From countries and regions marred by fraught political and social systems, rises a frenetic counter-cultural scene. A post-Troubles Belfast birthed raging punks and clanging industrial techno, the English countryside raved to acid in a glorious ‘90s revolt against the Tories, drag balls and voguing were a political statement in the era of Regan and the AIDS epidemic under the guise of a transcendent party, while Russia’s queer underground currently pulsates despite the anti-LGBTQ laws.

When Communism in Poland collapsed, an avant-garde electronic music scene phoenixed from the ashes of Soviet rule. Behind the Iron Curtain from as far back as the 1950s, the Studio Eksperymentalne Polskiego Radia was one of the few places for electronic music to thrive, but usually in the confines of scoring film, dance and theatre, before Stockholm and even Berlin became electronic stalwarts. As censorship waned and Poland’s political autonomy grew through the decades, local artists and composers began pushing their own standalone electronic tracks, innovative tapes, and a new outpost for non-classical music previously rebuked by government. In the 1970s, portable synths and personal computers empowered a new wave that created the synthy, dreamy ‘el-muzyka’ genre and the melodic Italo disco-adjacent disco polo, while post-punk bands like Bexa Lala defined the ‘80s with ambient-soaked sounds. By the ‘90s, with a new youthful generation free from the Communist regime, Poland was enraptured in Europe’s love of Detroit techno and Chicago house, its pioneering artists beginning to build on those giant sounds to cultivate an infant scene. Iconic club nights Blue Velvet and Filtry were born, while Jacek Sienkiewicz founded one of the country’s first techno labels, Recognition Recordings, in 1999. Across the ‘90s and early ‘00s, collectives like Boogie Mafia galvanised a burgeoning club scene in Warsaw, Wrocław’s Skalpel signed to Ninja Tune with their sample-driven, jazzy beats, and Novika pushed for more pop-confronting electronic music, representing Poland on a worldwide scale.

Fast forward to the present day, and a new vanguard is shaping a unified yet dappled Polish voice in the wider global industry, across techno, house, electro, gabber, and leftfield indie pop. Outside of the main towns and cities, dance music is broadening its scope, with Dym Records’ Dym Festival finding its home in western Poland’s Gorzów Wielkopolski, dominated by homegrown acts like avant-electronic artist FOQL and genre-dissolving DJ Morgiana. While you can find every tastemaker headlining local spaces, from Honey Dijon to Amelie Lens, there’s also a real drive for grassroots talent. And this week, monumentally, sees the second edition of Instytut Festival, a techno-led festival taking place in the 19th-century Modlin Garrison near Warsaw, run by local heroes Iwona Korzybska and Joanna Wielkopolan.