Up To Date 2016 in Bialystok is a serious and coherent happening. A must for every technohead and electronic music fan.

For a couple of years Bialystok, a handsome mid-sized city in northeastern Poland, has become a meeting place of electronic music activists from Eastern Europe. Thanks to the Technosoul crew it is not only the home of the smart techno music festival Up To Date (UTD), but also a host-city for Taste The East events, which include conferences, discussion panels and parties, uniting promoters and media people from countries on the Eastern side of Europe, such as Lithuania (Secret Thirteen guys together with minimal.lt crew and DAI proudly participated as well), Bulgaria, Georgia, and so on. Such activities have been challenging the idea of a country, where all the cultural potential is sucked into the capital city - a rather prevalent trend in the former Eastern Bloc. Poland has been able to make quite a successful escape from this tendency - high quality music events have recently been scattered all around this large country. UTD festival is the closest one to home as Bialystok is just a couple of hundred kilometres off the border. Even though various forms of techno are the main focus of the festival, UTD has always incorporated hip-hop, experimental/noise and ambient music into its line-ups.

The ambient part was the most intriguing this year and not only because of the music, but also the venues. The first one - a Branicki Palace - was a very fitting place for deep immersions into ambient sound and definitely one of the most amazing venues I have seen. This 17th century mansion is surrounded by vast gardens with a view of nocturnal Bialystok through its tall windows. The shows took place in an old hall upstairs, with lustres and baroque walls and paintings. The lighting was toned and subtle so it did not overwhelm the hall. Additional visuals were not needed, because the surroundings provided enough food for the imagination. Just laying down on the floor and watching the decorated ceiling patterns was sufficient. A further daylight walk around the palace merely reaffirmed the beauty of the area, with mazes of greenery, lines of statues and a mansion casting a shadow on the surrounding spaces.

Dan Vincente, the ambient persona of techno producer Acronym, was an early highlight. The project, which is still in its early stages, showcased the more mellow and lush side of this Swedish artist. Dan Vincente constructed a varied set of dreamy and majestic ambience, where analog pad layers floated together with melancholic melodic lines, at times reminding a more darkened version of Brian Eno’s colder moments, echoing in some parallel universe. Even though harsher undertones surfaced at times, the whole set had a peaceful tone. The sound resonated with the palace chamber very well as analog sonic lines wandered across a dimly lit room.

The main stages were situated in another venue - a large car-parking space beneath a football stadium. The place was quite a contrast to the cozy chamber tone of the ambient spaces and had the atmosphere of an open-air rave, It was a long time since I had been in such a large venue consisting of three stages - Technosoul’s stage concentrated on techno, the Electronic Beats stage played hip-hop, beats and some d’n’b, and there was also the Red Bull container. Umwelt was the first act witnessed at the Technosoul stage - a mixture of heavy techno and dark beats Ekman was relying on sturdy bass intercepted by sharp acid beams. It was a functional acid experience as well as a physical one, with basslines shaking the bones and walls. A monolithic 4/4 press. However, this pattern was repeated far too much during the evening. Even Legowelt was playing a much more techno-ey set, which was pretty unimpressive and dull. Legowelt has never been a big room act and it was felt in this case. With all the gear and experience he has, he can create (and in fact does quite often create) a much more colorful and inventive sound pallette. After seeing Legowelt for the second time, I became convinced that his releases are more interesting than his live sets.

Saturday’s ambient session moved to the Filharmonia concert hall with a giant flying saucer decoration on top. This was where last year’s Boiler Room and Taste The East conference took place. Even though it was not as impressive as the palace, the black-walled space suited without too much distraction. New Rome was a nice Saturday discovery. It is the project of Polish producer Tomasz Bednarczyk, who has just released a new album on Lawrence English’s Room 40 label. Operating on a light, breezy and mellow soundscale, his set was a kind of crossover between Pop Ambient compilations and the crystalline purity of Shuttle 358 or Aphex Twin’s lighter moments. The sunset tones on the screen in the back nicely resonated with the harmonies. Rafael Anton Irrisari was another high point of the festival and a much darker affair. His shoegazey patterns were coated in rough noisy wraps, the melodic textures went together with high-pitched drones. Rafael’s sound could be placed next to the so-called “power ambient” music - the calmness of his Sight Below project goes together with rough and gritty soundscapes, not dissimilar to Ben Frost. But the overall result is wonderful - an exercise in aggressive, uncompromising and introverted sonic beauty, which transports you to lonely seasides with picturesque villages or industrial areas looming in the distance. The experience was intense. It seemed that all of Rafael’s dream pop influences were channeled in tempest mode.

The late night part was more diverse than on Friday. This time Acronym delivered a raucous set of haunted techno. Its soft analog sound, minimalistic growing tension, claps echoing in the distance fitted the scene quite nicely. The rhythmics stomped like grey monolithic pillars in the urban sprawl, creating a heavy yet subtle soundscape. Phase Phatale’s DJ set was in stark contrast though. It was big-room EBM-infused techno, heavy on rhythmics, but also containing lots of details that reminded of his post punk/synth background. Vocals, synth shards, even elements of synthesized post punk - all merged into this danceable, dynamic whole. PP proved that he is capable not only of crafting dark techno cuts, but also of creating an intense dance-floor mash - a catchy, accessible, yet intellectual set. The following set by Vatican Shadow was too intense and techno oriented. Unsurprisingly, Dominic is now on Ostgut Ton bookings since, unlike his recorded material, the set was mostly straight techno without too much to add. Ewigt Mokter and The Gods Planet continued the line of solid techno, but my fatigue made it a bit difficult to concentrate on. The stage was symbolically closed by the Technosoul crew.

Even though my personal sonic experience was somewhat ambiguous, and the ambient part provided the biggest amount of satisfaction for me, UTD proves to be a strong event with a clear vision, strong educational value and coherent evolution. It stands among the most significant happenings in the Polish electronic music landscape. Technosoul’s consistent efforts of integrating this pack of genres into Bialystok’s locale and picking interesting venues are really appreciated. Hopefully UTD will grow, evolve and attract even more technoheads and music adventurers from the world, because it really deserves to. Pozdro techno!