Sway

Last year, Unsound returned to Krakow's Forum Hotel for the first time since 2019 — an iconic brutalist building that hovers ominously over the Vistula River. This space will come back to life again in 2026, when the Ballroom and Corner Room are filled with musical experiments that favor dance. At 89 (hidden in the underground of a former strip club) we can expect some of the most surprising performances at the festival.

The Ballroom event will begin with a live set by Venezuelan “sound collage collective” weed420, which uses concrete music techniques and vaporwave aesthetics to combine punk, noise and rap with cumbia and reggaeton. Then we welcome back to the gyrofield, which hosted an exclusive b2b set with DBridge last year as part of the European live premiere. He will also play new music, as it were, continuing a series of impressive and bass-heavy productions that culminated in the epic “Your Fight”, released by Field Research, his own gyrofield label. Soon after, Blawan — promises to be one of the best live sets serving experimental club music. He will hand over the reins to Vigro Deep, South African pioneer of amapiano, and British bass alchemist Batu. Finally, a twisted b2b set from two relentless young innovators: the self-proclaimed “priestess of independent music” KAVARI and the unconventional producer and DJ Ship Sket, who last year debuted on Planet Mu with the infinitely complex album “IniTiatrix”.

Enigmatic rapper Jawnino will bring intricate stories about the dysfunctional face of Britain to Krakow — after a recent collaboration with Surf Gang, he returns with a material seething with anger and free of prejudice, reflecting London's patchwork of cultures. He will present it in the Corner Room. From Melbourne, DJ Plead will arrive, who on his second album “Please” draws on the music of the Lebanese diaspora to propel dubstep, trip-hop, house and jungle tracks to its rhythms. At night in this hall we will be introduced by the Polish duo Opel, created by Piotr Bukowski and Hubert Zemler, who in the past reinterpreted Polish folk sounds. Their latest achievements have gone in a different direction — they are rooted in introductory trance rhythms and expressionist samples. Iconic Brooklyn band Deli Girls, along with their new drummer, will fill the hall with controlled chaos. Then DJ Spinn — one of the most recognizable creators of footwork. The evening will be closed by DJ k means, who lives in the UK and comes from Sweden — thanks to her insatiable and unrecognisable genre-splitting sets, she has made quite a reputation on the Bristol scene.

In '89, Charlie Osborne is a London-based Welsh artist who moves across disciplines, combining collage, art installations, independent music and fashion into a form of self-expression perfectly attuned to the contemporary flood of information.