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At AmberExpo in Gdańsk, Inside Seaside 2025 blew the chill off November with a surge of sound and colour. Across one wild weekend, the festival roared back to life with extraordinary sets from Pink Freud, Fisz Emade Tworzywo, Franz Ferdinand, The Kills, and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, cementing its place as Poland’s most daring and vital after season live music tradition.
Inside Seaside 2025, now a proper Gdańsk tradition, has become the festival that drags people out of their autumn gloom and into the light. It’s a loud and defiant celebration of music.
Four halls pulsing with sound, three stages overflowing with talent, and thousands of fans wandering between rhythm and noise. This year, the energy felt sharper and more confident, like the festival finally knows exactly who it is. Everywhere you turned, someone was playing, someone was laughing, someone was already halfway lost in the next song.
by Anna Chauvet
The first day at Inside Seaside unfolded like a slow-burning overture, a wave of musical emotions that moved from jazz improvisations to pop to pure rhythmic euphoria.
Metro opened the evening, precise and self-assured, redefining the shape of Polish alternative with retro pulse and modern energy. There’s an honesty in their sound that pulls you in; A certain charisma that drew an ever-growing crowd.
Then Ofelia drifted in, all dreamlike and experimental, weaving her own quiet world between poetry and pulse. Her set felt very personal, fragile in places, yet full of quiet power.
Pink Freud made a long-awaited return after years of silence. I’d caught only the tail end of their show once at the SeaYou Music Showcase and left unsatisfied, this time, I finally got the full experience. Wojciech Mazolewski said from the stage they wanted to see if they still had something to say together. The answer was clear: yes, and loudly. Their chemistry hasn’t faded at all! Their concert was full of energy, improvisation, and jazz passion.
Fisz Emade Tworzywo followed and for me, they always are a highlight. It was my third show of theirs this year, and they still surprise me. Twenty-five years after “Polepione Dźwięki“, they’ve released “25“, an album that feels both reflective and refreshed. Hearing the new material live, I caught myself remembering the old and after the concert, I re-listened to that first album, I realized I’d forgotten how good it is. It even reminded me that “Język Wszechświata” used to be my phone ringtone. The show was a mature, powerful performance full of depth and with a touch of nostalgia.
Marcin Masecki & Boleros turned the mood around with pure, rhythmic joy, Latin fire mixed with orchestral charm, a set that made people sway without realising it.
Liana Flores offered a gentle, almost dreamy performance floating between folk and bossa nova, a calm moment within the festival’s dynamic flow.
Sigrid filled the venue with pure pop energy, while Altın Gün captivated with their hypnotic fusion of Turkish tradition and psychedelic rock.
Ścianka gave one of the night’s most talked-about moments: special orchestral versions of their classics, proving why they’re still a pillar of Polish alternative.
The Gdańsk Stage closed with Royel Otis, those effortlessly cool Australians who’ll be back next summer supporting Foo Fighters in Warsaw. Tight grooves, youthful charm, and that sense they’re just getting started.
Zimmer90 took us into the early hours with neon synths and nostalgia, synthpop made for dancing with your eyes closed. Kosmonauci, one of the freshest discoveries of the weekend, wrapped it up with modern jazz soaked in hip-hop pulse and electronic shimmer.
By the end of Saturday night, it felt like Inside Seaside had already done what few festivals manage to do, blur the lines between genres and generations, between legends and newcomers. It was the perfect build-up, a gathering storm before Sunday’s explosion.
By Yannick Chauvet
The second day opened gently but with promise, starting with Cinnamon Gum, whose shimmering dream-pop warmed the hall like morning light through mist. Then Matylda & Łukasiewicz took it deeper, with a quiet intensity that drew everyone closer. Natalia Przybysz followed, graceful, wrapping the crowd in her soulful songs. Each gig lifted the pulse a little higher, rising the night in waves.
The Kills hit the Gdańsk Stage with venomous precision. Alison Mosshart prowled, a flash of white hair and menace, while Jamie Hince hurled riffs like sparks off steel. Their sound was tight and animal.
Then Baxter Dury floated in, the debonair misfit of modern music, a sort of living Bosch figure in a sharp suit, half saint, half sinner, eyes full of deadpan mischief. There’s something painterly about him: elegant chaos contained within perfect tailoring. His show unfolded like a confession disguised as cabaret, half performance art, half therapy session.
Each line felt both rehearsed and freshly bruised, his dry humour slicing through the air over pulsing, hypnotic beats. Somewhere between The Sleaford Mods’ street cynicism and a late-night Soho poet drowning his thoughts in whisky, Dury built a world of his own, raw, stylish, and beautifully absurd. It was a genuinely nice surprise, unexpected, and magnetic, the kind of set that catches you off guard and leaves the room humming with tension and delight.
The Pill, an unapologetically punk band from England’s Isle of Wight, crashed in later on the small, packed stage, fast and raw in that proper British way. Their sound was a deliberate, loud maelstrom of sharpened riffs, and the crowd loved every second of it.
When King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard arrived on stage with the Baltic Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, all sense of scale went out the window. Psychedelia turned cinematic, frenzy turned sacred. Guitars and violins collided like cosmic weather systems. It was heavy, intricate, and utterly unrestrained. The orchestra amplified their madness. For a moment, the music swallowed everything, AmberExpo shaking, flashing, alive like the heart of a storm.
And then, Franz Ferdinand, the band I’d been waiting for since the festival first announced them. From the first note of “The Dark Of The Matinée”, the place erupted. No prelude, no warm-up, just instant ignition. Franz Ferdinand came out like a band possessed, crisp and razor-sharp. Alex Kapranos still moves like a man privately trained by rhythm itself, cutting through the lights with those angular poses that turn every movement into punctuation. The band were in perfect lockstep, radiating that sleek, Glasgow confidence that made them legends in the first place.
They fired through their biggest hitters , “No You Girls”, “Do You Want To”, “Ulysses”, “Love Illumination”, each one detonating right on cue. The set felt like a perfectly balanced chain reaction: riff after riff, chorus after chorus, the crowd bouncing like one giant organism. There was no filler, no breath, just pure madness.
Before launching into “Take Me Out”, Kapranos leaned into the mic with that knowing grin and told the crowd to keep their phones in their pockets, “Don’t film this, live it”. And for once, (most) people did. Thousands of hands stayed free, raised high, ready. When that unmistakable riff tore through the air, the place went feral. Like a detonation. The floor heaved, the lights pulsed, and for a few wild, perfect minutes, Gdańsk forgot gravity.
This year, the festival’s layout feels right. The corridors buzzed like veins of sound connecting every stage. People drifted between sets, chatting under neon containers in the 100cznia zone, or watching quick interviews from Radio 357.
That’s the magic of Inside Seaside. It’s human and definitively full of warmth and intent. But at some point, especially on Sunday, reality kicked in: seeing every band I wanted in full was a mission worthy of an Olympic event. King Gizzard and The Kills both deserved more of my time, but the clock was merciless. I left their sets reluctantly, already plotting when I could see them again. They were that good, the kind of performances that stay with you, even in fragments.
You know you’ve been to a great concert when you wake up the next morning still humming the hooks. That was me, tangled in bedsheets, Franz Ferdinand still bouncing through my skull like a restless ghost. The hangover wasn’t from beer, it was from adrenaline. That’s how you know a gig has carved itself into your nervous system. And the tunes stayed until the evening. They were still there, echoing, and helping me write this article.
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