Early Check

The 2009 Off Festival in Mysłowice is coming up fast, so it high time to start getting ready. And what I did as the first step was sift through my music collection in search of artists scheduled for Mysłowice. Here's what in my iTunes and on the shelves overlaps with the festival line-up:

1) The National, the American band I started listening to a year or so ago after I heard enthusiastic reviews and a couple of songs on the Polish radio. Their dark, world-worn sound, coupled with the roughness of the lead singer's voice, produce a dreamy, exciting effect, like in "Mistaken for Strangers", a compelling song indeed.

2) Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, a solo project from the US whose previous album "Etiquette" I miraculously discovered in my iTunes. Interestingly, it didn't get a lot of attention from me, even though the name of the project and some of its tunes have firmly planted themselves in my sonic memory and when I replayed it today it sounded just fine. The kind of music that goes best with lazy evenings, idle travelling, watching out of the rain-swept windows. In terms of labels and categories: slow core, indietronica, lo-fi.

3) Errors, sensational, progressive electronica from Scotland I've been listening to for almost a year now. Artur Rojek, the man behind Off Festival, deserves full credit for helping me get to their music through his eye-opening reviews in the culture section of the daily "Polska". Such a pity their gig has been taken out from the busiest two days and ticketed extra. Another band he recommended in the same issue was The Week That Was, but I found it impossible to get hold of them in any of my standard music sources.

4) And another artist who you have to pay for extra in Mysłowice: Ólafur Arnalds from Iceland. Music as if designed for a walk with your face up watching the clouds change shape and go by, unpalpable, unlimited, ushering into a wide open space.

5) Spiritualized, whose "Ladies and Gentlemem, we Are Floting in Space" the song, not the album, I burned as a teenage fan of Brit pop in a self-made cd collection of hits, along with Blur, Pulp or Doves, and only today connected in my mind with the rightful owners as I listened on youtube to the whole album. "Broken heart" is one of the most poignant and heart-wrenching songs I've heard recently. Can't wait to see them in concert.