News / / 07.08.14

OFF Festival

Katowice, Poland | 31 July – 3 August

OFF is one of the last bastions for festival goers who don’t want to pay £8 a pint and stand in the rain watching Mumford and Sons.

It’s also still pretty much Superdry-clad-British-cunt free. Infact the only positively cuntish British behaviour we witnessed at OFF was a vaguely vulgar display from Belle and Sebastian’s drummer as he ‘did the elephant’ whilst singing MN8’s classic single I’ve Got a Little Something For Ya in our hotel lobby. But, if we’re honest, the whole bizarre ritual was strangely endearing, all things considered.

On touching down in Katowice we were compelled to do one thing and one thing only; go and check out the local porcelain factory. It was, of course, exemplary. The evening took us into the city centre for a series of OFF related events including an off kilter performance from, what we imagine is, Poland’s most prolific spoken word/trap artist Normal Echo. We’ll be honest, his wooly observations sounded like they’d been translated by a dodgy app and before we had to hear anymore about how we just couldn’t relate to roadsigns we set off to find an eatery before stumbling into Club Hypnoza to catch Amen Dunes and Dean Wareham both of whom performed blissfuly laid back sets. Wareham performed songs solely from the Galaxie 500 back catalogue, looking less like an old has been and more like a man on the edge of true catharsis. How he reaches those chords we’ll never know.

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Our first day on OFF’s site, deep in the Silesian hillside was daunting, the calibre of the acts at the festival is beyond compare. We found ourselves treated to a grand show from Wild Books; a Polish garage-psyche duo we really feel you should go listen to immediately. The afternoon gave us our second recent encounter with Cerebral Ballzy, they only confirmed what we thought we already knew; the kid has some kind of dude-based auto-cue and he genuinely doesn’t give a fuck who knows. The only time he diverted from script was the bit when he said “We love Poland, it’s such a lovely town.” But then again, he called his band Cerebral Ballzy so we can’t really expect too much from him can we?

As the sun set Black Lips and Perfume Genius were in turns barmy and balmy, both sets showcasing the best of their performers. The evening’s real highlight came in the form of the dizzyingly suave Protomartyr and headliners Neutral Milk Hotel whose reverential, engulfing folk-weirdness is perfect live. We’re so glad to see them return to the arena, not least because we love being able to sing our hearts out to In The Aeroplane Over The Sea and Two Headed Boy till we’re virtually crying along to the sound of a musical saw. As we returned to the hotel we couldn’t help feeling we’d found ourselves at a very special festival, somewhere between the ‘good old days’ of ATP and the not-too-pissed, not-too-sober fuss-free breeziness of Beacons.

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When we returned to the site the next afternoon we checked out Hookworms but left feeling somewhat uninspired by their all-too-derivative krautrock drone. Over on the main stage, however, Deafheaven absolutely smashed their sunset set, shimmering over blastbeats and turned down black metal shrieks marred only by their increasingly annoying frontman and his onstage spitting and posturing. Frank Fairfield was his ever-likeable, ever-impressive self over on the experimental stage and as for Bo Ningen well let’s just say they’re everything you could ever hope for from a Japanese born, east London bred acid-punk band.

The Jesus and Mary Chain headlined but failed to grab us and it sucks because we really wanted to enjoy it, like really. Unfortunately as with a lot of bands returning to the live arena after a long hiatus they looked and felt like they weren’t really sure what to do anymore. With heavy hearts we headed for LE1F in the forest and we can wholeheartedly say we made the best choice ever. He bounded across the stage with more energy than every member of the Mary Chain put together. Wut was a particular highlight but really it paled in comparison to his full scale ballet routine which he dedicated to all his girlfriends. The guy is perfect, honestly.

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On our final day at OFF we were faced with a line-up that looked so good we could have pinched ourselves. Perfect Pussy with an energetic blast of punk that obliterated all traces of our hangovers and sent us hurtling into Andrew WK‘s moronically brilliant set. Watching him tear through 210 bpm party banger and 210 bpm party banger was both hilarious and brilliant, his piano work bringing a dimension of respect we never knew we had for the long hair king of the party. Incidentally, he only said party 6,532 times during his set which is apparently quite low. Nissenenmondai‘s gathering hype has not gone unnoticed by Crack and we were keen to check them out but left early only for fear of being numbed before seeing Fuck Buttons perform what were sure would be a startlingly similar set. It was. Both bands, however, share a wonderfully creative and unique outlook on electronic music that is truly exciting live and remains both fun and bewildering.

Slowdive, however, were quite the opposite. Their post-rock dreariness really just felt uninspired and uncared for. We couldn’t help getting bored but nevertheless we soldiered on through their set with the help of energy drinks and found ourselves chattering away to locals. Finally though, it was time for Belle & Sebastian and boy were we happy to see them. There is nothing, literally nothing, in the world more heartwarming than Stuart Murdoch. His flair, his effortless cool is just unparalleled and as the indie-pop icons charged on through a set that included everything we needed to hear, hits like Boy With The Arab Strap and Piazza, New York Catcher sounding more perfect that their recorded counterparts and closing the weekend in the only way we could have ever wanted it to, gracefully and whimsically.

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OFF festival is basically brilliant, the only faults coming in the form of the Polish law that means you can’t drink near a stage. Basically, all it means is that you either drink or watch bands. In a way though it puts the music back in control which can really only be a good thing. We suggest you head out to Poland and get into OFF before the crowd is made up mostly of drunk british girls and lads in V-necks. It’s cheap, it has a line-up nonpareil and we’ll definitely be heading back next year for what will surely be the best line-up in Europe again.

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