Music & clubs

OFF Festival

OUR PICK - IN KATOWICE! Time to do what Germans have always done: invade Poland. With the 2010 OFF Festival (Aug 5-8), Katowice is hosting one of the more impressive rock events of the year.

Image for OFF Festival
Monotonix at OFF Festival in 2009. Photo by Jacek Poremba

The Berlin festival season is well upon us and speeding past, with our Melting into Fusion and whatnot. Time to do what Germans have been doing for centuries, and invade Poland. Specifically, the Silesian city of Katowice, which will be hosting one of the more impressive rock events of the year – the largest in central eastern Europe – with the OFF Festival (Thu, Aug 5-Sun, Aug 8).

With a series of rather directly sobriquetted stages, including the Forest Stage and the Offensive Stage, it’s a pretty unquestionable line-up as far as indie/alt tastes range, from Dinosaur Jr. to Matmos to the Horrors to The Fall to A Hawk and a Hacksaw, with the Germans represented by Lali Puna and Mouse on Mars. I could go on: Damon and Naomi, Anti-Pop Consortium, Bear in Heaven…it’s a thorough sorting of your subconscious. And yes, there shall be many Polish acts, hopefully the sort that come from the forests.

There’s also a concurrent film festival with a music film section, including Wayne Coyne’s hard-to-catch-on-a-real-screen Christmas on Mars (and Coyne’s Flaming Lips will be at the fest), as well as audio engineering workshops for that ostalgic feel. The whole thing is €30 – pretty solid.

OFF FESTIVAL | August 5-8 in Katowice, Poland. For a complete schedule, visit 2010.off-festival.pl