Live review: Vieux Crane Festival #3 - Warsaw 2025

Club Chmury, Warsaw, Poland
28th March 2025
Vieux Crane Festival with Meta Meat, Echoberyl, Madmoizel

Sometimes you just need to do something crazy - to check if you’re still able to live like you’re twenty. Warsaw is not my usual concert city. Too far, too fast, too much. But this time, I made an exception. A reckless, beautiful, exhausting exception. I packed a bag, jumped on a Flixbus, and came just for one night - Friday at the Vieux Crane Festival. No hotel, no rest. Just music, sweat, energy. And then straight back. To see if I could still do it. To feel it. And yes - I survived. And it was worth every second.

Before the night even began, I had the chance to speak with the festival’s organizer - a passionate soul whose dedication quietly pulses through every corner of this event. She shared that this was the third time she’s brought Vieux Crane to life, and in between, she curates other smaller, independent shows. When I asked how she builds her line-ups, she smiled and simply said: “I travel, I go to clubs, festivals… I listen. But honestly? Sometimes the best ideas come from afterparties.”  And somehow, you can feel that. This isn’t just another imported showcase or a soulless copy-paste of a Western line-up.



It’s personal. Curated with instinct, love, and an ear finely tuned to what actually moves people - not just what sells. A rare thing in Poland these days. Events with a soul, a distinct taste, and a traceable signature of the one who made it happen. And on top of that - it’s professional. Smooth. Alive. So thank you, truly, for bringing such hot names to Poland (even if it’s “only” Warsaw). The third edition of Vieux Crane opened in a packed, sold-out Klub Chmury, pulsating with anticipation and charged with that particular kind of warmth that only independent, grassroots events carry. A festival celebrating Francophonie and underground music culture - it sounds niche. But it felt vital.

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Madmoizel

MADMOIZEL is a Paris-based composer, performer, and producer whose sound blends neo-classical roots with punk edge and electronic pulse. Known for powerful live sets with a minimalist, frontal setup, MADMOIZEL conducts machines like an orchestra, fusing “Synth Lyricism” and “Cathedral Techno” into hypnotic, physical narratives. Since 2010, the project has toured underground clubs, European festivals, and art spaces, releasing five albums and numerous collaborations across independent labels. https://madmoizel.com/



From the very first moment, MADMOIZEL made it clear: this wasn’t going to be a gentle introduction. The opening act of Vieux Crane Festival delivered a shock to the system - visceral, bold, electrifying. No slow build. No compromise. Just raw, immediate presence. The setup was minimal, but the impact? Immense. Standing alone, surrounded by machines that pulsed like a living nervous system, MADMOIZEL conjured a sound that wasn’t just heard - it was felt. A sonic manifestation. A ritual in rhythm. Every gesture sharp and deliberate, every note landing with precision and weight. Goosebumps. Real ones. A sudden silence. Then another strike.



My senses were on high alert, completely disarmed by the force of this performance. MADMOIZEL doesn’t fit neatly into categories. The sound drifts somewhere between Synth lyricism, Post-Punk pulse, Cathedral Techno, and noise-laced poetry. It whispers and it commands. It seduces and it disrupts. It carries both the discipline of classical training and the beautiful unpredictability of punk instinct. What unfolded at Klub Chmury wasn’t just a set - it was an exploration. Dynamic yet stripped down. Shocking, elegant, vulnerable, confrontational. It didn’t imitate anything. It carved its own space. And with that, the tone for the entire festival was set: experimental, fearless, charged. Vieux Crane began not with a warm-up, but with an awakening. The name was MADMOIZEL. And every sense remembers.

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Echoberyl

It was my first time seeing ECHOBERYL live - but not my first time falling under their spell. ‘Through the Chaos’, their album, had already found its way into the folds of my daily life: dark, poetic, full of haunted grace. But standing there, in the breathless space between lights and shadows at Klub Chmury, I realized something: I hadn’t really understood their world until I saw them summon it in real time.



Because this wasn’t just a concert. It was alchemy. Their music lives in opposites - and so does their stage presence. One moment tender, almost fragile, the next moment pulsing with untamed electricity. It whispers, it screams. It seduces in silence, then throws you headfirst into light. ECHOBERYL move with elegance, but never distance. Their energy is direct, magnetic, and open - like an invitation to join them somewhere in-between dream and fever. There’s something both ghostlike and utterly present in how they perform. A flicker. A force. The music - already so beautifully layered on record - blooms even more in the live setting. Shimmering synths and hypnotic beats pull you to the edge of the dancefloor, while the vocals carry emotion like smoke: delicate, aching, but never weak.



There’s grace in their intensity. Club rhythms laced with poetry. Melancholy wrapped in movement. It’s rare to feel both mesmerized and completely alive at the same time - but that’s exactly what ECHOBERYL offered. A set filled with contrasts: softness and strength, control and surrender, serenity and fire. They didn’t just perform songs. They inhabited them. And so did we. It was one of those rare moments when beauty feels immediate and pure - when a voice pulls you close, then vanishes into the pulse of the room, leaving you suspended somewhere between your body and your heart. I came curious. I left enchanted. And I know it won’t be the last time.

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Meta Meat

I’ve been a long-time fan of META MEAT - I’ve seen them live a few times already, and every single time they leave me shaken, re-centred, reminded. Every time I witness this duo live, something inside me realigns. As if my internal compass starts pulsing to a rhythm older than memory. They don’t perform music - they conjure it, beat by beat, breath by breath, movement by movement. Their shows are not just concerts. They are wild ceremonies disguised as live sets. Controlled eruptions. Elegant chaos. From the first moment, the air thickened. Not with smoke or lights, but with sheer presence. META MEAT brought the stage to life with a feverish energy that vibrated through the floor and straight into the spine. Two bodies, two drums, one pulse - and that was all it took to remind the entire room what it means to be fully awake. It’s hard to describe what exactly happens.



The fusion of raw instinct and precision is magnetic. The theatricality never feels forced. Their movements - sharp, fluid, erratic - mirror the beat with uncanny synchronicity. The tension in their shoulders, the storytelling in their faces, the silence between rhythms - every detail counts. Every twitch is music. There’s a strange familiarity in the way it hits. As if you’ve been here before, in another lifetime - barefoot, under moonlight, dancing to fire and bone. Their melodies are almost primitive, but never simple. They slice through the noise of the world and give you something to hold on to: clarity in vibration, unity in rhythm.



And what strikes me most is how everyone - even the still ones - is affected. No one escapes. It pulls you in, whether you want it or not. META MEAT don’t play for you — they play through you. I left drenched in sweat, vibrating, and somehow quieter inside. Like I had remembered something I didn’t know I’d forgotten. Whatever this is - music, ritual, embodiment - it’s real. It’s theirs. And they offer it without compromise. Bravo, META MEAT. Again and always.

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All Pictures by Karo Kratochwil