Sub Pop will curate a stage at OFF Festival 2014

Artists signed to America’s legendary Sub Pop record label are frequent guests of the OFF Festival, but this time we’re taking things one step further! Sub Pop will be taking over the Experimental Stage for an entire day, serving up a lineup that features Wolf Eyes, Clipping, Rose Windows, and more!
 
Sub Pop has changed the history of music on at least one occasion. In the late 80s Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman decided to launch their own label to promote music that was similar to the bands on SST and Touch and Go, but more listener-friendly. Sad and dirty, but catchy. The Seattle-based label took inexperienced rookies and their bands under its wing: Nirvana, Soundgarden, Mudhoney… Despite the enormous commercial success of grunge rock, the label never lost its indie cred, and has instead become a trendsetter over the last two decades. Though Sub Pop started out as a rock label, it’s made a name for itself outside the guitar world, fostering the careers of such greats as The Postal Service, Fleet Foxes, and Shabazz Palaces; according to several influential music review sites, the experimental hip-hop on Black Up was the best thing to happen to music in 2011. And so we’re proud to announce that Sub Pop will be one of the curators of the Experimental Stage at this year’s OFF Festival. The lineup selected by the label will perform in Katowice on August 1.
 
Artists performing include: Wolf Eyes (Detroit, MI), Rose Windows (Seattle, WA), clipping. (Los Angeles, CA), Lyla Foy (London, UK), Protomartyr (Detroit, MI), Kaseciarz (Krakow, PL) and Wild Books (Warszawa, PL).
 
Wolf Eyes


“Choking Flys” (From No Answer – Lower Floors / Destijl)
Some say Rock N Roll will never reach the same primitive raw vein hit of Bo Diddley at his more subhuman lurch, or that no unit could ever scramble the marbles left of what brain-boiling suburban electronic punk outsiders did in the mid-’70s: Whatever you think, there is no denying the homemade nuclear war Wolf Eyes has declared on music. Wolf Eyes was birthed in the shadows of late-’90s Michigan. However, Wolf Eyes has grown beyond a band into a collective mutant ensemble, an art abstraction unit: musicians, print makers, photographers and more, all sharing a primal vision of decoding the wilderness of the humanoid soul using their deep audio arsenals.
 
clipping.


“Work Work” feat. Cocc Pistol Cree (From CLPPNG / Sub Pop)
Before the release of clipping.’s debut, 2013’s Midcity, the trio of rapper Daveed Diggs and producers Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson did not expect to find an audience for their abrasive brand of rap music. But since the formation of clipping. and the release of their debut album, the field of commercial music enlarged ever so slightly, making room again for noisier, more adventurous elements in electronic production. Examples of this have been incremental, mere baby steps, so far. And despite clipping.’s insistence that they’re really just making rap— not noise-rap, industrial-rap, or any other mashup genre— their music might be more sonically challenging than that of the punkish rap rockers, lo-fi bedroom producers, and street goth hybridist’s they’ve been lumped with so far. The band will release their Sub Pop debut, CLPPNG, this June.
 
Lyla Foy
“Feather Tongue” (From Mirrors the Sky / Sub Pop)
Lyla Foy (formerly known as WALL) released Mirrors the Sky, her Sub Pop debut in March. The London singer and producer specializes in intimate vocals effortlessly intertwined with delicate, emotive instrumentation. The production is an integral part of her writing process, capturing not only the intended notes but also the incidental and accidental sounds that bring the recordings to life and provide endless intrigue. While the patter of keyboards, guitars and pulsing bass lines create a beguiling backdrop, it’s Foy’s sense of melody and turn of phrase that takes centre stage. Subtle nods to classic refrains, mingled with her own inflection, suggest a writer who draws from many different eras, resulting in a sound that is both timeless yet modern.
 
Protomartyr
“Scum Rise” (from Under Color of Official Right / Hardly Art)
Protomartyr’s taut, austere rock was incubated in a freezing Detroit warehouse littered with beer cans and cigarette butts and warmed, feebly, by space heaters. Despite the cold, Protomartyr emerged with a sound that is idiosyncratic but relatable, hooky but off-kilter. Protomartyr’s economical rock elicits comparisons to possible antecedents like Pere Ubu or The Fall as well as local contemporaries like Frustrations or Tyvek (whose frontman Kevin Boyer played bass in an early iteration of Protomartyr). Singer Joe Casey’s dry declarative snarl serves as a reliable anchor, granting his bandmates — guitarist Greg Ahee, drummer Alex Leonard and bassist Scott Davidson — the opportunity to explore textures and reinforce the rhythm section. This is never more apparent than on the band’s sophomore LP and Hardly Art debut, Under Color of Official Right.
 
Rose Windows
“Heavenly Days” (From The Sun Dogs / Sub Pop)
Rose Windows began in late 2010 in Seattle. On their debut album, The Sun Dogs, the band incorporates elements of The Band, The Doors’ organ-driven psychedelia, and Black Sabbath’s dirges, along with Persian, Indian, and Eastern European music.  Rose Windows have toured the West Coast several times, fluidly sharing the stage with underground art-metal bands one night and popular indie Americana acts the next. The Sun Dogs was recorded and produced by Randall Dunn (SunnO))), Boris, Earth) at Avast! in Seattle.
 
Wild Books
“Oranges & Lemons” (from Wild Books / Instant Classic)
Who said you could only play rootsy, dirty, sunburned rock in Texas or Tennessee? The duo Wild Books proves that you set out from a Polish garage to follow in the footsteps of Jack White and The Black Keys. Wild Books’ self-titled 2014 debut record showcases retro-rock in its whole ass-kicking glory.
 
Kaseciarz


“Dance” (from Motörcycle Rock and Roll / Instant Classic)
Three years ago, this guy proved you could be a surfer in southern Poland. This year he’s back withMotörcycle Rock and Roll, a mix of psychedelia, garage, and surf, or as he likes to call it, “garbage rock.” Fortunately the sound quality is inversely proportional to its aesthetic value. Maciej Nowacki’s music will blow your socks off, even though he himself admits that the only reason he got into music in the first place was to prove he was in the arts at parties.
 
 
About Sub Pop Records:


Sub Pop Records, founded in 1998 by Jonathan Poneman and Bruce Pavitt, is the Seattle indie-rock label that gave birth to grunge in the late 80s. Sub Pop launched and defined an era that rocked the music world from the 80s through today by signing such acts as Nirvana, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, and the Afghan Whigs.  Sub Pop’s catalog also includes recordings by the Reverend Horton Heat, Sunny Day Real Estate, Sebadoh, L7, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Saint Etienne, Pigeonhed, Supersuckers, the Dwarves, Combustible Edison, Mark Lanegan, the Vaselines, Red House Painters, the Murder City Devils, The Postal Service, the Shins, Fleet Foxes, Iron & Wine, Father John Misty, Beach House, Shabazz Palaces, and many others.
 
Tickets:
Three-Day OFF Festival Passes are now available at the OFF Shop. These passes are valid for all shows at Three Pond Valley. The price of the pass is a low 180 PLN / 42 EUR! Hurry up: the price goes up in March.
 
Important information:
1. This year, the price of the pass does not include a camping spot. You can buy a separate camping spot for 60 PLN / 14 EUR (this lets you stay at the campsite from Friday, August 1, to Monday, August 4). If you buy a three-day camping spot and want to come to Katowice a bit early, you can purchase an extra night (Thursday/Friday) for 25 PLN / 6 EUR per person.
2. As always, there will be a Before Party in downtown Katowice on Thursday, July 31, but the event will be slightly different this year. To enter, you need to buy a separate ticket. A detailed schedule for Thursday night will be announced shortly.
 
Buy Tickets here: http://offsklep.pl/settings/lang/en