After three long restless years it was finally time to take that joyous, sun-drenched walk down Francuska to Dolina Trzech Stawów for OFF 2022.
Three years without any income would have an effect on any festival, and on first impressions this seemed to be the case. There was a definite feeling of the purse-strings having been tightened in the central area, with a much slimmer selection of merch and food stalls (the masala dhosa stand being a notable and hard-felt absence).
It was a similar situation with the line-up. While there was plenty of quality, there was perhaps fewer stone-cold attention-grabbers than in previous years. One gets the feeling that all the money was spent getting Iggy Pop to top the bill in order to get the ticket money flowing. This is an understandable tactic, and if you’re going to spunk all your money on one act, Iggy is the man to go for. Besides, it was a pleasure to be back, and the real joy of OFF has always been found in the undercard.
And so spirits were high going into the weekend.
After a solid, if not revelatory, first day (Squid were good, Ride were great), it was decided to ease into the Saturday with a bit of mid-afternoon Gruzja on the (renamed Lesna Czujesz Klimat Rossman, but forever the) Forest Stage. And by ease I mean getting your face smashed in by Polish black metal in the most entertaining fashion possible.
Gruzja burst on stage and immediately start laying down riffs, while their four (count ’em) frontmen work together to whip the crowd into various states of frenzy. Four guys trying to command your attention at once might seem too distracting on paper, but in reality it works a treat. Each singer stalks around the stage, climbs the barrier at the front and even appears, as if from nowhere, behind the moshpit in the middle crowd, all working independently yet as one, like some sort of campily dressed hydra. As with all metal music, not speaking the language it’s spoken in doesn’t hamper the experience too much, Gruzja’s iconography and the fact their last album was the soundtrack to a priest simulator game giving plenty of hints to what they are growling about. At one point one of the frontmen mentions OFF Festival supremo Artur Rojek to riotous laughter and multiple hand gestures from the crowd. Good-natured bantz between chums no doubt.
As is often the case with OFF, the tightly packed, alternating stage schedule sometimes throws up two acts you really want to see at the same time (Dua Lipa v King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard at Primavera this year was particularly painful). A difficult decision must be made; excise one act entirely or see half a set of each. This year’s dilemma centred around The Armed and Arooj Aftab, two acts at polar opposites of the musical spectrum. In the interests of total coverage the half set option was chosen.
First up, The Armed. Completely filling the Forest Stage with smoke and blinding neon lights, the band explode frantically out of the blocks, appearing as big-haired and even bigger-biceped silhouettes. Think the 2007 remake of The Mist, but with much more ripped and violent monsters wielding guitars. The high energy levels do not drop as The Armed blast through several cuts from new album ‘Ultrapop’, each band member not staying on the same instrument for too long. Guitarist/bassist/vocalist/mentalist Jonni Randall is particularly fun to watch, skipping, jigging and pelvic-thrusting with a child-like glee totally at odds with the intense hardcore being played.
It is with some distress I pull myself away from The Armed and head over to the Experimental Stage to catch the second half of Arooj Aftab. Any misgivings are short-lived as her set proves to be a complete depressurisation from the previous wild antics. Much lower tempo, but no less thrilling. Accompanied only by a guitarist and a spectacularly dressed violinist, Arooj guides us gently through the tender and soulful compositions on her new album ‘Vulture Prince’. Her voice is at once powerful, deep, layered and delicate, and never loses it potency or warmth as the performance progresses, despite an heroic on-stage consumption of red wine. After the gig it is discovered that, before my arrival, Arooj had invited any and all photographers onto the stage to take as many snaps as they pleased. Bugger.
So onto the big man himself. The aforementioned splurging on Iggy Pop definitely had the desired effect, with much more people attending on the Saturday than the other two days, resulting in the single largest crowd this fester has seen at OFF (and longer queues at all the bars). And Jim Osterberg did not disappoint, bounding on stage with the most exciting limp you’ve ever seen, a brown leather handbag in a black leather jacket.
Iggy commands the stage with a surety that comes form being one of the most influential musical figures of all time. The history of rock and roll is laid out before us, in a set that leans more into Iggy’s (often unfairly overlooked) solo career than his Stooges heyday. ‘Lust for Life’ and ‘The Passenger’ are dealt with one after the other while lesser known but still certified bangers such as ‘Five Foot One’, ‘The Endless Sea’, ‘Sister Midnight’ and ‘Mass Production’ elicit a rapturous response from the crowd, despite no-one knowing the words to those ones. But oh, those Stooges numbers. Urgent, dangerous and every bit as electrifying as they would have been 50 years ago (presumably).
‘TV Eye’, ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ and ‘Gimme Danger’ (easily one of the greatest songs ever written) are peppered throughout the setlist, leading up to a titanic ‘Search and Destroy’ to close the main set. Galloping back on for an encore of ‘Down on the Street’ and ‘Fun House’, he seemingly doesn’t want to, or can’t, stop. His backing band do a fine job of keeping up with him, but it’s all about Iggy, more energy emanating every second from his saggy left moob than Dry Cleaning could muster in their whole set. He’ll probably still be doing this in another 50 years.
The biggest highlight of the weekend was, by far, Mdou Moctar, stopping in at OFF on his apparently endless world tour for his debut opus ‘Afrique Victime’. Hailing from Niger, the Tuareg plank spanker is an absolute behemoth on the axe. Eschewing a plectrum, Mdou combines lightning fast finger picking with even faster fretboard runs, Van Halen-esque tapping and a Hendrix-like control and manipulation of feedback. His mad skills and the obvious and irrepressible joy he exhibits at being on stage cause the many extended facemelters in tracks such as ‘Chismiten’ to take flight, and the audience laps it up entirely.
By the tenth minute of eponymous tour-de-force ‘Afrique Victime’ Mdou has climbed the barrier and is almost in the crowd, shredding in people’s faces and wringing every last drop out of the crowd with the relentless groove.
Special mention goes to Charlotte Adigery and Bolis Pupul, who provided the weekend’s single best song, an exhilarating Pateniput. The heavy electro will transport Scottish clubbers of a certain age instantly back to Optimo circa 2005. Also the legendary Bikini Kill, who’s defiant and highly influential feminist punk seems to be inspiring a new generation of Riot Grrrls, judging by the pleasingly multi-generational crowd pogoing at the barrier.