experimental sound, The Wire Magazine is involved in discussions.) I’m probably most disappointed myself not to witness the premiere of “TRINITY,” a promising-looking, epic exploration of nuclear testing in New Mexico by Biosphere and Lustmond, bringing together two of the world’s most sonically-imaginative artists.

If you can make it to Poland or Manhattan, I certainly endorse experiencing the festival in person, but in the meantime, let’s enjoy surveying its musical treats:

http://unsound.pl/en

A small note based on Part 1: this is no history of dub – no need to create a list of dub forefathers in the comments! But if you’re interested in such things, definitely watch Bruno Natal’s Dub Echos, he talks to everyone under the sun, and it’s fascinating!)

A Quiet Bump [as seen in part 1] has their feet firmly planted in the heavy Rhythm and Sound aesthetic of half-time, head-nodding feel. The second modern dub label I’ve been impressed with over the years, Qunabu, is rooted a little more strongly in two other genres, the clicks and cuts and glitch of Mille Plateaux (which I’m probably more familiar with) and dub techno (to which I’m a relative n00b). The latter is a sound that’s captivated me over the last eighteen months or so, as I’ve gotten into old Chain Reaction, some of the Echospace / Deepchord projects, and everything on Echocord – but I’m absolutely no expert and I’m sure many readers have been following the genre stretching back well into the 90s.

Qunabu is more than just a netlabel; it actually arose as a twinned project of a design firm and netlabel, founded by Piotr Hatti Vatti and Mateusz Qunabu out of Gdansk, Poland. Mateusz and his brother Rafal sit well within a long Polish tradition of innovative visual design, and they offer a pretty stellar portfolio of all sorts of graphic and interactive design, photography, and video work. It’s all on displace, on the main site under the interactive section. I mention it because, unfortunately, right now the actual netlabel part of Qunabu has a placeholder page – it’s being redesigned and wasn’t ready quite in time for this piece. But it’s easy to get excited for how it will look, and in addition to their portfolio, the podcast series and the shop are up and running.

The amazing coincidence is that I was familiar with both Qunabu and Piotr’s work as Hatti Vatti, completely independently of each other. Hatti Vatti totally captivated me with his track “Different Music,” which came out on Indigo’s Mindset label a couple years ago – a song I still play in sets to this day. Fodder for a different article for sure, but I consider every track Hatti Vatti’s ever produced to be 100% awesome and probably be the finest example of what’s good and interesting about dubstep today – it’s the opposite of this. And in hindsight of course I can hear the connection between his brand of dubstep and the experimental and techno leanings of Qunabu.

The label has had an impressive output so far, and includes some ambient work from NN as well as a few pieces that call more on hip-hop and free jazz like The Strait of Anian’s This Wandering Winter release. But the majority of tracks lope along in the 115-125bpm range of slow techno, ranging in feel from fairly driving to almost muffled. Their two strongest releases so far have been the two volumes of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band”. These are the label’s showcase compilations, akin to the great Staedizism compilations from ~scape (and both put out long before Easy Star All Stars released and album with the same name!) They are both a pretty stunning collection of tracks from producers that haven’t seen many releases elsewhere.

Mateusz and Piotr answered a few of my questions by email below. Also, be sure to check out check out the captivating video of “You” that Qunabu created – showcasing the real love and affection they have for their city of Gdansk, a town that has produced Reza and his CX Digital label among others.

Hatti Vatti feat. Cian Finn – You (HD) from Andrei Matei on Vimeo.

Who is involved in Qunabu, and when did it start?
Mateusz Qunabu [MQ]: It started in 2006. It’s been me, Mateusz Qunabu and Piotr aka Hatti Vatti from the beginning. I’m responsible for the website and technical stuff as well as the first selection of received audio and organizing graphics, etc. Piotr is responsible for finalizing the music and further contact with artists.

If you had to describe your aesthetic to people who didn’t know the label, what would you say?
MQ: Dub Side of the Moon, recently the dub techno side

Hatti Vatti [HV]: We started with dub techno, but right now we are focused on any electronic and experimental minimalistic genre. But dub elements are always somewhere around. HQ open-minded music.

How do you choose which artists to release?
MQ: The first release was from Piotr’s friend from a Polish reggae forum. Then he started to meet people on myspace. It was a time when myspace was full of interesting stuff (2006-2007), so he gathered a collection of tracks for Sgt. Peppers #1. After that we were receiving emails from people around the world. We’ve met a few of them in person, some of them we know only by email. Stendek is the only local friends we have published – I think he is one of the greatest artist in our portfolio.

HV: There’s no rule. We asked a lot of people for EP, but ~50% of our releases are sent as demos… It’s an international netlabel but we are really happy if we will get something cool from our country or city (Gdansk). I’m really proud of our first compilation – it’s 100% polish. All told, Qunabu has released music from 15 countries and 4 continents .

Which project are you most proud of – or was the most difficult?
HV: Making “Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Dub Band Vol. 1″ was hard work. We were a bit unknown as a netlabel at the time… I think it’s my favorite release because of the big response and the feeling that we had done something really special in many ways. But I like every single EP and LP… “Sgt Peppers… Vol. 2″ was our biggest project, but it was much so easier after “Vol. 1″. I think almost 100% Qunabu stuff is still “actual”, fresh and very interesting. Also, QNB004 (77′s Schlummerlieds EP) and QNB005 (Misk’s Pathos EP) both came out in the same moment (2007) – now it seems like a kind of prophecy of dubstep and dubtechno crossover…

What upcoming releases are planned?
HV: Avant jazz experiments meets dub techno EP + “Sgt Peppers…” Vol 3.

http://www.qunabu.com/

Previously: CREATED: Digital Dub for 2012, Part 1 – A Quiet Bump, A Conversation with Peak

Kid Kameleon is a San Francisco-based DJ, promoter, writer, blogger, historian, archivist, and fan of electronic music. Tune in regularly for his CREATED series on new and undiscovered music, including what to hear, and talks with artists.
http://kidkameleon.com

“This sounds crazy. I want to see this. I think I may have to see this to understand what you mean. But I want to see this.”

David Dodson, journalist, writer, and electronic musician (“Primus Luta” and, most recently at our Handmade Music series, Concrete Sound System), has just told me he wants to cover New York’s Unsound Festival, the Polish-based electronic and “advanced” music festival.

Only he wants to cover it … fictionally.

There’s a love story. There’s drama. There a bits of review, interwoven with a story. In place of the usual omniscient narrator that we find in music journalism, delivering pronouncements about the State of Music from on high and dissecting the programming, we hear reflections on the work the way you do when you’re actually there – snippets of commentary from friends outside the venue, internal monologue in your head. But these thoughts come out of the heads of made-up protagonists, who then rub shoulders with the real characters spotted at the event. (Warning: if you were at Unsound, you might make a cameo.)

It’s trippy, disorienting, frequently comical, and for me, at least, leaves me half-guiltily aching for more.

It’s worth reading all the excerpts in order in the blog format in which we’re able to present them, but a few examples to whet your appetite (or, if I’m lucky, give you some idea what the heck I’m talking about):

There are drops of sweat on her lashes when Gisella finally opens her eyes. She looks at Lil’ Man who is smiling like a man who knows he’s done good. She smiles back licking the presperation off her upper lip only slightly suggestive. Lil’ Man notices but turns to give an nod to Chancha for keeping her there with him on the dance floor. Only two other ladies, who probably arrived with Chancha, could keep up with the cumbia influenced rhythms. It didn’t keep others from moving to the beat, but even with her eyes closed, Gisella knew they had been the center of attention.
“Let’s go get some air,” she says into his ear before leading him through the crowd.
As they walk down the corridor where people are still waiting to get in, Lilo comes behind them from the back room.
“Oh my god,” she says. ”I don’t know who’s on now, but whoever was doing the last set in the back room just made my night.” There are more people outside waiting to get in and small groups gathered in nicotine circles. ”You missed him playing Madonna.”
“No way,” Gisella replies as they walk toward the curb where she recognizes Praveen and Sougwen.
“But did you see Dave Q voguing behind his laptop?” Praveen asks over hearing Lilo’s enthusiasm. The guy standing next to him responds by striking a pose.
“Do you know Dave?” Sougwen asks Gisella.
“Only by reputation,” Lilo says extending her hand.

…or…

“While I don’t feel cheated,” Lilo says between sips of wine, “I do feel like I missed something. I mean it was Morton Subotnick, the Buchla was there, and he performed Silver Apples on the Moon, but something was missing.”
“He didn’t patch live,” Lil Man says.
“Yes, that is it isn’t it?” Lilo thinks about it taking a sip. ”It’s funny how laptops throw everything off.”
“You couldn’t really see what he was doing,” Gisella chimes in. ”You could see it all working but you couldn’t see the work.”
“He had a controller near the laptop,” Lil Man notes. ”He was doing something with that.”
“Yeah,” Lilo says after another sip. ”I mean you have to think, why wouldn’t he use a laptop? Can you imagine how hard it must have been to create Silver Apples back in the sixties, let alone perform it. Even now with the technology we have it’s an amazing achievement.”
“Most def,” Lil Man affirms.
“But I do wish he had pulled at least one patch cable,” Lilo adds before finishing the glass.
“Most def.”

…or…

The sound of an ambulance trails off behind her. Suddenly a female voice moves in only to be accompanied by at least ten different iterations of the same voice. They are all being manipulated diferently and floating around the space. Gisella closes her eyes and could see the voices sweeping, like ghosts in a haunted house. It was clearly the Pamela Z piece, but the description didn’t really do the effect of it justice. The title and even the description made it sound out of place. What did “The Star Spangled Banner” have to do with horror? But listening to Pamela Z’s deconstruction and recomposition of voice in the surround space, at this point Gisella recognizes, Pamela is the first artist to truly create a scene from a horror movie. So why was she thinking about sex?

Author David Dodson explains the project:

I’ve been thinking of moving back into fiction writing for a few years now, but fiction that deals with real historical places and events. A few years back I wrote a novella entitled “The Moshi” which placed characters in the middle of New York during the black out of 2003. When working with fictional characters it’s always interesting to think about how they respond to ‘real life’ situations.

For “Above the Threshold” I wanted to really embrace that. Rather
than create a world in which the characters can do whatever I saw fit, I decided to create the characters and place them in our world to see what they’d do. I started out with a very simple premise – a female lead working in the music industry attends the 2011 Unsound festival. I then attended the festival myself and ‘observed’ how my characters acted within the settings that the festival presented.

During the course of the festival I penned over 50k words of this
storyline, and in essence watched the plot unfold. It will be some
time before the full piece is ready to go to print, but I’m offering
up some excerpts from it on the CDM partner Noisepages site. These excerpts may or may not end up in the final draft, but will give some glimpses of the characters, the festival and how the two came together.

I only wish fictional characters could inhabit all the events we attend. I suppose, in fact, they could.

The full work, emerging in blog form:

Above the Threshold

Digital technology has made music oddly invisible, virtualized somewhere inside a screen – but it also allows music to be mapped more literally to the physical world than ever before. Some of these experiments may even be silly, but they suggest a lot of possibilities.

From Poland, BeatMachine is a project that sequences beats in a step sequencer using discarded beer bottle caps. Would-be Internet haters, I suggest you count the number of beer bottle caps on the table, and start drinking that number while watching. I guarantee eventually it’ll seem like a brilliant idea.

Make sure you keep watching to the clever-looking software they’ve evidently developed for the task.

http://mw.boo.pl/beatmachine/

If this seems familiar, it was in fact inspired by the Bubblegum Sequencer featured here previously, and its rival I Eat Beats. Through the power of the Internet, iterating and improving ideas isn’t just something you do for yourself alone – it’s something you can share with others. That’s the idea behind our own tangible interface hackday coming up on Saturday:

http://hackday.noisepages.com

Thanks to Artur Nowak for the tip. I know we have a number of readers in Poland, so is there anyone who could help with a quick translation?

(Oh, and Poland, by the way – my book was actually translated into your language!)