OFF Festival Katowice 2016: More Jazz!

There’s something magical about the way jazz keeps reinventing itself and overcoming its own limits. That’s why we’re happy to announce that TaxiWars and Maestro Trytony are joining the OFF Festival lineup.

Does the voice of TaxiWars sound familiar? Sure it does! It belongs to Tom Barman, the vocalist of the accomplished Belgian act dEUS, whom we featured at the OFF Festival back in 2011. Now he’s coming back to Katowice, heading up a quartet he founded with the acclaimed NYC-based sax player Robin Verheyen. The two dreamed up a project that melds furious, high-speed jazz with poetry, and the results will please fans of Charles Mingus, Morphine, and Tom Waits alike. TaxiWars will perform at 5:50 on Saturday at the Trójka Stage.

It’s been 20 years since the premier of the legendary album Enoptronia, one of the most seminal records to come out of Poland’s yass revolution, which bridged the Polish jazz tradition with avant-garde rock in the late 1990s. To celebrate this auspicious anniversary, the band Maestro Trytony is getting back together and will play their first post-reactivation gig in Katowice. Led by Tomasz Gwiciński on guitar, the group will appear in its original lineup (short of the late bassist Tomasz Hesse). Maestro Trytony will play at 4:10 on Sunday at the Trójka Stage. TaxiWars and Maestro Trytony will be replacing Mutoid Man and Mass Gothic, who have dropped out of the lineup due to changes in their European tour schedules.

Here’s who we’re going to see onstage at the 2016 OFF Festival: Anohni, The Kills, Devendra Banhart, Lush, Mudhoney, Sleaford Mods, GZA, Minor Victories, Derrick May, Brodka, GusGus, Masecki vs Sienkiewicz, Jaga Jazzist, Thundercat, Napalm Death, Kiasmos, Andrew Weatherall b2b Roman Flügel, Kaliber 44, Clutch, SBB plays Nowy Horyzont, TaxiWars, Yung Lean, DJ Koze, Ziołek / Zimpel, Lightning Bolt, Pantha Du Prince presents The Triad, Daniel Avery, Powell, Flatbush Zombies, Liima, Rysy, Księżyc, Komety perform Partia, Zomby, Mgła, Maestro Trytony, Willis Earl Beal, Basia Bulat, Fidlar, The Master Musicians Of Jajouka, Orlando Julius & the Heliocentrics, Rødhåd, William Basinski, Beach Slang, Machinedrum, Lotto, Jenny Hval, Ata Kak, The Feral Trees, So Slow, Adam Gołębiewski, Janusz Prusinowski Kompania, Syny, 67,5 Minut Projekt, Jambinai, Sotei, Islam Chipsy, Show Me The Body, Goat, Kero Kero Bonito, Żółte Kalendarze, Niemoc, JAAA!, Lauda, Rosa Vertov, Odpoczno, Jóga, Heroiny, and Jesień.

There’s also much more to the OFF Festival than just the musical lineup. Join us for that magical, friendly and unique atmosphere that emerges when the best festival audience gathers at the picturesque Three Pond Valley to listen to the most beautiful music.

It’s this atmosphere that shines through in the new OFF Festival promotional video by Arkadiusz Nowakowski, a director who truly feels the music and has proved as much with his videos for Rebeka and The Dumplings (scoring a Yach Film Award for the latter’s “Betonowy las”). The video’s irresistible score comes from the track “Pink Eye” by JAAA!, who will be performing at this year’s OFF Festival on Saturday, August 6.

So open up your eyes… and OFF WE GO!