OFF Festival Katowice 2012: From Psychofolk to Songs in Polish
Three new acts have been added to the Trójka Stage lineup: two American groups that take an irreverent approach to their country’s folk traditions — Akron/Family and Megafaun — as well as our own Afro Kolektyw, who also think nothing of blurring the boundaries between words and music.
Akron/Family
What happens when you transplant rural American folk music into a New York City garage? Not only does it not wilt, it actually blossoms with feedback, tearing apart traditional song structures and bearing the fruit of new sounds, without losing its roots in good songwriting. Akron/Family’s studio experiments and live jams have rightfully launched them to the forefront of a genre known as freak folk or new psychodelic rock, depending on how acoustic or electric the sound is. Their performances should be proof enough, but their albums are worth listening to as well, particularly their latest release _Akron/Family II The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT (2011).
Megafaun
Megafaun are good friends with Akron/Family and a certain Justin Vernon, with whom they collaborated in the band DeYarmand Edison before each went their separate ways: Justin going on to fame as Bon Iver, and Brad Cook, Phil Cook, and Joe Westerlund venturing into the unknown as Megafaun, exploring post-hippie music not limited by trends or time. There’s a bit of the country tradition with a rock edge in their sound, and even oddities worthy of Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, all performed in laid-back style that you won’t find anywhere outside North Carolina. One Pitchfork reviewer describes their music as “well-suited for a night strapped into headphones as it is a lazy Sunday morning, dancing around the bedroom.” In that case, it’s well-suited for the Trójka Stage too.
Afro Kolektyw
When this Warsaw group debuted over a decade ago with Płyta pilśniowa, they drew comparisons to The Roots and were lauded as the great hope of Polish hip-hop. Today, following the release of Piosenki po polsku, enthusiastic reviewers see Afro Kolektyw more as a worthy heir to the best Polish pop-rock traditions of the 70s and 80s. As hard as it may be to keep up with them, two elements of Afro Kolektyw’s style have remained constant: their excellent instrumentalists, whose groove remains unrivaled in the land of the Vistula, and their one-of-a-kind frontman, Michał “Afrojax” Hoffman, against whose sharp tongue, witty humor, and irony few local wordsmiths dare compete.
Tickets and passes are now on sale at the OFF Festival website and the ticket sales networks Seetickets (UK).
Now on sale:
1. OFF 3-Day Festival Pass with or without Campground Access: 120/160 zł — provides access to all three days of the festival at Dolina Trzech Stawów, August 3 to 5. Prices are valid till April 16.
2. Tickets to this year’s OFF Club (May 11–13, Światowid Cinema, Katowice) — available exclusively at the OFF Festival website. Tickets are 30 zł (until May 10) and 40 zł (May 11, 12, 13).
