Music

Experience an Underground Cave Rave in Poland on THUMP’s New Travel Show

This past October, THUMP traveled to Kraków, Poland to attend Unsound, an experimental music festival featuring a mouth-watering lineup of international artists performing in hyper-unique spaces all throughout the Polish city.

Unlike other music festivals, Unsound is a non-profit, which frees the organizers from depending on ticket sales or line-up hype, and instead allows them to get weird, challenging tired notions of what a music festival can be. This year’s week-long edition was no exception, starting with Unsound’s “Surprise” theme. Not only was the majority of the lineup not announced to ticket-buyers in advance, but a number of the venues were also kept a secret until just before doors opened.

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There was a multimedia, “synesthetic” installation in an abandoned tobacco factory called Stara Fabryka Tytoniu; all-night DJ sets in the defunct, Soviet-era Forum Hotel; performances at Muzeum Inżynierii Miejskiej, The Musuem of Municipal Engineering in Kraków; and a special headlining act whose identity was never revealed, held 300 meters underground in the aforementioned Wieliczka Salt Mine, arguably the country’s most treasured national monument—and one that was built in the 13th century.


In the first episode of Rave New World, THUMP joined the festival’s organizers, artists, and fans for a musical experience unlike any other. It turns out cave raves aren’t just for mole people.