Unknown
As a new festival, falling foul in your first year is forgivable. Steps into the unknown require a certain amount of apathy on the part of the audience when it comes to bar queues, organisation, unseen problems and all the logistical nightmares that can plague any effort making its debut. However, these all too familiar flunks were in no way a reality for Unknown festival’s inaugural year, which bypassed the aforementioned year of frustration with an immaculately curated and presented festival in one of the most scenic locations in Croatia’s current climate of festival saturation.
A collaboration between the people behind Sound Channel, The Warehouse Project, Hideout Field Day; Unknown looked to gather disparate groups of music fans from their various pools toward a festival that presented itself as a welcome retreat back to something more basic rather than overtly hedonistic.
The northern coastal town of Rovinj’s picturesque mix of plush nautical vessels and paving stones provided the main base for exploration with the standout landmark of St. Euphemia’s basilica a pointed constant on the horizon almost anywhere in the surrounding vicinity. With lines of pizzerias and finer dining options tucked away in the old town, the options were firmly in place to abandon the late night resort to the basic burger van time and time again.
With the festival tucked neatly round the cove on the Amarin resort complex where the majority of punters were staying, the action took place along the coastline with stages in forests, in clearings a stones throw from the beach, and adjacent to the swimming pool, with the outstanding forest stage running until it felt like stopping. With showers, camping space and restaurants aplenty as well as coastal paths in which to disappear and find more seclusion during the day, Unknown essentially provided a unique opportunity to find your perfect placement on the holiday/party spectrum.
The woodland amphitheatre forest stage and it’s absolutely punishing sound system proved to be the most popular poison of choice for those whose spectrum edged towards the partying, with its stellar line-up and spacious balcony style stage arrangement allowing punters to watch from a level above the well. Beautifully lit amongst the trees, not even an impromptu gale sweeping dust across the stage could pour water on this party. The Innervisions takeover was a highlight for many with a truly memorable hour and a half from Henrik Schwarz and a now so established b2b set from Dixon and Âme that, far from becoming a repetitive staple, continues to confound expectations with its depth and rich textures. The Hotflush party ran and ran with Scuba and George Fitzgerald’s techno framework proving its popularity with an early/very late finish. Erol Alkan rolled back the years with a set positively gushing with acid and Jackmaster (whose presence could be felt everywhere this weekend both musically and physically – playing approximately 300 sets over the course of the weekend) cruised through the hits with a final night shakedown from Joy Orbison, and Optimo providing a fitting end to proceedings until the 10am finish.
With a few adverse weather conditions not exactly making the earlier part of the festival easy, you did fear for Unknown’s capacity to deal with the extremities of the weather. Despite this, the little touches – such as the hammocked area in the woods and the beautiful lighting – remained wonderfully intact as a charming part of the furniture for more or less everywhere you wandered at the festival.
One of the defining musical selling points of the festival was the attempt by Unknown to attract itself to the indie fan that also enjoyed a beat or two. Enter Django Django, who despite not appealing to this reviewer (the electronic Mumford and Sons, listen closely) united a huge crowd with a massive sing-along. The Horrors androgynous set of partial new material, partial last two-record material and fully capturing mix of heady guitar experimentalism and main stage filling guitar swirl was the only thing that could have followed Factory Floor. The perfect uniting band for this audience, their blend of live techno, krautrock and electronic noise built and built to an outstanding crescendo that once again cemented them as one of the best live acts in operation today. Disclosure’s – sort of if you play bass guitar it counts as live – ‘live’ show was every bit as middle of the road and you could expect from an act with whom it’s almost impossible to understand how they have garnered so much respect from such credible quarters. On a similar note, Richie Hawtin’s co-ordinated fist-pump extravaganza sounded as perfunctory as every time we’ve heard him in the last few years. A change of approach or something to turn at least turn a few real music heads back in his direction might be the right tact for a man who has reached a size he might not be able to escape from.
With the nights ending so late and the line-up weighting in the favour of the electronic zeitgeist, the sparse attendance for some of the daytime gigs was probably a reflection of the sheer wealth of acts at your disposal at Unknown. This may have been due to boat parties, which disappointed due to poor sound-system quality, weather, an awfully thought through ticket token system (and the fact that tokens for one party weren’t redeemable the next day) and drastically over-sold capacities. Numbers’ rain-soaked wedding disco, sorry… Tweak-a-holic special was comically awful in the rain and Innervision’s sunny, but altogether too chin-strokey affair meant neither quite did the job. But as we said, it’s their first year…
The music was interesting wherever you looked. Michael Mayer’s melodic minimalism by the pool, Modeselektor more than soldiering on after the tragic news of Apparat’s motorcycle crash, Daniel Avery’s coolly presented electro tucked away behind the main stage, Todd Terje’s astro-disco in the woods – it all made wonderful sense.
Despite the bohemian image given off by the festival, they were perhaps a little eager to take your money. Such offences include supermarkets emptied of alcohol by the site personnel to make sure you bought on site and a somewhat convoluted card top-up-then-pay system that made ordering a drink a little more complex than perhaps it should have been. With efforts to scrap together the remaining balances on three cards, you questioned whether playing with that whole age-long process of exchanging money for goods and services was really a good idea.
Unknown was a truly welcome addition to the cramped Croatian party calendar, brought into sharp focus by the reams of smiling faces and beautiful people that attended. Everyone was housed wonderfully in a purpose built site that had more or less everything you needed to enjoy music, shower and come back again with the required amount of gusto to repeat the process. The organisation was swift and well manned and the opportunities to do things outside of the festival were ample. Considering the players involved, we shouldn’t have expected anything less.
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Words: Thomas Frost
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