Guillaume Maupin (Saintonge records/ Matamore) sings songs since a very early age. Of course, humour does belong to music, and traditonnal, orginals, covers, wicked, strange songs are all part of his shows. Working solo or with other artists (Eugene Chadbourne, Beck, Lonely Kid Quentin, Mihai Iordache, Dead Western, Arrington de Dionyso, Euphorium freakestra, Portron Bros…) sharing stages with very various acts (Jeffrey Lewis, The Ex, Old Time Relijun, The Fall, René Binamé, ..) and playing around the world (Siberia, USA, UK, Kenya, France, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, Romania, Poland, Czech rep,…) he loves to provoke fruitful encounters.
DECIMUS (USA)
Availability: Springtime 2020
Territory: Europe + UK
Decimus 6 picks up where that thread left off, a number of years back, with 2016’s Decimus 7. The a-side seems regenerative, feeding off its own energies, a bath of guitar and electronic murk that judders in and out of focus; at times, it recalls the whip-crack industrial of Esplendor Geometrico, elsewhere, its seemingly oxymoronic ‘jittery laziness’ suggests some through-lines back to Murano’s early music as a member of improv group the No Neck Blues Band. The b-side slowly coaxes shivering, silvery synths through a series of patterns, sometimes interlocking, sometimes bruising each other as they weave and lattice around ticking time boxes.
UT (USA)
Availability: 15th, 16th, 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd February 2020
Territory: Europe
Ut is a radical rock group that was founded in NYC in Dec.1978 by Nina Canal, Jacqui Ham and Sally Young. Originating in the downtown No Wave scene and inheritors of the collision between rock, free jazz and the avant garde, Ut was conceived to explode the rigidity of conventional rock groups. Songs are constructed through collective improvisation and each member plays all the instruments and rotates the role of singer/director. This would result in sometimes lengthy discussions on stage between songs to the point that this was one of the things they were internationally known for in the 80’s. After a pause for 1991 to 2010, Ut is back for live dates.
FRET! (UK)
Availability: 9th-27th March 2020
Territory: Europe
Fret! are Rob Woodcock (drums / vocals), Cath Tyler (bass / vocals) and Steve Strode (guitar) from Newcastle upon Tyne (UK). Three ‘heart of darkness’ fuzz monsters riding a tidal wave up the River Tyne to soundtrack a Mexican bar brawl.
Focusing on tight, frenzied riffing ripped out of the Amphetamine Reptile playbook, they’ve been blasting out their surfabilly-garage-hardcore hybrid for seven years.
A visceral and thrilling live experience, they’ve shared stages with the likes of Mike Watt; Richard Dawson; Blown Out; Sly & The Family Drone; The Blind Shake; Deathfix; Kuunatic; Bodies On Everest and a host of others.
Their latest release, ‘A Vanity Spawned By Fear’ is a fine example of their fuzz-rock pedigree and the follow up to 2017’s acclaimed debut album, ‘Through The Wound The Light Comes In’.
HIDE + SRSQ + NGHTCRWLR (USA)
Availability: 18th April
Territory: Belgium
The post-industrial duo HIDE from Chicago will team up with label partner SRSQ and the latest project of Kristina Esfandiari, NGHTCRWLR, for a week of shows together after Roadburn Festival.
SRSQ (pronounced seer-skew) is the solo project of Kennedy Ashlyn
(vocalist/keyboardist of Them Are Us Too). Creative voids aren’t filled, but rather holes left that push the edges of the present into new realms of consciousness. SRSQ’s pulse began after the death of Kennedy’s closest friend and TAUT collaborator Cash Askew, a casualty in the sudden and tragic Oakland Ghost Ship Fire of 2016. Driven by loss, SRSQ became the vehicle for Kennedy’s transformative process, exploring nuance, nostalgia, reflection, and reconciliation, manifesting in the aural landscape of Unreality.
NGHTCRWLR is yet another vehicle for the creative impulses of Kristina Esfandiari – only this one is yet to be fully unleashed on the world. As NGHTCRWLR, Kristina has already notched up plenty of live shows including a US stint with Boy Harsher, but if you go searching online for an aural glimpse of what to expect, you’ll come up largely empty-handed – for now at least.
ANDY MOOR (UK)
Availability: 7th February 2020
Territory: Benelux + France
Andy Moor (born 1962) is an experimental musician, best known as the guitarist of the UK band Dog Faced Hermans and the Dutch punk collective The Ex. He was also a founding member of Kletka Red and along with Isabelle Vigier and Yannis Kyriakides created the experimental music label Unsounds. Moor was born in London, England. He began his musical life in Edinburgh, Scotland, playing guitar with the band Dog Faced Hermans, a group that mixed post punk with traditional music and improvisations.
In 1990 he moved to the Netherlands after an invitation to join Dutch band The Ex. Moor is featured in the 2008 film « Roll Up Your Sleeves », directed by Dylan Haskins. He regularly collaborates with composer Yannis Kyriakides. His latest projects include Lean Left – a quartet with Ken Vandermark, Terrie Hessels and Paal Nilssen-Love, and duos with Anne James Chaton and DJ /rupture and Colin Mclean and Christine Sehnaoui. Moor continues to be a full-time member of The Ex.
BURIAL HEX (USA)
Burial Hex is a chthonic composition cycle of Post-Industrial musical dowsing, since 2005. Coining the term « Horror Electronics »; with influences as disparate as Horror film scores, Black Metal, Death Industrial and Medieval music. Burial Hex music is an animistic Theatre of Cruelty, each encounter very personal, immersive and unpredictable.
Availability: 25th January-1st February 2020
Territory: Europe + UK
The Trio of the Australian drummer Timothy Green, British saxophonist Massimo Magee, and German guitarist Joshua Weitzel brings together unique, young voices of the current improvised music scene. All musicians in this trio are multi-faceted artists: Magee is a writer and media artist having published several novels aside an impressive Catalogue of recordings on labels such as Astral Spirit, Kendra Steiner Editions and Ideal State. Weitzel does not only maintain an active live schedule, having played with hundreds of musicians, but also curates concerts, performances and exhibitions in Kassel. Green is working with fine art, music education, runs the label factor vac and curates concerts aside from having a Bachelor Degree in Percussion and having worked with installation artist Ross Manning, bassist Barre Phillips and instrument builder Dale Gorfinkel. However, despite their several talents, this trio will focus on energetic, heartwarming free Jazz and free improvisation without any compromise.
MELAINE DALIBERT (France)
Cheminant, a selection of compositions by French pianist Melaine Dalibert, is a warm stream of harmonious ripples that echoes the graceful postclassical music of Max Richter, Ólafur Arnalds, Jóhann Jóhannsson, etc, but the economy and precision, combined with Dalibert’s calm hands on the keys, put it on a whole other level of beauty. The notes change slowly, step by step, suggesting an interestin mathematics hinted at in titles such as Music In An Octave and From Zero To Infinity. The notes that accompany the album describe the music’s effect as like vertigo, but it feels more rooted aninternal to me, more like slowly panning across an epic landscape. From Zero To Infinity, at just four minutes long, creates the same effect in miniature, a sparkling jewel which presents different aspects each time you revisit it. Listening to music like this is like a drug experience, a soft, secret space removed from the rhythms and disjoints of everyday life.
JAHI of PE.20 (USA)
PE 2.0 is the spiritual successor and « next generation » of iconic New York rap group Public Enemy fronted by Oakland rapper Jahi. Originally from Cleveland Jahi had met Public Enemy frontman Chuck D backstage during a soundcheck at the 1999 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and later appeared as a support act on Public Enemy’s 20th Anniversary Tour in 2007.
Jahi states the task of PE 2.0 is to « take select songs from the PE catalog and cover or reVisit them » as well as new material with members of the original Public Enemy including DJ Lord, Davy DMX, Professor Griff and Chuck D.
Chuck D can also be part of the bill.
MICHAEL FOSTER + DAVID MEIER(USA/SWITZERLAND)
Availability: 8th-21st June 2020
Territory: Europe + UK
New York-based saxophonist Michael Foster and Zurich-based drummer David Meier first met in 2018 in New York while David was in residency there for half a year. After several sessions together in various groups (including a trio with Brandon Lopez) they began developing duo material.
Their collaboration seeks to bridge the gap between deceptively traditional methods of improvisation with contemporary extended techniques and textural playing. While working within the classic saxophone-and-drums format, Foster and Meier explore the unpredictable musical strategies that reveal themselves over time to be more complex than initially expected.
DOUG MacLeod (USA)
Availability: 23rd-26th March + 28th-30th March
Territory: Europe
Doug MacLeod, perennial Blues Music Award winner & nominee, is a singer-songwriter in the American tradition. He is a traveling artist that writes and sings original songs that are based on his own life and experiences. He learned from the old masters, lived the music, survived the life and carries forward a valuable tradition. MacLeod is known for his superb songwriting, guitar wizardry, warm soulful vocals, wit and unforgettable live performances. At the heart of this is his knack for storytelling, bringing characters-from the faceless to the legendary-to strikingly real life.
QUANTUM NOIZE (Austria)
QUANTUM NOIZE is a new project by sound artist and experimental violinist Mia Zabelka, visual artist Conny Zenk and the philosopher Renate Quehenberger. In science quantum noise is a subject of quantum fluctuations; noise due to spontaneous fluctuations in optical fiber communication systems, thermal noise and dark current noise Quantum noise is often a limiting factor for the performance of optoelectronic devices. However, by transferring this term into sound art by Mia Zabelka & her partners, there is no limitation for her noise performances The acoustic Quantum Noize is correlated with optical visions stemming from Quantum Cinema [1] — where the scattered grid of the Higgs field meets the Platonic world of ideas in 5 dimensions & beyond played by Conny Zenk.
BJ NILSEN (Sweden)
BJ Nilsen Is a sound and recording artist. His work is based on the sound of nature and its effect on humans. He primarily uses field recordings and electronic composition as a working method. He has worked for film, television, theatre, dance and as sound designer. His latest album is « Eye Of The Microphone » [Touch, 2013] – a somewhat surreal audio rendition of the sound.
OPENING PERFORMANCE ORCHESTRA (CZ REPUBLIC)
Fraction Elements sees Opening Performance Orchestra Begin with ambient, ominous gloom that rumbles and scrapes itself to life. As things begin to increasingly crash and rumble, feedback and electronic noise begin to really rise. The growth from slight sounds to massive noise is long and impressive. Their work builds to assaultive, distorted walls, spikes of sharp sounds and much sonic overdrive. In photos there appear to be four members but Discogs lists seven; I don’t know if it’s due the number of group members, but the control over such a loud mass of sound is excellent. The number of individual noise components is quite small, but it builds to a massive cacophony of noise that’s controlled in every aspect. Fraction Elements gradually builds to a wall like assault. I later learned both their tracks were played and recorded live, impressive.
CM VON HAUSSWOLFF (Sweden)
Availability: From 25th April onwards
Territory: Europe + UK
Carl Michael von Hausswolff was born in 1956 in Linköping, Sweden. He lives and works in Stockholm.
Since the end of the 1970s, Hausswolff has worked as a composer using the audio recorder as his main instrument and as a conceptual visual artist working with performance art, light- and sound installations and photography.
SIMON SHREEVE (UK)
As Kryptic Minds, Simon Shreeve helped drive dubstep’s ultra-dark dungeon sound. As Mønic, he makes atmospheric techno that draws from his history in drum & bass and dubstep. He’s also released two records of somber electronics on Downwards under his given name. Most of Shreeve’s output has come through his Osiris Music UK label, which is the main portal into his shadowy world. The label marks its 50th release with a two-part EP that shows just how far he’s come since the days of Kryptic Minds dubstep.
BIRDWORLD (UK/Norway)
London/Oslo-based duo BirdWorld is a musical partnership between Gregor Riddell and Adam Teixeira. With a simple acoustic instrumental set up alongside electronically manipulated field recordings and a variety of traditional percussion including numerous kalimbas, the duo weaves between ambient electronic, contemporary classical, folkloric music and improvisation creating soundscapes both natural and otherworldly.
DINO SALUZZI & FERENC SNÉTBERGER DUO(Argentina/Hungary)
Availability: 15th-30th October 2020
Territory: Belgium
Dino has been playing the bandoneón since his childhood. Other than his father, he was influenced by Salta musicians such as Cuchi Leguizamón, and by the lyrical strain of the tango of Francisco de Caro and Agustin Bardi. Dino described the vividness of his musical sketches as « an imaginary return » to the little towns and villages of his childhood. Snétberger was born into a Romani family. At the age of thirteen, he attended music school and studied classical guitar. From 1977 to 1981 he studied at Bela Bartók Jazz Conservatory in Budapest.
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