Review co-authored by Shaun O’Neill
All photos courtesy of Gabrysia Kuczyńska ©.
The past year has once again been a difficult one for touring musicians as well as for popular music festivals, which have for the most part been cancelled or postponed for the second straight season. However, as the saying goes, where there is a will, there is a way, and as a result we have seen the revival of the mini-festival. With pandemic restrictions limiting the size and scope of musical events, organizers have been forced to reduce the size of both crowds and line-ups, though plenty of gigs have been creatively spread over the course of several weeks or months, such as November’s Green Zoo Festival. The latest addition to Krakow’s music festival scene is the Grajdół Festival, which started in September of this year as an outdoor festival perched atop the Beskid Sądecki mountains – just a stone’s throw away from the Polish-Slovakian border. From rock to jazz to electronic dance music, festival-goers got to experience a very diverse range of musical styles against the backdrop of traditional local culture and history. The event was successful enough to warrant a separate one-off show, this time taking place at PAON, a small but very active and artistically ambitious venue in the Dębniki district of Krakow. The line-up was just as diverse as the first time and to many in the audience, it provided a glimpse of a few up-and-coming artists you don’t want to miss.
Warsaw-based 4-piece, Ignu, (Lubosz Majewski – vocals, Jan Szegda – guitar & vocals, David Condis y Troyano – bass & vocals, Cyryl Skiba – drums & percussion) opened the night at PAON with an unapologetic smack in the face; a violent, rumbling, bottomless, guitar overdrive – the musical equivalent of a nail-bomb exploding in a crowded underground station – with great rolling surges of bombastic energy and spiky licks aplenty. They sounded at times like a demented mish-mash of Nowe Sytuacje-era Republika, while channeling the discontent of 90’s Rage Against the Machine and Alice in Chains. They’ve released two albums in the last 4 years: Auriga from 2019 and their 2017 debut offering Lightningflash Flintspark. Both are worth checking out. It’s refreshing to hear a Polish band more than willing to sing in their native tongue, and while their performance was entertaining and musically stimulating, perhaps they deserved to come later in the evening. As it stood, the audience were enthralled and the two subsequent acts definitely owed them a debt of gratitude, for not so much warming the audience up as char-grilling them and spitting out their grisly remains. Ignu’s return to Krakow for a longer extended set, replete with added instrumentation like flute, didgeridoo and violin accompaniment is something fans would most certainly want to witness.
Second on the line-up was Makiwara (Phao Sanato – vocals, Łukasz Bareja – saxophone, Laura Aida Gantner – violin, Pat Rajko – guitar, Cyryl Skiba – drums, Jan Szegda – bass & vocals), another Warsaw-based act that also includes members of the festival openers Ignu, making the transition from one performance to the next all the more seamless. Though quite a jump stylistically from Ignu, Makiwara does a fine job of blending rock, rap, folk and dance music into one multi-ethnic, bohemian and energetic organic rock package that nicely encapsulates the diversity of music and cultures that festivals such as Grajdół are built on. Lead vocalist Phao Sanato skillfully animated the crowd, bouncing to and fro and whipping his dreadlocks like a possessed shaman exorcising any potential evil spirits in the room, bedazzling the crowd in both English and Spanish. Their celebratory, Manu Chao-esque performance included hits such as Arda, Just Listen and Baobab making references to peace, love, freedom as well as throwing up arms in the air like you just don’t care. Currently only singles are available for download but given their energetic live performances and broad-ranging instrumentation, fans of these organic rockers will be clamoring for a full LP release in the near future.
Moonstone (Jan Maniewski – vocals, guitar, Volodymyr Lyashenko – guitar, Wiktor Kozak – bass, Kuba Szyma – percussion), the festival’s headlining act, got to flex their doom muscles and their performance showed why these boys have a very bright future ahead of them, not despite the doom and gloom but rather because of it. Opening number Ash and Stone got the doom train rolling with its slow, Sabbathy groove, fuzzed out guitars and rumbling bass before picking up steam to gut-punch the audience and get heads a-bangin’. Magma, the first track off of their latest EP continued the voyage with face-melting rawness, though in true doom fashion, it changed gears downward into a sludgy, semi-molten tempest of more Iommi-inspired riffage and ear-splitting high-frequency lead guitar screams. What seemed like the end of the song was but a mere peaceful, dream-like intermission before a driving climax replete with raw distortion, howling leads and a fast-paced finale that leveled everything in its wake. The next two numbers, Spores and Mushroom King, were the band’s way of paying homage to all things fungal and Maniewski’s haunting vocals on mushroom reproduction and mycological royalty to the backdrop of Kozak’s pounding bass lines and Lyashenko’s groove-centric riffs had the crowd mesmerized yet again. Spores felt like an epic journey through a psychedelic wonderland, shifting from dreamy, clean melodies then quickly shifting to a brutally fuzzed out verse then back to dreamland before speeding and beefing it up to a mosh-inducing conclusion. Mushroom King very much reminded me of Sleep’s Dragonaut in that it sounded like early 70s Black Sabbath doing it doggy-style with Dark Side of The Moon-era Pink Floyd: a joy to witness indeed. This was followed by Sulphur Eye, another master class in stoner doom. Last on the setlist was an Electric Wizard cover, Vinum Sabbathi, also a fine specimen from the stoner/doom metal catalogue that declared the band’s allegiance to detuned riffing, distortion aplenty, slow grooves and booming percussion. If there is a must-see Krakow band from the metal genre, these fungophiles are it. We only got to hear 6 songs from Moonstone, but with an average length of 10 minutes, there was no shortage of stoned out doomage whatsoever. Fans of the genre will not want to miss their latest EP 1904 and come May of next year the band will be opening up for Bongzilla in Wrocław at Interstellar Smokefest Vol.2. Iommic worship complete.
Closing out the night was DJ Shoshana XD with an equally diverse blend of styles with elements of Balkan, cumbia, world music and drum & bass. Despite the aural onslaught of the first three acts, attendees still had enough in the tank to juke n’ jive to the beats of some highly energetic and eclectic EDM until the first church bells started ringing Sunday morning. Grajdół turned out to be a very electrifying and successful little festival despite the downsizing. The festival will return next year taking place June 23-26 at its original outdoor home. Hopefully the lineup and overall vibe will be equally as wide-ranging and enthralling as the last.
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