Polifonic Festival 2022: Exploratory sounds in the scenic setting of Southern Italy

While Croatia may have taken recent plaudits for its Adriatic festival excursions, Southern Italy is perhaps less discussed in conversations surrounding electronic music hotspots.

Puglia, which lays beside the southern Adriatic Coast, is a region rich in beauty and distinction. From the groves that line the countryside to the hilltop towns with requisite crumbling old walls, ornate churches and a plentiful number of trulli dwellings – the distinctive white-tipped corbelled abodes of the local workers. It’s also really warm.

Polifonic Festival operates within the natural elements of this spectacular surrounding and bleeds into the landscape. After an opening salvo at the Cala Maka Beach Club, the festival’s fourth edition swung into action with a set from in-house residents Dirty Channels, who were an ever-present and popular act across the entire weekend. The pair played disco-tinged house to an immaculately dressed audience soaking up the Apulian sunset. Italian DJ royalty Francesco Del Garda provided a requisite counterpoint on the beach with a session replete with low-slung baselines, grooves, techno oddities and the odd banger. 

The Saturday and Sunday of the festival pulled another stunning setting into the mix: Masseria Capece, an old Italian farmhouse complex flanked by olive groves and stone walls. With four stages situated within the grounds and the warmth of the night allowing for looser attire, there was sense of post-pandemic eagerness in the air as revellers basked in the return of this particular event – hosted here for the first time since 2019.

Therefore, it was somewhat unfortunate that on the night prior, the location’s new showpiece stage – situated in a quarry, and called The Cave – was subject to late interference from the local authorities. This led to an extremely limited capacity of just a few hundred people in an aesthetically pleasing space designed to hold at least triple that number. Equally frustrating, was the authorities decision to curtail the running time of the event by an hour, changes which meant certain DJs weren’t able to play and set times that had to be hastily re-configured. Despite this setback, the deeper strains of Italian techno were ably served up by the likes of Adiel and Marco Shuttle, who played to a smaller but entirely appreciative crowd.

With changes afoot in the programming, the night was propped up by two of the most reliable spinners in the game. Jane Fitz’s commitment to the ravier side of electronica was the perfect antidote to the difficulties on the ground and a recently rejuvenated Danilo Plessow of Motor City Dance Ensemble was in fantastic form to close out the night with all manner of disco rarity.