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Category: Festivals

Athens Epidaurus Festival 2025 

Posted on by nr

NR · Magazine
Published · Online

Report · Athens Epidaurus Festival
Words · Melis Özek

Athens is a city that resists metaphor. It does not stand in for history; it is history, unfolding in real time. To arrive here during Subset was not to attend a festival, but to step into an atmosphere dense with texture: conceptual, sonic, civic. What unfolded across the weekend was not simply a program of performances, but a series of durational states: of attunement, permeability, and ecstatic stillness.

Subset operates as a proposition, one that asks the listener to relinquish mastery, to dwell in uncertainty, to encounter sound as condition rather than content. Athens responded in kind. Its terrain, fractured, layered, and perpetually in flux, held the festival with an uncanny fluency. The city’s ambient frequencies folded into the works, becoming a porous substrate through which performance and place co-articulated. Everything felt permeable, just beneath language.

Christina Vantzou opened the weekend at the Athens Conservatoire, and in many ways it was an initiation. The space itself, solemn and precise, seemed to recognize the gravity of the moment. But it was the crowd that moved me most: a quiet density of intellect and curiosity, gathered from all corners of the world. Vantzou’s performance unfolded not in front of us, but around us. Her compositions invited a kind of listening that is almost extinct, one that demands the body.

The work stressed the pure form of existence: listening stripped of spectacle, of signal, of distraction. A reintegration of the ear not as a passive receiver, but as a site of encounter. To listen, here, was to inhabit the moment with one’s full physicality. It was a radical slowing down, a surrender to the temporal grain of sound. A rare moment of reintegration. The ear, often reduced to a passive conduit, was here reclaimed as a site of encounter, a threshold through which time, breath, and matter could converge. Hers was a poetics of embodied listening and letting presence accumulate.

At the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, Renzo Piano’s architectural meditation on openness and light, MONOM’s spatial sound dome emerged not as a venue, but as a vessel. Walking through the surrounding park, where olive trees serve as temporal anchors and the sea glints at the periphery, one approached the dome less as a structure than as a frequency field.

Sound moved through the spine, the chest, the base of the skull. A full collapse occurred between interior and exterior. MONOM made porous the boundaries we so carefully uphold: between self and world, between rhythm and rest. It was meditative, yes, but also deeply physical. It compelled stillness and invited motion, as if the body had momentarily forgotten where it ended and the sound began.

Suzanne Ciani’s Improvisation on Four Sequences opened with analog synthesis rendered in fluid geometries, sketching a speculative grammar of resonance. Evita Manji’s Echo(location) chamber is a refracted emotional architecture, as if longing had been spatialized and given breath. Cinna Peyghamy summoned tactility from pressure and pulse, folding ritual into modulation with almost surgical clarity. Andrea Belfi’s Above My Door, There Is Knocking activated what lay dormant just beyond the threshold. A sonic ecology that expanded the architecture of listening just slightly beyond the edge of the body. 

Where Vantzou dissolved the self and MONOM absorbed it, Ryoji Ikeda reconfigured it. His performance dealt in extremes: of data, of frequency, of form. His precision was almost surgical, excising time into units and spatializing mathematics into physical sensation.

There is a rigor to his practice that resists spectacle and yet produces awe. Frequencies carved through the space like scalpel lines. Data was not visualized; it was enacted, rendered as intensity. The room did not move. It held. The audience, silent and still, was algorithmically synchronized. There is something devotional in Ikeda’s refusal to soften, a kind of purity that exceeds expression. Pure intelligence.

Cafés became informal extensions of the program, where conversations unraveled like marginalia: speculative, embodied, unresolved. A city shaped by interruption and multiplicity, it offered not stability but resonance. In the rhythm of its streets, in the slow generosity of its pauses, Athens enacted what Subset proposed. To listen is not to extract meaning, but to remain in proximity to it.

Subset does not curate spectacle. It curates conditions. Its intelligence is not in its scale, but in its sensitivity, a careful orchestration of slowness, density, and attention. It does not speak over. It listens. And in Athens, a city fluent in dissonance and return, that listening became something more than practice. It became epistemological. It became political. Not resistance in the usual sense, but resonance as mode — as method, as ethics, as form. 

Subset Festival Athens

Posted on by nr

Now in its third edition, Subset Festival  is rapidly establishing itself as one of the most forward-thinking and culturally significant platforms in Greece’s contemporary music scene. Curated by composer and sound artist Stavros Gasparatos,  the Athens-based festival becomes a dynamic reflection of a broader cultural shift: where experimental sound, technology, and performance are not sidelined but brought to the forefront of Greece’s artistic discourse.

Launched in 2023 as part of the historic Athens Epidaurus Festival, Subset offers more than just a programme, it builds a much-needed space for contemporary and experimental music within a country still negotiating the balance between tradition and the avant-garde. “When I first proposed Subset, my goal was to create a space that can support and connect the vibrant Greek artistic community working in these fields,” says Gasparatos. “I want a platform that commissions new works, highlights the wealth of talent based in Athens, and opens up meaningful exchanges with leading figures from the international experimental scene.”

Rooted in the cultural heart of Athens and co-produced with the Athens Conservatoire,  the 2025 edition of Subset expands this vision even further. It brings together global pioneers and local innovators across venues such as the Athens Conservatoire and the SNFCC, presenting a bold conversation between music, movement, spatial sound, and digital media. The lineup features international figures like Lyra Pramuk, Mouse on Mars, Suzanne Ciani, Carmen Villain, and Ryoji Ikeda, alongside a new generation of Greek artists actively redefining the local scene.

Notably, the Athens Epidaurus Festival itself does not shy away from forward-thinking music either, will present Arca’s debut in Greece on May 31st, marking a landmark addition to the festival’s evolving identity. Live in Athens from the iconic Lycabettus Theater in celebration of the Festival’s 70th anniversary, Arca will be supported by local Greek musician and fellow PAN-signee, Evita Manji, and with a DJ set from local Porschelane. The performances will be followed by Subset’s opening celebration, doubling as the afterparty for the Concert and developed in close collaboration with Plural Artist Management and NR Magazine. Taking place in a raw brutalist basement in the centre of Athens, it features boundary-pushing DJ sets from Apu Nanu, Bapari, Bobby Beethoven, Engalanan, Evita Manji, Oldyungmayn, Safety Trance and Wicboyx. The lineup resists easy categorisation: deconstructed club rhythms, ambient textures, reggaeton mutations, and rave atmospheres converge in a night that celebrates genre fluidity and radical expression.

As Plural Artist Management notes, “Subset Festival represents a well-intentioned shift from the traditional Theater, Dance and Performing Arts programme that Athens Epidaurus Festival is known for. As such, it positions itself as an expansive addition to summer in Greece, and has attained well-deserved praise for its openness to collaborate and invest in ‘one-of-one’ artists.”

A visual recap of the afterparty and select DJ sets are set to be published exclusively on NR in the coming days, capturing the charged energy that opens the festival.

At its core, Subset is not just an event but an evolving platform for cultural dialogue. “Another key aspect of Subset is fostering collaboration across disciplines and backgrounds,” Gasparatos explains. “The festival actively encourages hybrid projects that blur boundaries—between genres, between artists, and between audiences.” This spirit of experimentation defines Subset’s role in today’s Greece: a space where adventurous ideas can take root, and new artistic vocabularies can emerge.

Additionally, Athens Epidaurus Festival has also initiated a first-time collaboration between the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre and Berlin-based spatial sound studio MONOM, which will present both Live and Archive works presented across 6 days at the SNFCC Dome. “The partnership with MONOM is, for us, an especially fruitful result of Athens Epidaurus Festival’s ambition to experiment, and an effort to offer the public some insight into new technologies surrounding music/sound creation. With projects from two artists on the agency presented daily [Cinna Peyghamy and Evita Manji, who is Greek] as part of the Archive Works, we’re excited for audiences to experience this new format.” says Plural Artist Management. 

In a country shaped by both rich heritage and a restless, forward-looking generation, Subset feels like a timely signal. Here experimental sound doesn’t just exist in the periphery, it belongs on the main stage of Greek cultural life.

Find full details on the Athens Epidaurus Festival website for all concerts, and secure a spot via Resident Advisor for the afterparty – tickets are limited.

Cinna Peyghamy

Posted on by nr

NR · Magazine
Published · Online

Feature · Athens Epidaurus Festival
Words · Melis Özek

Auditory Matter as Ritual Form and the Space Between

What does it mean to truly listen, not as a passive gesture but as a radical, embodied act of attention? In a culture shaped by speed and spectacle, listening offers a slower kind of presence. One rooted in care, intimacy, and transformation. One that moves beneath language.

Cinna Peyghamy brings us into contact with the spatial texture and weight of sound. Moving between percussion and electronics, field energy and sculptural precision, his work challenges the idea of listening. Here, sound is force. It’s matter. It’s ritual. With a background in science and a commitment to improvisation, Cinna treats sound as a phenomenon to be shaped, inhabited, and released. In this conversation, he speaks of silence as suspension, of performance as a state beyond thought, and of listening as a sensual, even sacred act.

This conversation coincides with the presentation of Cinna Peyghamy’s spatial sound work within the AEF x SNFCC x MONOM program in Athens. Developed in collaboration with MONOM and originally conceived for the 4DSOUND system, the piece deepens Peyghamy’s exploration of vibration, resonance, and embodied sonics. Here, sound is not treated as discrete, rather as a sensorial continuum to be entered, absorbed, and metabolised. The work resists the notion of performance as delivery; instead, it unfolds as a durational ecology of attunement, shaped by presence, porosity, and mutual transformation.

What happens when we reopen the ear , not only as a site of perception, but as a threshold for memory, identity, and transformation? How might deep, embodied listening allow us to access the invisible architectures that shape who we are , internal time, ritual, spiritual resonance , and reorient us toward a more fluid, post-human understanding of self? In a world saturated by visual dominance and extraction logics, can listening become a quiet form of resistance, a way to transmit emotion, reimagine presence, and dissolve boundaries between body, landscape, technology, and the unknown?


That’s such a deep and fascinating question. I always like to start by saying that sound doesn’t need images to be understood. Hearing is one of our most fundamental senses, but it’s also a way of perceiving the world across different timelines and intensities. Whether you’re in a concert hall or walking through a forest, sound is something you can feel. It surrounds you, it moves through you. It’s not abstract—it’s physical.

In French, we use the word matière to describe sound. It means material, something tactile. And I treat it like that—as something I can shape, mold, and work with like clay. Unlike vision, which we can close off easily, we can’t simply choose not to hear. You can close your eyes, but you can’t close your ears. That makes sound uniquely intimate, but also inescapable. It reaches you whether you invite it or not.

Orson Welles once said something about how we’re addicted to images, and I think that’s still true. We live in a visual culture. But sound is older. In nature, it’s how animals protect themselves. It’s how a child cries for its mother. It’s primal. And yet we tend to treat it as background. I’m interested in what happens when we bring it back to the foreground.

How do you see sound as a source of transformation?
Sound is transformation. It is energy in motion. A wave doesn’t move matter, but it transfers force. It literally reshapes the space around us. It changes how the air behaves. When a wave hits the ear, it gets translated into electric signals in the brain—and that translation becomes emotion, memory, sensation. So even before you attach meaning, sound is already doing something to you. That’s the level I’m working on. The invisible level that still leaves an imprint.

When you’re composing, how does that sense of energy and space influence your creative process?

I often describe myself as a two-faced musician. I play acoustic instruments, but I also compose electronic music. My work lives in the space between—electrifying the acoustic and bringing acoustic resonance into the electronic world. That duality is everything to me.

The way energy feels is completely different depending on the source. When I’m playing percussion, I’m the source. I create the sound. My hand hits the skin, I feel the feedback in my body. There’s a direct, muscular relationship to the sound. But when I’m composing electronically, I’m working with machines and software. The speaker becomes the voice—but it’s designed, manufactured, mediated. It’s a different intimacy.

At the computer, I’m focused on texture, weight, spatial balance. How do the frequencies sit? Where does the bass fall in the room? But when I’m performing live, it’s almost athletic. I think about posture, hand coordination, physical stamina. It’s about staying attuned to the space and what it’s asking for. One is psychological, the other is fully embodied. Both are necessary.

Silence and decay seem as present in your work as tone and rhythm. What is the function of absence in your compositions? Is there a kind of sacredness in withholding sound?

Absolutely. There’s a quote often attributed to Chopin—”Silence is music”—and I believe it. But silence is difficult. Most people are afraid of it. Even outside of music, silence in conversation can feel awkward, like something you need to fill. But I think silence is also peace. It’s immobility. It slows things down. It invites reflection.

Silence functions very differently depending on the space. If I’m performing in a church, silence has weight. It echoes. You can use it to stretch time, to create tension, to let something land. In a club, it’s trickier. Silence exposes the background—the bar noise, the chatter, the bodies. It’s more fragile. But even then, it can be powerful if you trust it.

When I’m composing, I often return to a track and realize I’ve said too much. Why is there so much happening? Did I really need that many layers? Maybe not. Subtraction is a tool. You remove until you’re almost at silence—but not quite. That in-between space is where I try to live. That equilibrium, where presence and absence are in dialogue. It’s a place of heightened listening.

How did your collaboration with MONOM influence the way you think about resonance, space, and performance?

I worked with MONOM in May 2024. Usually, artists do a residency and create a fixed piece using their 4DSOUND system. But from the beginning, I knew I didn’t want to compose a finished work. My practice is rooted in improvisation. I never go on stage knowing exactly what I’ll play. That’s what makes each performance alive.

The MONOM system is incredibly complex—more than 50 speakers in a multidimensional space. With the spatial sound engineer, we adapted my usual stereo live set into a format that could move through that environment. I didn’t write anything in the traditional sense. I treated the space as an instrument and trained myself to play it.

Every day during the residency, I practiced, improvised, tested gestures. How does a frequency move across the room? How can I shape it in real time without hiding behind a screen? We developed a system that let me perform the room. The final show was fully improvised, like always. But it felt different. I had to react instantly to what I was hearing. That concert was recorded and will be presented at Subset. It’s a piece made entirely of live responsiveness.

What does it feel like to perform in that way?
When I perform, I enter a very specific state. I’m not thinking. I’m not planning. It’s like a small inner sphere—me, my drum, my synth. My hands are doing the work. I let them think for me.

It doesn’t matter if there are ten people or a thousand. The focus is the same. It’s not about control. It’s about attainment. The performance reflects the space, the mood, the temperature, the breath in the room. Everything affects everything. I like to compare it to walking a tightrope. You can’t lose balance for even a second. That’s what keeps it alive.

Questions from Christina Vantzou:
Is there a sound you’ve always wanted to hear but haven’t been able to?

I’ve always wanted to hear the sound of an earthquake. Not buildings falling, not the aftermath. I mean the sound the earth itself makes when it moves. That ultra-low frequency that we can’t quite access. It’s probably more of a vibration than a sound. But I hope one day we’ll find a way to hear it.

Would you say sound exists more on a cosmic level or a sensual one?

Sensual, definitely. What we talked about at the beginning—sound goes through you. It wraps around you. It touches you. That’s the core of it. It’s bodily. It’s intimate. It’s a feeling.

Photography · Payram
Discover more on aefestival.gr

Carmen Villain

Posted on by nr

NR · Magazine
Published · Online

Feature · Subset Festival
Words · Melis Özek

Auditory Presence as Psychic Topography and the Politics of Listening

What does it mean to truly listen, not as a passive gesture but as a radical, embodied act of attention? In a culture shaped by speed, visibility, and extraction, listening offers a different kind of presence. One that resists control, invites transformation, and asks us to be changed in the process. This conversation begins with the ear: not just as a site of sonic perception, but as a threshold for memory, time, identity, and relation. What if the ear, long relegated to the background, became central to how we move through the world? What if listening could dissolve the boundaries between body and landscape, self and other, language and emotion? One rooted in care, intimacy, and attention. One that moves beneath language.

Carmen Villain moves through this space with rare clarity. As a composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist, her work resists resolution and leans into resonance. She scores what lingers in the in-between: ambient yet pointed, spectral yet grounded. Through layered textures and dilated time, she traces the emotional and psychic topographies of sound. In Villain’s world, listening is not a tool but a threshold, a portal into what slips beneath language, dissolves certainty, and refuses closure.

This interview unfolds within NR’s experimental series, a conceptual relay where three artistic voices respond to a unified theme. A living structure, each conversation blurs authorship, embracing intuition, curiosity, and the space between voices. What emerges is not a fixed exchange but a shared vibration.

This particular conversation unfolds following Villain’s live performance at Subset Festival in Athens on June 5, 2025, where she presented Music from The Living Monument, a durational piece that holds space for slowness, suspension, and subtle transformation. It asks the audience not to grasp but to dwell, not to consume but to become one with. In Villain’s work, listening becomes a site of encounter with the unseen architectures that shape how we relate to time, to space, to each other.

What happens when we reopen the ear, not only as a site of perception, but as a threshold for memory, identity, and transformation? How might deep, embodied listening allow us to access the invisible architectures that shape who we are , internal time, ritual, spiritual resonance, and reorient us toward a more fluid, post-human understanding of self? In a world saturated by visual dominance and extraction logics, can listening become a quiet form of resistance, a way to transmit emotion, reimagine presence, and dissolve boundaries between body, landscape, technology, and the unknown?

Those are big questions. I often think about these themes. Listening, for me, is something entirely different from hearing. I was actually just the other day reading Pauline Oliveros’ Quantum Listening, in which she talks about this distinction: hearing is passive, it just happens. But listening is a decision, an orientation. It unlocks entire worlds.

For example, when I’m outside and hear an unusual sound that catches my ear, the act of recording it forces me to actively listen, which shifts how I relate to the space around me. It sharpens my awareness and connects me to my environment in a deeper way. I become more present. But there’s also this internal listening connected to memory. I can hear or recall sounds in my head, like imagining a flute inside a cave. That imagined echo has a memory attached to it. It’s not just sound, it’s spatial, emotional, associative.

As a musician, deep listening is essential. It’s how I interact with my materials and make creative decisions. But beyond that, it feels like a way of being. A way of tracing memory through sound and finding identity in moments that are fleeting, dislocated, but still resonant.

In a time defined by overstimulation and hyper-visibility, can listening become a form of resistance — a counter-practice rooted in slowness, attention, and care?

Yes, I believe it can. Listening is a powerful tool for cultivating empathy. In a world that often feels overwhelming, with so much negativity, polarization, and noise, listening offers another route. A quieter one. A slower one.

Through listening, we can reach a different kind of understanding. Not just with people, but with landscapes, histories, and emotions. It’s a way of paying attention to what might otherwise go unnoticed. And in that attention, there is care.

Listening can bring us into contact with what lies beneath the surface. It cuts through the quick assumptions we tend to make. It invites us to pause, to receive, and to connect. That, to me, is a form of resistance. Especially now, when speed, distraction, and spectacle dominate. Listening asks something else from us and gives something back in return.

Your work often inhabits sonic in-betweens: fragile, suspended, undefined. What draws you to these liminal states, and how do they shape the emotional or spatial architectures of your compositions?

Honestly, I rarely know what the final result will be when I start. I might begin with a loose idea, a texture I want to explore, or a feeling I’m trying to reach. But I never map it out in a fixed way. It’s more like following sound and letting it guide me somewhere unexpected.

Take The Living Monument score, for example. It was created to accompany extremely slow movement by dancers. I had to imagine the choreography while still in the studio. That meant slowing everything down: sonically, emotionally, perceptually. I had to let the sounds expand and take their time.

I’m drawn to that space, the in-between where things feel suspended. It allows for a kind of openness. The boundaries dissolve a little, and you’re left with something that feels more intuitive than logical. I like not knowing exactly where I’m going. That uncertainty is where a lot of the magic lives.

There’s a temporal softness to your work: sounds stretch, blur, and become immersive. How does this slowing-down allow you to access more intuitive or unconscious states, both for yourself and the listener?

When I stretch a sound over time, I begin to notice details I wouldn’t otherwise hear. It’s like placing a magnifying lens over a moment. The texture opens up, and so does my ability to respond to it.

I enjoy sinking deeply into sounds, allowing them to breathe and unfold. My process is mostly intuitive. I might have some structural guidelines or ideas, but I try to stay flexible. Sometimes the best ideas emerge when I stop trying to control the outcome. It’s about listening to the sound, and listening to myself inside that process.

That slowing-down allows me to enter a different state. Less mental, more sensory. And I think it allows the listener to do the same.


Question from Cinna Peyghamy:
Do you consciously seek out the unheard, to create sounds that challenge expectations or dissolve the known edges of genre, voice, or instrument?

Absolutely. I love the challenge of morphing sounds, reshaping them until they become unrecognizable yet still intimate. It’s like a form of sonic treasure hunting.

In collaborating with visual artists I might start with a suggestion or a prompt. For example, for the Living Monument score, the choreographer Eszter Salamon gave me a feeling, a texture, even a color, and from there I begin trying to push the material beyond conventional limits. 

The goal in my music isn’t novelty for its own sake. It’s about arriving at something that feels emotionally specific, something that sounds like me. That search keeps me excited. It keeps the work alive.

You’re about to perform Music from The Living Monument at Subset Festival in Greece, your first time performing there. What does this performance mean to you, and how do you anticipate the work unfolding in that context?

I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve never played in Greece before, so it feels special. Performing The Living Monument in a live context is something I cherish. It’s a piece that invites me to go deep into the sound and let it sit, let it breathe for a long time.

I’m excited to see how it resonates in the space and how the audience listens with me. That mutual attention, that quiet exchange, is what makes these moments feel meaningful.

Discover more on aefestival.gr

Christina Vantzou

Posted on by nr

NR · Magazine
Published · Online

Feature · Subset Festival
Words · Melis Özek

Embodied Listening as Navigation and the Architecture of Time

What does it mean to truly listen, not as a passive gesture but as a radical, embodied act of attention? In a culture shaped by speed and spectacle, listening offers a slower kind of presence. One rooted in care, intimacy, and transformation. One that moves beneath language.

This conversation begins with the ear, not just as a site of sonic perception but as a threshold for memory, time, identity, and relation. What if the ear, long kept in the background, became central to how we move through the world? What if listening could dissolve the boundaries between self and other, body and landscape, language and emotion?

Christina Vantzou’s work moves through this space, where listening becomes a mode of relation, a method of inquiry, and a force of transformation. Through fragmented voices, field recordings, and intuition-led structures, she opens spaces where the sonic becomes psychic, where time dilates, and where meaning surfaces through sensation rather than explanation. Her practice offers a quiet refusal of the fixed and extractive, proposing instead attention, slowness, and presence as subtle forms of resistance and repair.

Framed by the context of her forthcoming performance at Subset Festival in Athens on June 6, 2025—where she will present The Reintegration of the Ear, a durational, ensemble-based composition that reimagines listening as a relational act—the article extends and deepens the conceptual threads that inform her practice. Originally commissioned by INA GRM, the renowned Parisian sound research institute where much of the material was recorded and first presented, the work lives at the intersection of experimental music and embodied inquiry. Neither spectacle nor score, the piece is a sustained invitation to attune: to place, to entanglement, to the quiet textures between bodies and environments.

What happens when we reopen the ear, not only as a site of perception, but as a threshold for memory, identity, and transformation? How might deep, embodied listening allow us to access the invisible architectures that shape who we are, internal time, ritual, spiritual resonance, and reorient us toward a more fluid, post-human understanding of self? In a world saturated by visual dominance and extraction logics, can listening become a quiet form of resistance, a way to transmit emotion, reimagine presence, and dissolve boundaries between body, landscape, technology, and the unknown?

This is a powerful question. One that opens up deep research into the nature of perception. We often forget just how dominant sight is in our culture. I’m someone who constantly records, both sound and image, and I’ve noticed something essential through field recording, particularly in nature. When I’m focused on video, my brain is busy: framing, composing, evaluating. But with sound, it’s different. Listening taps me into the present. It brings the moment into the body.

The eyes face forward; they frame and judge. The ears, on the other hand, are lateral. They open you up and make you porous to your surroundings. Listening inherently invites connection. When you’re truly listening, your body becomes part of the environment. It’s no longer about observation from a distance. It becomes participation. Even in conversation, when we only look, we risk staying on the surface and falling into judgment. But when we listen, we extend ourselves toward the other. We meet them. There’s something beautifully shared in listening. It’s a relational act: between you and another, you and the world, you and yourself.

You often work with voices that seem to arrive from somewhere distant or unknown: dislocated, layered, multiplied. What draws you to this fragmentation of the voice, and how does it reflect your relationship with space, memory, or selfhood?

I remember, even without a formal background in music or opera, how deeply moved I was by a moment in the opera in Belgium. A voice sang from offstage, unseen and disembodied. It drifted in like a phantom, and I found it to be the most powerful part of the entire performance. I later learned it’s a known technique, but the effect was profound. There’s something magical in the distant voice. Softness, absence, or quiet can activate more imagination than what is overt.

I’ve had similar moments while walking through cities such as Poland, France, and Austria, where I’d catch traces of a rehearsal through a building window. A faint opera voice or instrument barely reaching my ears. It’s often too soft to record, and too ethereal to locate. But I’d stop in my tracks, completely captivated. These fragile, fleeting moments, blended with city sounds, become living compositions that exist only in that time and place. They’ve deeply influenced how I approach mixing and composing today.

And again, it’s about presence. Anyone can experience this. You don’t need special training or tools. All it takes is noticing. Simply listening. It cuts through so much noise about who’s allowed to be a composer, or what counts as music. When you open yourself to the everyday as potential composition, it becomes a kind of liberation.

But in the rush of daily life, we often forget to listen. These small, shimmering moments slip by unnoticed. And yet, through music, through the act of deeply listening, we can return to them. Your work, your sound, has the power to bring us back. To remind us of the beauty in the everyday. That sense of wonder. The magic that still lives in the ordinary. It’s like rediscovering a kind of childlike joy. Brief, but real, and deeply human.



In your recent works, sound feels like a portal — opening onto spaces that are emotional, psychic, even elemental. What role do liminal states, deep listening, or field recording play in helping you access what’s beyond the visible or the tangible?

For me, sound is a gateway to altered states of consciousness. Deep, embodied listening helps me step outside the dominance of visual perception that’s so present in daily life. When I really focus on the auditory, I find I can access something quieter — internal rhythms, spiritual resonances, a more profound connection to place and presence.

Much of your work resists overt structure, yet it carries an undeniable sense of coherence — as if guided by internal tides. How do intuition, ritual, or bodily memory shape your compositional process? What’s happening beneath the form?

Intuition plays a central role. My process is entirely guided by feeling, an internal sense of knowing, step by step, what needs to happen next. When I’m working with recorded sounds and assembling a composition in the software, it’s never about formulas or rules. It’s always about what feels right. I listen, and something in me knows. This needs to be softened. That has to be removed. This transition matters. It’s a visceral process.

Time is also a crucial part of it. You can get very deep into something, but eventually you have to let it go. Step away. Forget it for a while. And then, when you return, intuition steps in again with fresh ears. That space in between, forgetting and returning, becomes part of the composition itself. It’s almost like a ritual of death and rediscovery.

I don’t build pieces using traditional musical structures. No bars, no beats. I don’t even open those grids in the software. I avoid anything that might constrain the process into something too rigid. Instead, I work in a kind of open time. Structureless, but not directionless.

And yet, as you noted, there’s coherence. It emerges through listening, through the way it feels to me as a listener. That embodied sense of rhythm and progression creates its own kind of form. So while I may resist overt structures, the shape of the piece arises from inside. It comes from intuition, ritual, and the memory held in the body.


Your work often stretches time until it almost dissolves. What kind of consciousness emerges in that expanded space? How does temporal distortion help you access emotional or spiritual dimensions in your practice?

I often hear the same comment after a concert: “I thought that was an hour, but it was only twenty minutes.” Or the opposite: “I can’t believe that much time passed.” People are surprised by how elastic time feels. They’re curious about the actual duration, because what they experienced was something completely different. To me, that’s a profound compliment.

When I’m working on music and I lose track of time myself, I take that as a sign I’m in the right place. That kind of absorption is a gift. In daily life, we’re so bound by time, by schedules, by structure. But to enter a space where time slips away, like having a picnic and suddenly it’s dusk without realizing it, that’s rare and precious.

You asked about consciousness in this expanded space, and I think it’s something close to dream logic. In dreams, fragments of memory, emotion, and experience collide in strange, surreal ways. And yet, sometimes a dream leaves you with a distinct clarity. Like it answered a question you didn’t even know how to ask. Music can work in that same way. It reaches beyond language or linear thought and allows for a kind of emotional resolution, or even healing, that bypasses rational understanding.

Letting go of structured time and logical sequencing opens a portal. In that temporal suspension, you can access deeper layers: emotional, spiritual, unconscious. I think that’s why music has always been part of ceremony and healing. It creates a space where we can feel something shift, release, or clarify, without needing to explain why.

So yes, stretching or dissolving time isn’t just a stylistic choice. It’s a way to enter another kind of awareness. One that invites depth, presence, and emotion.


‘The Reintegration of the Ear’ reflects a counter-statement to the extraction mentality that dominates contemporary society. Can you elaborate on how you hope the piece fosters a shift in the listener’s relationship to nature, both in terms of what they hear and what they feel?

The statement is a bit complex, but I understand the spirit behind it. I do think it’s relevant to how I approach sound and listening. Music, for me, is inherently a collective, communal practice. Even when I’m alone in the field recording, I’m very aware of what I’m doing. I’m conscious that I’m taking something, capturing the sound of birds, for example, and with that comes a responsibility. I’m leaving a trace, even if it’s an invisible one.

That awareness matters. For too long, we’ve taken from the environment without asking or even thinking. Practicing a different kind of relationship, one that considers what we take and what we give or share in return, is essential. Even something as subtle as being present in nature with a spirit of exchange, rather than extraction, is part of that shift. It starts with a simple awareness, but it’s deeply needed in today’s world.

We’re constantly surrounded by examples of extraction. It’s the default mindset we’re conditioned into. So to ask, “Can we think differently?” becomes a radical and urgent question. That’s part of what The Reintegration of the Earis about. It’s not just about hearing. It’s about participating. About cultivating an active, reciprocal relationship with sound, with each other, with the environment.

And this carries over into collaboration too. Much of my work is ensemble-based, and The Reintegration of the Ear is no exception. When I collaborate with other musicians, it becomes an exercise in deep listening, mutual exchange, and co-creation. That experience, of building something together through attentive presence, feels like the opposite of extraction. It’s generous. It’s shared. And it’s essential.


The collaboration in ‘The Reintegration of the Ear’ involves a diverse ensemble of musicians, including Irene Kurka, John Also Bennett, and Oliver Coates. How does this dynamic influence the unfolding of the piece, especially when integrating such different sound sources , from synthesizers to live instruments to hydrophone recordings?

The ensemble is a huge part of the sound. I’m working with people whose sonic language I love, artists whose contributions are deeply meaningful and whose voices are distinct. This is the first time I’m collaborating with Oliver Coates, and I’ve been a fan of his work for years. His presence brings an entire world of detail. His cello playing, even the smallest gestures, becomes part of the piece’s atmosphere. It’s a deeply generous act to bring that kind of intimacy into a group context, and it makes the work feel alive in new ways.

John Also Bennett, who plays flute and synthesizer and who is also my partner, has a long personal and musical history with me. His way of playing has developed across time, and that shared evolution adds something subtle but powerful to the work. There’s an intuitive understanding between us that naturally informs the unfolding of the piece.

And then there’s Irene Kurka. Her voice and the way she delivers both text and melody drew me in through recordings. I didn’t know her personally, but I reached out simply because I loved the way she sounded. That’s really the core of how I collaborate, falling in love with a sound and following that instinct.

This will be the first time the four of us come together as a quartet. Until now, we’ve presented the piece as a trio. So Athens will be the debut of this full formation, and that adds another layer of excitement and intimacy to the performance.

Question from Carmen Villain:
In your work, how do you approach the relationship between listening and seeing?

For me, it’s through observing this relationship in nature.  I like paying attention to how the sound of wind through leaves, for example, is embedded in the visual of a tree. Still, it’s tempting to try to focus on one or the other and sort of feel around for what happens.  Sound travels instantly into feeling for me.  I don’t sense any gap whatsoever. Seeing takes me to a feeling too, but in a reflective way, passing through thoughts first. 


Subset Festival brings together a wide array of experimental artists. In a setting where sound, technology, and space are explored in depth, what do you hope audiences will take away from experiencing ‘The Reintegration of the Ear’ in this context, where the concept of “reconciliation” might resonate on a personal and collective level?

On a personal level, performing in Athens holds special meaning. My father is Greek, and though I haven’t performed much in Greece, returning to my roots and having my work exist in that landscape carries emotional weight. It feels like a kind of homecoming.

I’m especially excited about the context of the Subset Festival. It’s a beautifully curated program that brings together experimental artists in ways that feel both accessible and sensual. I hope that audiences, especially local ones, come away realizing that experimental sound doesn’t have to be abstract or difficult. There’s beauty, there’s feeling, and there’s a quiet invitation to listen differently.

The venue, the Athens Conservatory, is also ideal. Our set will be immersive. And while we’re using instruments often associated with classical traditions, such as cello, flute, and soprano voice, we’re blending them with environmental recordings, subtle textures, and a non-traditional approach to form. That juxtaposition can be disarming in the best way, opening people up to new ways of experiencing sound.

Ultimately, what I hope is that the music doesn’t just stay within the frame of the concert. That it lingers. That it sparks curiosity or reflection, maybe even reconnection. Whether it’s with the environment, with memory, or with each other. And especially in a city like Athens, where a new scene is emerging, anything that fosters deeper listening and a more vibrant community feels important. Music, at its best, can be a part of that cultural evolution: something more than just a performance, something shared.

Photography · Julie Calbert
Discover more on aefestival.gr

Mucho Flow Festival 2024 Guimarães

Posted on by nr
2024 Mucho Flow Snow Strippers Photography João Octávio Peixoto

Guimarães breathes different air during Mucho Flow. The city—a UNESCO-stamped history lesson of medieval charm and serpentine alleys—undergoes a subtle, intentional rewiring. There’s a low-frequency thrum beneath the cobblestones, a collective hum of anticipation. The festival feels curated—not in a hyper-branded, algorithmic way, but with a deliberate touch, as if each act was chosen not just to fill a slot but to complete a circuit. Live music diehards, experimental sound-scapers, and club kids orbit around a shared axis of sonic exploration.

Between sets, the crowd spills into the streets like smoke escaping a room—only to gather itself again, folding back into the next venue like a recurring dream you can’t quite shake. There’s something spectral about it. Mucho Flow doesn’t just stage performances—it conjures a language. One built on shared frequencies, sidelong glances, the tacit codes of experimental sound and improvised aesthetics. It’s what Sarah Thornton would call subcultural capital, but here it feels less academic, more lived—felt in the way people move, dress, speak without needing to explain.

The city’s venues serve as emotional coordinates: CIAJG with its brutalist echo, Teatro Jordão’s plush nostalgia, the minimalist CCVF, the chipped elegance of São Mamede. They don’t just host—they haunt. Dotted across Guimarães like pressure points on a map, they pull you through the city’s dark arteries. You don’t attend Mucho Flow. You drift through it. Between a late-night bar, a staircase conversation, a courtyard cigarette.

It isn’t a festival with borders. It breathes. It evaporates. It reforms somewhere else.

In Guimarães, the festival pulses against a backdrop of tiled facades and baroque silhouettes, casting silhouettes of tomorrow’s sound against the texture of yesterday’s stone. It’s a place where friction becomes fuel—where the soft violence of distortion slips easily into the grace of a medieval alleyway. Tradition holds hands with rupture. Beauty hums beside abrasion.

2024 Mucho Flow Black Angrymen Photography João Octávio Peixoto
2024 Mucho Flow Angry Blackmen Photography João Octávio Peixoto

Mucho Flow feels like an affair whispered rather than advertised. There’s an intimacy to it, a charged closeness, like being folded into something sacred and fragile. The boundary between stage and floor dissolves; what’s performed becomes shared. It’s not about headliners or recognition—it’s about resonance. Gabber, jungle, ambient drones, deconstructed club, folk mutations—all colliding like weather fronts in a sky that won’t settle.

The audience doesn’t just listen—they lean in. There’s a quiet literacy in the room, an alertness. No one needs translating. Newcomers and cult favorites coexist without hierarchy, because here, curiosity is the only currency that matters. And everyone seems rich with it.

The festival’s diversity defies tidy summation. In the fog-drenched Lynchian haze of The Jordao Theater Auditorio you get an almost opera-esque experience with the likes of Rita Silva, Nadah El Shazly’s voice at sunrise, or Bianca Scout’s performative immersion. Across the Jordao Galeria and Vila Flor’s walls you get out of the dream sequences and into the action with live sets by Snow Strippers, Angry Blackmen, University, Florence Sinclair, and more. A jolt to the senses in different directions, with sonic detournements all having in common one thing: An in your face approach to live music. Each night closes with a club sequence: Gabber Eleganza, TOCCORORO, DjLynce, Alex Wilcox, Crystallmess, Violet. The momentum builds, collapses, regenerates. The only issue would be the lack of sleep. But that’s what all festivals are all about, don’t they?

2024 Mucho Flow Crystallmess Photography João Octávio Peixoto

The first night begins with hesitancy. Outside Teatro Jordao, the air is wet and electrically charged. My first cigarette tastes like metallic fog. People are dressed like ghosts from a nightclub that doesn’t exist yet. No one I know. Good. Mucho Flow isn’t about reunion—it’s about detachment. The opener struggles to ignite the room, fragmented between local catch-ups near the bar and out-of-towners scanning the scene. Then Florence Sinclair recalibrates everything. Avoiding cameras with paranoid grace, he becomes a conduit on stage—unrelenting, eyes obscured by a durag, pulsing forward with uncompromising presence. The crowd yields. The club energy locks in. Cashless bars, quiet alliances, subtle nods exchanged in corners. Thornton’s theory at work again—subcultural identity forged in shared frequencies.

Still House Plants follow. Slacker swagger meets glacial dissonance. A sound more at home in a gallery than a nightclub. Someone calls it “California post-rock elegy” before realizing they’re from London. The loops fracture. The party stretches. The line between set and sunrise begins to blur.

I get lost in the street on my way to Jawnino, an Italian searching desperately for a Negroni. That’s because I love clichès, but maybe this is an unnecessary detour. The Vila Flor venue surprises me with its architecture, and how people responded to it: Have you ever seen a pogo and a seated audience in the same room, inches from one another? No? Well, you should have been to Mucho Flow.

2024 Mucho Flow Hypnosis Therapy Photography João Octávio Peixoto
2024 Mucho Flow Hypnosis Therapy Photography João Octávio Peixoto

My battery is running low, but i had to check Crystallmess’ set: Even though it is by now the 5th time i listen to her DJ, she always finds a way to surprise me. Icon.

Day two shifts gears. The crowd now surges with energy rather than observation. At the hotel, a group of Berliners say they came just for Crystallmess—and are still recovering. “You don’t get nights like that back home,” one says, already on his second beer. Papaya follows with forty-something musicians unleashing beautiful, cathartic noise. The younger crowd takes over, the older ones still reverberating from the night before. The festival avoids retro revivalism, instead inhabiting a pre-indie, post-genre liminal zone of raw experimentation.

At night, the concert halls give way to club transformations. Rita from the festival team shares Mucho Flow’s beginnings—cramped rooms, high-risk bookings, a taste for the unknown. The dressing rooms buzz with burlesque charm and lived-in chaos. Artists drift through in towels and glitter. Phones become DJ decks. Sharpie graffiti fills the walls. It feels like a séance backstage. A cabaret run by witches.

Gabber Eleganza melts me at 5AM. I’m unsure if I’m alive or in a rave-sponsored hallucination. On the cobblestones outside, someone plays Snow Strippers on their phone at volume 3. No one speaks. We just listen.

Morning. Church bells, clean sun, €1.20 espresso. Guimarães returns to itself, but I don’t. I walk slower. I observe less, feel more. I realize I’ve been reporting from a distance—an anthropologist at a séance. But Mucho Flow doesn’t want to be understood. It wants to be surrendered to.

So I stop writing.

And let the frequency take me.

Outside, a handful of us perch on a bench, finishing final cigarettes. Someone plays a track from the night before, barely audible. It’s enough.

Guimarães, by daylight, resumes its identity. But for those touched by the temporal dislocations of Mucho Flow, something lingers. The realization comes: the people here aren’t observing. They’re experiencing. And that is everything.

It’s not about understanding.

It’s about surrender.

And perhaps, in that surrender, lies the true essence of Mucho Flow.

Credits

Words · Andrea Bratta
Photography · João Octávio Peixoto
More information on muchoflow.net

In order of appearance

  1. Snow Strippers
  2. Angry Blackmen
  3. Crystallmess
  4. Hypnosis Therapy

Primavera Sound Festival Madrid 2023

Posted on by nr

NR · World
Words · Freya Pierce


When we think of European summers and the festivals that define each month, drenched in sunlight with the heat on our skin, one such festival that joins ranks beside the northern titans like Dekmantel and Glastonbury is Primavera Sound. Initially beginning its legacy in Barcelona in 2001 and now for the first time in Madrid, the festival has become a pioneer in the events space, becoming one of the largest and most-attended festivals in Europe. Boasting headliners such as The xx, Tame Impala, Kendrick Lamar and Patti Smith, but also spotlighting smaller, local artists, it’s a place where creatives big and small come together and revel in the Barcelona heat.

With a focus on gender equality and their role in the sustainability of the location, this year’s Primavera Madrid debut is an opportunity to reexamine their track record of eco-conscious achievements and active gender equality efforts. In this interview, I chat with festival curator Joan Pons about the music scenes of Spain, TikTok-era festival etiquette and the broader subjects of inclusivity and sustainability at Primavera.

Is there a specific moment in time or influence from the music or creative scene that inspired you to get into the curation game? Were you an experienced raver or partygoer all along, or rather somebody more behind the scenes?

Of course. We have always explained (almost taking on legendary dimensions) that the idea of the festival was born from four friends, who at the beginning of the century wanted to bring the alternative and electronic music artists of that time who were not touring in our country. We believe that this initial idea remains: we still consider ourselves music fans and we still want to bring our favourite artists of our present to our home. More than a raver, personally, I consider myself what I said before: a music fan who has been to many festivals, of very different music styles and each one of them is enjoyed in a different way. Some are for dancing, others for sitting and relaxing, others for a singalong, others to surprise you and others to provoke new sensations. I think Primavera Sound, in the end, is a festival where you can find all these kinds of possibilities. In other words, we have made the festival in our own image and likeness.

When considering the rave and music scenes, Madrid and Barcelona might not immediately spring to mind for many. What is it about these cities, specifically the Spanish and Catalan music scene, that might draw more people to these places to rave? Is there a stark difference between the two?

I would like to politely disagree with the apriorism from which this question arises: Barcelona and Madrid are two cities that, at least in this century, have been very important places on the map through which almost all relevant artists and tours have passed. Proof of this is our own history – if we did a festival, it was because there was demand from the public, artists and industry. Also, international interest – for years now, more than 50% of our audience has been from abroad, and 30% from the UK. So we understand that if you say Barcelona, for some people, the first thing that will come to mind will probably be the football team, but for music fans or those with cultural interests, it will probably be Primavera Sound. Obviously, this cultural vibrancy and musical life make cities a hotbed of club scenes, concert halls, music scenes and important artists. Some of them were maybe born around the festival, performing their first steps and finally being headliners, like this year’s Rosalía.

You’ll often see on platforms like TikTok the discussion of festival etiquette, and that many partygoers have ‘forgotten’ how to behave or act respectfully during concerts and events. This was most likely borne out of the Covid lockdown, with a lot of Gen-Z’ers experiencing their first nights out and festivals without the ‘practice’ of partying in their later teens. With Primavera focusing on sustainability and inclusion at its core, how does the festival foster the environment of making people feel free to experience the music in their own way, while also recognising the need for respect and care of the artists and organisers?

The Primavera Sound public is very abundant and diverse, and there will be both aware and escapist people – you can’t tell. What we can say is that the festival is aware and doesn’t want to be a bubble detached from reality, and if some of our gestures, decisions and actions in this sense can help the public that attends the festival to be so too, then that’s perfect. We have done visibility actions and we’ve been involved with both Open Arms and Greenpeace. We also believe that by moving forward on the path of sustainability we are raising awareness among our public (such as the reusable cups, with the almost total elimination of plastics), with tarpaulins explaining the UN programme of 17 sustainable development goals, of which we have been part of since 2019, because the organisation itself made us aware that we were complying with many of them.  There are also pioneering initiatives such as Nobody’s Normal, which was born as a protocol to prevent, inform and act in the face of sexual aggression and is now a plan for the promotion of sexual and gender freedom. 

Finally, there are our identity decisions, which may seem artistic, and also speak of the reality surrounding us with an inspiring and transforming spirit: the parity poster, increasingly inclusive and diverse because reality is also increasingly inclusive and diverse, not by chance. We believe it is a duty to our time and our reality, and this is what our assistants have told us with very positive feedback that we did not expect after the first year of implementation. They said that they were finally at a festival where they felt free, safe and comfortable to show their sexual identity. So in the end, maybe we do have an aware public.

Primavera boasts a 50/50 gender and pronoun lineup from 2019. With the fact that many bigger industry names feature in Primavera each year, how do curators ensure that smaller artists, some of whom might be LGBTQ+ or gender non-binary, also get the spotlight, as well as financial support? What is the process for research there?

We believe that there is no small print at Primavera Sound and that every name on the line-up matters. If it’s at Primavera, it’s because we love his/her/their music, that’s for starters. Each artist fulfills their function, whether in terms of artistic balance or diversity. The truth is that there is not much mystery in creating an inclusive and gender-balanced line-up, you just have to want to do it – once you have that in mind, it almost works itself out. We also feel that the smaller names actually get the same exposure as the big names because the line-up comes out with all the artists at the same time. They share the spotlight with each other. Also, we create individual assets for each and every one of them and promote all of them equally. It would be disrespectful if that weren’t the case.

I would like to think that this year we have made progress in the gender-balanced lineup, because it’s no longer 50%, and we have taken into account 10-20% of artists who do not identify with a binary separation of gender. We believe that percentage will get higher and higher because, in reality, it will also be higher and higher. If in some way we manage to make this aspect visible through our artistic programming, we can only be proud.

The festivals obviously draw thousands of partygoers each year. In cities like Madrid, where there are issues with heavy tourist flows and the pollution and impact on the local residents that come with it, how does Primavera ensure that the residents of Madrid are not negatively impacted by this large presence of festival-goers?

We believe that our impact on any city that hosts Primavera Sound does not have to be assumed to be negative. In fact, in economic terms, it is highly positive for many sectors (public transport, restaurants, hotels, museums and leisure). In more intangible terms, it brings a cultural value to the life of the city, which during the days of the festival becomes more vibrant and with the eyes of the whole world on it. 

On the other hand, we don’t believe, based on our studies and attendance data, that Primavera Sound festival-goers are an annoying type of visitor to the city. In fact, when we talk about it with the institutions of each city, we tend to consider them as cultural tourism.

Primavera has renewed its partnership with the UN Sustainable Development Goals Campaign. With pledges like gender equality and education on the docket, does this alliance inspire Primavera to become a leader in this sustainability and inclusion space – what are you hoping to inspire with this alliance? Do you see yourself as an example in the festival scene?

We like to think that if we are really so insistent on the issue of inclusion and gender equality, it is because Primavera Sound is such a popular festival with so much media attention that we believe in and defend this policy. With this, it can be inspiring for others and ultimately transformative. Whether it really is, I can’t say. But it definitely would NOT be if we didn’t do it. About sustainability – although we received the A Greener Festival award, we know that it is a long road, a process which we will improve little by little. So, if we are an example to anyone, it is to ourselves: each year’s progress should be a benchmark to be beaten in the next edition.

Credits

More info · Primavera Sound Festival Madrid
Special thanks to Chris Cuff (Good Machine PR), Joan Pons and Henry Turner (Good Machine PR)

Sónar Lisboa 2023

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NR · World
Published · Online

Feature · Sónar Lisboa 2023
Words · Mariana Berezovska

For the second edition of Sónar Lisboa, a music and visual technology-driven art festival and sister event of Barcelona’s annual happening, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this summer, I had the opportunity to interview Gustavo Pereira, the main curator of the Portuguese team. With years of experience in the music industry and as a well-known DJ and promoter in the city, Gustavo closed the festival with a b2b DJ set alongside the legendary Rui Vargas, delighting the dedicated dancers.

As the festival season opens in Europe, it is fitting that it begins in Lisbon, one of the most beautiful and vibrant cities of Europe, which is also undergoing the most dramatic gentrification on the continent. Festivals have the potential to shape the cultural and social landscape of a city, and in this interview, we explore their responsibility to consider their impact on the local community and create a more inclusive city. Together with Gustavo, we discuss how responsible and inclusive programming of influential cultural organisations and promoter groups can impact the development of cities, gentrification, and support for local artists.

In our conversation with Gustavo, I am curious about Sónar Lisboa’s mission to promote forward-thinking culture, technology, and lifestyle while shaping the authentic side of the Portuguese edition, preserving Lisbon’s diversity and tackling homogenization. We also discuss Sónar’s approach to featuring local talent and its role in supporting the local music industry in the face of gentrification challenges.

As an experienced raver yourself, what changes have you seen in the Portuguese scene in recent years? And what inspirations and influences from the other scenes and cultural spaces have become more prominent here? 

I’ve been going to parties and live shows ever since I was really young. First, I went to live shows with my parents, then around 13/14 years old, with my brother, and later on my own. When I started clubbing, I mostly went to clubs and raves around Portugal and Galicia in Spain. I’ve seen lots of live shows, clubs, and nightlife in different genres and settings. Nowadays, I feel we’re going through an identity crisis because of the massive amount of music available today. People get used to that and look for all kinds of music and events, which, of course, is not a bad thing. In a way, it was easier to identify who listened to what, and that’s not happening anymore. 

Portugal is a melting pot for diversity and influences from other countries and cultures, and that reflects in the number of amazing artists we have nowadays producing incredible and extraordinary music from what’s been heard before. There is also a lot of respect for the origins and the music foundations. Personally, I try to get a nice balance between the old school and the new school: experience and creativity. 

What direction and guidelines in the curation do you share with Sónar Barcelona? And what makes Sónar Lisboa unique and worth travelling to? 

We work together on the line-up, but it’s always very important to present a balanced line-up with local talent, live shows, advanced music, and a contemporary vision with a touch of the foundations. Just the fact Sónar Lisboa is happening in a different city makes it unique and gives it a different touch. The local talent flavour, the gastronomy, the venues, and the experience are different here. Barcelona is the sanctuary, of course, and you can’t compare both. Just assume our differences and make it also special.

Lisbon is going through heavy gentrification, people are being pushed outside of the city, and young local creatives can hardly afford to live in the city, which is, of course, a significant loss for the city’s cultural development. Is there a way for Lisbon’sLisbon’s music industry to have a say in this development and think together with the city about how to make this situation fairer for the locals (I noticed the festival had been supported by Turismo de Portugal, Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, and Turismo de Lisboa, so I assumed such conversation might be a part of the discussion within your team)? 

There’s no interference in the work of those institutions from Sónar Lisboa. We have main concerns, and of course, we try to fight to promote the local culture and give everyone some voice and promotion as much as possible. It’s not an easy task, but the support from these institutions is also essential for our job here and shows their interest in it. At the moment, only the Lisboa city hall is supporting us, and we really appreciate it, but of course, the initial support from the other institutions was really important for our kick-off.

Due to its long history of immigration and colonisation, Lisbon is home to a diverse and vibrant mix of cultures, contributing to the city’s unique cultural identity. The city has been a port of entry for people from many parts of the world, including Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Gentrification can lead to a homogenization of the city’s culture, making it difficult for underground creatives to find audiences and venues for their works. How can Sónar, as an establishment for a forward-thinking culture, technology, and lifestyle, contribute to preserving the city’s diversity and tackle the problem of homogenization? 

Sónar Lisboa is part of the private cultural sector that helps promote and disseminate multicultural and diverse artistic talent. We have in our backbone the will and passion for exploring the heterogenization of national and international culture as much as possible, especially in the music and visual sector.

The Portuguese artists featured on this year’s Sónar line-up, such as DJ Nigga Fox, Rui Vargas and Gusta-vo, Violet and Photonz, and Sensible Soccers are significant to the local club scene and also made an essential impact on putting Portugal on the global map, and thus, of course, are essential to be a part of your booking. Yet, from some recent conversations with friends from the underground music scene in Lisbon, I learned that the smaller collectives feel underrepresented by the big festivals in Portugal, such as Sónar, that could potentially offer them financial support and opportunities to build international audiences and gain recognition. How do you, with your curatorial team, approach featuring the local talent in your program? 

We try to balance our work and actions as an organisation as well as possible. Of course, some of the names are already recognised but new and fresh names from smaller collectives as well. We keep our ears and eyes open but unfortunately don’t know all of them as we wish, and also, we don’t have slots for everyone all at once. We try not to repeat many artists from one year to another to give space to different artists to be part of Sónar Lisboa.

One of the central features of this year’s program of Sónar is the AI-generated image campaign. The fast-growing advances and use of AI technology have caused considerable anxiety in creative communities. There’s a growing sense of the digital and physical becoming blurred and reality becoming increasingly subjective. What role does the discussion on the AI influence in the music and visual art production play within your team and the scene you represent?

The discussion makes the intangible more tangible, and the conversation allows an ongoing dialogue within a community that can help regulate, find solutions, and even integrate responses to problems from our everyday life.

Sónar focuses not only on music but “Music, Creativity and Technology.” In your view, what trends and developments are driving the evolution of electronic music? 

Definitely machine learning is interacting with all forms of music and visual development in this industry. A lot is being done with new ways of processing these two separately and in an integrated way.

There’s been a growing competition among fast-emerging artists, many of whom are becoming popular over social media. Social media is also a result of technological advancement, but it often exploits its consumerist side more than its unlimited possibilities for creativity. Sometimes the artists who mostly invest time in developing their production and DJing skills find it hard to keep up with the artists who are more affine to social media and know how to keep their audiences entertained on Instagram or TikTok. Considering these developments, how can creativity be encouraged and nurtured more evenly in the electronic music industry today?

Social media occurs on and by the use of platforms, and they can allow us to show creativity to an amplified audience. You can see that on the best brands and pages you follow, so we should condemn the vehicle but the way we use it or not to showcase our creativity and talent. Of course, there’s social interaction at a bigger scale, but I believe that we can input social media with our best craftsmanship and use it in a good way. In a non-paid setting, it’s a recreational space for the electronic music scene.

How do you see Sónar Lisboa grow in the next few years? Are there any specific themes or new formats you want to explore, such as networking events, workshops, discussions, etc.?

I believe Sónar Lisboa’s growth and evolution will be dependent on the core of its context, and by that, I mean the team that makes it happen, Lisboa’s own evolution and growth, and the way the industry evolves we will mirror our own perception of this reality and try to keep things interesting for our audience.

Credits

  1. Luisa, Sonar Park, Lisboa 2023. Courtesy of Pedro Francisco
  2. I hate Models, Sonar Club, Lisboa 2023. Courtesy of Pedro Francisco
  3. Sofia Kourtesis, Sonar Club, Lisboa 2023. Courtesy of Pedro Francisco
  4. Conference, Plaça de Barcelona, 2023. Courtesy of Neia
  5. Entangled Others, Clothilde, Sonar + D, Lisboa 2023. Courtesy of Pedro Francisco
  6. MetaAV, Sonar + D, Lisboa 2023. Courtesy of Pedro Francisco
  7. Peggy Gou, Sonar Club 2023. Courtesy of Neia

    For more information visit Sónar Lisboa
    Special thanks to Rosalie De Meyer

X100

Posted on by nr

NR · WORLD
Published · Online

Feature · X100
Words · Mariana Berezovska

Untamed storm of Iannis Xenakis at Berlin’s X100 

X100 at Berlin’s Kraftwerk celebrated the obsession with Iannis Xenakis, a man who broke the laws of time and space, leaping far ahead of his generation. Over three nights, commissioned acts by popular experimentalists like Lee Gamble, Puce Mary, Bill Kouligas, Kali Malone, Pan Daijing, Dreamcrusher, and Powel, high-energy percussion performances of Xenakian classics, and a cappella ensembles filled the cavernous halls, with abrupt staccato and drastic light travelling through the former power plant. Xenakis’s revolutionised approach to composition and architecture has been admired across cultural circles for decades—from early adopters of computer-assisted music production to the Iranian Empress Farah to today’s multimedia enthusiasts to Berlin Atonal’s team. At X100, they fulfil Xenakis’s dream to bring the masses into one space beyond elitist art circles, holding them in awe with a multisensory experience. 

Our conversation with X100’s curators starts with an anecdote about Xenakis’s annual trips to Sicily with his family. They’d sail the island on kayaks, camp, and keep moving. During the storms, Xenakis would count the seconds between lightning flashes, grab his kayak and throw himself into the storm to embrace nature’s mayhem. This fascination with the laws of nature laid the foundation of his work as a composer, architect, and mathematician. For LABOUR (Colin Hacklander and Farahnaz Hatam) and OUTER (Laurens von Oswald and Harry Glass), organising X100 was like travelling in their own kayak through the divine chaos of artists and visions inspired by the ground-breaking legacy of Iannis Xenakis.

How did you select Xanakis’s pieces to be presented at X100?

Harry Glass: There aren’t so many electro-acoustic pieces, and only a few that are really available. We worked together with Sergio Luque who was one of the experts in presenting this work, and he’s very scholarly about it also (Sergio Luque is a composer, researcher, and expert in Xenakis’s legacy who supported the team in the curation and production process and diffused the pieces). 

Many of Xenakis’s works are not made available in a final form, and there’s a lot of controversy and politics regarding how these works should be presented. When Xenakis was composing, it was challenging to document things properly—he was making these recordings of his electro-acoustic pieces on tape at that time.

And today, if you want to present or perform his works, you receive digitised files from a publisher that have been made available. But when you speak to some experts, they often say that the way the files were prepared is wrong or a tape is recorded backward. So, it’s often the case that people are usually clapping when these pieces are performed, but they’ve just heard the thing completely upside down. [Luckily] there are these obsessives among musicians, academics, and architects who study his composition techniques and know all the details. So there’s a whole discourse around it, and people who have different perspectives. But there’s also many people who represent misleading perspectives.

Laurens von Oswald: I sometimes think that this ambiguity is kind of baked into the work itself in an interesting way: one of the piano pieces that was presented on the first night was written to be physically impossible to perform (Mists 1980)

— so, the interpreter has to make a decision (Prodromos Symeonidis). They can’t do it all, so they have to say no to some things to be able to say yes to other things. And that’s built into this space, built into the work. So this kind of idea of the ambiguity – that it’s contested somehow, is not just a super-phenomena, but it’s kind of in the stuff itself in some way. 

One of the most notable tasks in your work was to transform the enormous space of the former powerplant into something different than what you’d expect from a music festival. Experimentation with space, light, travelling sound, and stages was even more remarkable during X100 than with the previous editions of Atonal and Metabolic Rift. The audience had to move between two floors confused and excited about where the next performance would break out. 

LO: From early on, we wanted to make it feel less like a conventional festival—with a lineup and a stage where you’re waiting and there’s a changeover and you go to the bar and have a beer and come back to see the next act. And we did that by splitting the staging up, having eight speaker stacks in a space that get used at different configurations for every performance, and somehow that’s our kayak in the storm. Trying to reference this obsession of the Xanakis to kind of be situated within something bigger—some sort of chaos that is going on around.

Along with the Xenakis’s pieces, a number of popular experimental artists performed their new works commissioned specifically for X100. Puce Mary, Bill Kouligas, Pan Daijing, Lee Gamble, Rashad Backer, Moritz von Oswald, Powel—the names affiliated with your initial annual festival, Berlin Atonal. How did you approach the commissions and did you have any specific Xenakian ideas in mind when approaching new artists? Did you want specific techniques or mindsets to be interpreted in these commissioned performances? 

HG: One of the cool things about our curation was that we didn’t know that our internal obsession with Xenakis was so widely shared by other artists around us. An artist would be like, ‘My cat’s called Xenakis!’ or ‘Oh my god, Xenakis was my first massive musical experience!’

You don’t often get an opportunity or a context where you can freely associate your work with somebody else’s, be it techniques or anything else. But it makes sense in this context because it’s directly related to his pieces. For example, Powell is obsessed with specific mechanisms that Xenakis used in his compositions, although Powel’s music doesn’t sound like Xenakis’s.

Another example is Pan Daijing’s [opera pieces,] which don’t sound like Xenakis’s music. Yet, there’s a direct correlation between using voice in the way Pan does, the emotional effect, and the situational aspects [developed by Xenakis]. 

And what about Lee Gamble, whose music influenced many post-club movements on the dancefloors and Discord communities today and questions consumerist violence, seductions, and capitalist impulses? 

HG: There’s so much in Lee’s practice that can correlate to Xanakis’ work — patterns, rhythmic structure, and synthesis techniques that are pretty wild and hard to tame. And short compositions — aiming to not only get a dance floor moving but also create listening situations. 

Colin Hacklander: On the one hand we’re inspired by a number of quite specific techniques as far as synthesising all the sounds that we’re using—for our music [as LABOUR], for example, we’re using supercollider, which is an algorithmic sound synthesising environment. Xenakis was very ahead of his time, as, for example, mapping out these algorithmic ideas in the digital realm and also developing massive audiovisual spectacles. The modern-day audiovisual show that we’re used to seeing is really indebted to Xenakis. On a broad level it’s this idea of developing new systems, architectures and new ways of thinking about music. Xenakis was always coming in on a meta-level of music. Schönberg, for example, deconstructed harmonic music tonality, and then Xanakis just comes in and he’s so post-tonal from the beginning. 

Haswell & Florian Hecker used a technique where you draw sound, which Xenakis developed (UPIC Diffusion Session # 23). And so we use a graphical tablet that’s then digitised and made purely manipulated sound synthesis. Also, Schmickler in Particle/Matter-Wave/Energy was doing a lot of things in terms of diffusion. 

I believe it’s also not common to hear these complex pieces in such a democratised environment with a very diverse audience, from sound designers to artists to ravers to families with toddlers. I can imagine that the academic world holds on to their agency to present and listen to such new modern music. How challenging was it to bring these pieces to Kraftwerk?

CH: The way that the diffusion centre was set up in the festival made it possible to do those pieces. It’s true that they are normally done in a really academic environment, like orchestral halls, and are served in perfect listening positions where the audience is always seated. And what’s special about Kraftwerk and this particular situation is that it’s young audiences—they’re probably not privy to his work or practices from before. They can move around freely in the hall and get different perspectives on the sound itself. Kraftwerk is just a massively beautiful building to do something in. So I think it matches how amazing Xenakis’ works are, how spectacular they are, and how much they work with space and shape that space.

Your piece ‘Sungazing’ (by LABOUR) was one of the central and most expansive performances of the festival, where performers appear among the audience and the audience becomes a part of the action. You started with this approach in your work Hit of Enlightenment (بیگانگی) presented at Metabolic Rift (also organised by the Atonal team) in 2021, right?

Farahnaz Hatam: The first time we played with a group of drummers was at the Atonal festival back in 2018. Next time, for Metabolic Rift, was where we included the peripheral drummers. This piece was magnified more because we started working more with noise and different percussion instruments that we were a bit careful with before because we weren’t sure they’d work in such an expansive space. And actually, when you move people as a cluster and act like a moving cloud, this density allows you to work with instruments that, maybe by themselves as individual instruments, would not be loud enough to be used. This was a beautiful way of incorporating all of the space and the periphery and going outside the speakers’ field. 

This collective act draws inspiration from ancient Zoroastrian rituals involving sun and fire. In Sungazing, strings, percussion and voice, drum sets, light arrangements, dancers, and electronics disperse through the space like molecules—one of the natural phenomena Xenakis studied and implemented in music composition. How do you translate this Xenakian approach in your work?

FH: Xenakis was very interested in natural phenomena and analysed them in terms of probability functions: the way gas moves, birds move in flocks, or people move in a crowd. With Sungazing, we were interested in experimenting with super-imposing stochastic systems, unleashing systems, and then layering on top so that the drummers are moving around, the instrumental is moving around, and the electronic sound is coming in—coming in with their voice. There are moving fabrics through the space in a line, these constant things. 

It’s redrawing space and disrupting the audience. Usually, it’s a very separate zone, and we were very much interested in actually being in that zone, moving through the space, and bringing the proximity of sound much closer to the audience—in an acoustic way and not just through the loudspeakers.

CH: Exactly, not just through the loudspeakers. And this juxtaposition of amplified and un-amplified sounds is a fundamentally different space to be in when we’re listening to just the acoustic sounds in the room. You listen differently and become more aware of the multi-dimensional space and sound organisation. So the listening becomes more active, and your ears have to reach out and look for the new details. Plus [the experience is amplified] by the lights. 

The audience was well familiar with the majority of the artists invited to X100, and many went to a specific night to see a specific act. The great thing about well-curated festivals is that there’s space to discover new artists. JJJJJerome Ellis was a new name to the experiments-pampered X100’s audience. His poetic and luminous performance softened the concrete severity of Kraftwerk with the mellow sound of his voice and his sax, with his character freezing and melting in time and travelling between generations, dressed in lace and embroidery. How does his work translate into the ideas behind your curation? 

HG: One thing we are attracted to in his practice is the continuity between him as a person, his lifestyle, and what he does artistically. For me, it was very special meeting him and discovering that the glimpses one gets of his self-understanding expressed through his music also appeared in his personality. The way he conceives his performances is deeply personal, reflecting on his own experiences. 

And what about Dreamcrusher— the noise, industrial, nihilist queer rebel from Brooklyn, who performed at Kraftwerk for the first time? Pure punk as they are, they invited the audience to loosen up in this ‘arty-farty’ setting at the beginning of their performance. And honest as they are, Dreamcrusher finished by saying, “People who invited me here have been really nice to me, and it doesn’t always happen with alternative musicians who are not white.” 

HG: That was super sweet of them to say—I wasn’t expecting that, but it’s touching, nice, and very human in the context of a festival that could be quite ‘inhuman’ in some ways. Both their and Jerome’s interventions were quite human, and it was also something we were trying to balance out. It also goes for Pan [Daijing]— to avoid getting lost in this abstract world of techniques, computer music, etc. 

Dreamcrusher’s act was one of the most ‘vocal’ ones at the festival, radiating a different energy of experimentsation, more common for hardcore concerts, rather than what’s expected from Xanakian vocal interpretations, like Pan Daijing’s experimental opera or an a cappella piece sung by the PHØNIX16 ensemble. How does Dreamcrusher’s approach to music correlate to the ideas behind X100? 


HG: A part of our job and our journey is trying to look for people who fit a certain idea, and with this project this idea was a little bit different to what we normally do in that it had this specific slant. But that in a way made it easier to find the things that we wanted to identify and the artists that we wanted to bring. One great thing we learned from Sergio [Luque] is using the word ‘energy’ as a musical word, in a technical sense. Instead of saying ‘loudness’ or ‘harshness’ Sergio would say the energy here, the energy in this range, the energy from that speaker. I think the way in which this translates into a human body and a bodily performance is nicely expressed in what Dreamcrusher is doing. And that for sure is something interesting for us.

Credits

Photography · Frankie Casillo and Lisa Wassmann
Special thanks to Berlin Atonal and Modern Matters

Primavera Sound Festival Barcelona 2022

Posted on by nr

NR · World
Words · Ellie Brown

After a two-year hiatus, Primavera Sound returns to the Parc del Fòrum in Barcelona this weekend. That, in itself, is a reason to celebrate. For sure, the very idea of a live festival is music to the ears of many after the coronavirus pandemic saw the cancellation of summer events in two consecutive years. Last year would also have marked the twentieth anniversary since Primavera Sound launched back in 2001. In its first edition, the festival was a much smaller ordeal and took place at Barcelona’s Poble Espanyol. But the likes of Sonic Youth, The Kills and The White Stripes all performed there – setting the precedent for the festival’s line up each year, as music icons and legends from around the world return descend upon Primavera’s stages each summer. Of course, the festival has grown considerably in size, popularity and reputation since then, whilst managing to retain something of a “local” festival feeling. But perhaps there’s no greater testament to Primavera’s global influence within the music world than the fact this year’s iteration has been promoted to a two-weekend line up. Whilst Massive Attack, Tame Impala, The Strokes, Gorillaz and Tyler, The Creator (to name just a few) are set to headline this weekend’s events, the likes of Dua Lipa, Lorde and Megan Thee Stallion will also perform next weekend. 

The addition of this second line up to Primavera’s programming is part of the festival team’s response to the pandemic. As Marta Olivares, Primavera’s affable Head of Communications, tells NR over Zoom, COVID was a moment for pause and reflection – especially as, she says, it was a time when the “whole ecosystem proved to be so fragile.” For Primavera co-founder, Pablo Soler, this couldn’t have been more apparent; the pandemic didn’t just reaffirm the importance of live music, he says, “it has revealed it;”

“Without festivals, we realised that we were missing a part of our lives that was the collective experience.”

The communal aspect of a festival goes without saying – it’s about the excitement and the emotions that are experienced with other people that, Pablo says, is crucial for creating a state of happiness. The idea that the festival is nothing if not for the people is crystal clear, as Marta explains that having this year’s events spread out over the course of two weekends (with a week of indoor performances in Barcelona in between, no less) was made possible by the fact that last year’s ticketholders “overwhelmingly” decided to keep their tickets. As a result, Primavera 2022 is an amalgamation of three years’ worth of acts in some ways; Beck and Pavement, scheduled to headline in 2020 will, for example, make a much-awaited appearance in Barcelona this weekend. But over the course of the pandemic, Marta says, we’ve witnessed;

“so many artists creating amazing stuff, working so hard and releasing incredible records.”

In that sense then, Primavera 2022 is an ode to music in the lead up to, and over the course of, the pandemic – especially when popular acts from today might have flown under the radar back in 2020. 

Given that the festival will be a de-facto twentieth birthday celebration, this weekend’s events will be both a moment to look back on Primavera’s journey so far, whilst also looking towards the future. In fact, part of the festival’s events will take place at Poble Espanyol – something that Pablo thinks the team can be justifiably sentimental about. “Over the years, we have played concerts at this venue outside of the festival,” he notes, “but going back there with Primavera Sound is even more emotional.” It will be, Marta says, a kind of homage to that tiny festival that was first unveiled. But as much as Poble Espanyol is part of Primavera’s legacy, the festival team’s outlook is to keep moving forward. In fact, in the midst of the pandemic when the Primavera team were figuring out their bid for survival, the answer was, perhaps surprisingly, to grow bigger still – though “sustainably” as Marta puts it. “It felt weird to stay put,” she recalls adding that there was a need to pivot somehow. As in previous years, the festival will head to Porto for the weekend (which will occur at the same time as the Barcelona edition’s second weekend). But satellite festivals will also take place in Los Angeles, Santiago, Buenos Aires and São Paulo later on in the year. “It was [a case of] go home or go big,” Marta notes of the decision to grow the festival in this way. “Definitely we’re going big.” For Pablo, the new locations explain the festival’s future-facing outlook in themselves: “we are a festival that any country would want to have.” And with an insatiable international appetite for Primavera as it’s staged in Barcelona, it perhaps makes sense to take the music to the people. So how does the essence of Primavera translate to these new locations? Marta notes that the festival’s Barcelona location is part of its draw – close to the city, near the sea, and with a lot of cultural pull as well as music. “That’s something we want to be careful with,” she says of the other locations – noting, for example, Porto’s luscious green backdrop near the coast at the festival’s site in the Parque da Cidade. But as Primavera looks outwards and globally, it’s also turning back inwards, too. Earlier this year, Primavera Sound Madrid 2023 was announced – a way for the festival to continue its newly-established tradition of two back-to-back weekend events in Spain. There is, it seems, an exciting path ahead for Primavera over the coming years, but first: this weekend. 

“We are always the first festival of the season,” Marta explains, adding that this particular edition means that the weekend will be something of a test run for the string of European festivals that follow on.

“I want people to come to Barcelona and celebrate life, to express themselves and to feel safe and alive again”

Marta says. Pablo concurs; “seriously speaking, we have learned that we have to live in the moment – seize the day – because we are all more vulnerable than we thought. If we should take this twentieth anniversary party as the party of our lives, then so be it.” But what should Primavera punters expect when they’re there? For Marta, it’s the unexpected – recalling Arcade Fire’s impromptu performance on a boxing ring-esque stage at the 2017 festival. This is, of course, not an indication or confirmation that such an event might occur this year, but possibilities and chance encounters are certainly part of the Primavera fabric. To that end, Marta describes the ideal standard that the Primavera team strives for: “at the perfect Primavera;”

“you would be able to enjoy a show from your favourite band; you would go to something that challenges you; you would see someone you don’t yet know will be your next favourite act; and the fourth would be something you really had fun at.”

And with a line up as glittering as Primavera’s is this year, it’s almost guaranteed to be perfect.

Credits

More info · Primavera Sound Festival Barcelona
Special thanks to Chris Cuff and Henry Turner (Good Machine PR)

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