Poland's Unsound festival initiated its Intermission project as an extension of 2020’s online edition of the annual music event, serving as a creative, reflective time capsule of a year of upheaval. The resulting book and compilation feature new works by Unsound affiliated artists, inspired by their individual experiences of the pandemic and intersecting events.

Musicians Hildur Guðnadóttir and Sam Slater present a track reflecting their shared, largely housebound days of the last year. “This track [“Happy Healthy Safe”] was made from a recording of our son Kári singing to himself during lockdown 2020,” explain Guðnadóttir and Slater. “He does this when he's happy and the result is an endless, often wordless improvised melody that floats around the house. When asked to compose something that reminded us of lockdown, our honest answer to the brief was simply to acknowledge that most of our lockdown was purely domestic – home schooling, playing football outside, keeping neighbours’ kids entertained and all with a consistent backdrop of mild dystopian panic. Kári's voice was the most common music we heard the whole period.”

Musician, writer and activist DeForrest Brown, Jr and accomplice musician and Primary Information founder James Hoff centred their track around field recordings of New York Black Lives Matter protests, which took place in the midst of the pandemic. “The failure of the American experiment is filtered and conditioned through the lens of America's primary ideological exports of mass media, software colonisation and war (all of which have come home to roost)”, says Hoff, “so we chose to write a trailer for America's third act, which we anticipated would unfold in real time across gorilla glass like a bloated Hollywood production. It's tempting to think of the Capitol insurrection by white christian terrorists on 6 January as the start or end of something, but the reality is that it was just a sponsored post for a country that has always cosplayed democracy and freedom.”

DeForrest Brown, Jr adds, “Reflecting on my old life in my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama before moving to New York in 2013... it’s hard not to feel a sense of bitterness and pity towards Americans and the inhabitants of the world at large that cannot be bothered to retain vital information while balancing the many tragedies that await us with the climate disasters that are already among us as well as the long term political, social and economic effects of the Capitol riot's unveiling of the true nature of the American PR scam of 'freedom' and 'democracy'...”

Intermission also features tracks by Moor Mother & Geng, Jlin x SOPHIE, Slikback, and more. It is released on 5 March and reviewed by Matthew Blackwell in The Wire 445. Wire subscribers can also read the review online.