Festival Editions
Xeno IV
Berghain, Am Wriezener Bahnhof, 10243 Berlin → MapTickets: 15 €, door only (includes Theta II)
30
FriOn this night at Berghain, seven different performers will boast their respective approaches to brazenness and potency in techno.
James Donadio aka Prostitutes has found homes for his crunchy, textural techno on Digitalis, Diagonal, Opal Tapes, and most recently Spectrum Spools and Night School. Donadio has carved out and occupied his own particular groove in the techno community, and this niche is as solid and relentless as his 3D beats, the materiality and rough woodenness of which could leave splinters. The Quietus wrote of the final B-side track to Donadio’s September EP Nouveauree that it “borders on ridiculousness, a blaring foghorn swells like a knocked lip, smothering everything in its wake.”
As part of his musical studies, Aleksi Perälä (Ovuca) spent several months immersed in the studio containing pioneering electronic instruments built in the 1960s by one of the great unsung pioneers of the electronic age, Erkki Kurenniemi. Featured at CTM’s 15th anniversary edition last year, Kurenniemi’s instruments and sound library left an indelible imprint on Perälä’s explorations and inspired a series of Colundi Sequence releases for his own AP Musik, based on a newly-invented musical scale: “Instead of dividing the keyboard into octaves with semitones, we have chosen specific frequencies to work around... The scale is 128 resonant frequencies chosen via experimentation and philosophy, each relating to a specific human bio-resonance, or psychology, traditional mysticism or belief, physics, astronomy, maths, chemistry.” (interview with The Wire). Perälä will test the efficacy of his Colundi Sequences during this night at Berghain utilizing a six-channel setup and constitute one of the brainier, gentler acts over the course of the evening.
Gábor Lázár is a computer music composer and innovator noticed for his 2014 debut on Lorenzo Senni's Presto!? label and subsequent 12" EP on Death of Rave Records. His music, a collection of chunky, aggressive, iceberg structures, is the voice of algorithms. His mathy electronic formations will cover the driest reaches of this night's steroided expressions.
French electro heavy-hitter Maelstrom will circulate his minor-key candy. Although grim, Joan Mael Péneau's tracks satisfy a shallow-bellied hunger for ecstatic, diamond-studded, up-temp action in a way few of the night's other performers' devotion to the gutter will permit them to do.
Canadian Night Slugs affiliate Egyptrixx will appear ahead of the release of his third LP (to be released with the launch of his newly founded Halocline Trance label) and do its part to keep the evening shrouded in grey. His music wanders techno and grime's existential, misanthropic planes and makes isolated, wallowing grooving an inevitability.
Young British producer and Diagonal Records founder Oscar Powell is yet another high-octane addition to the evening's roster. Powell's international presence has lately augmented itself through EP releases on Liberation Technologies and The Death of Rave and a single on XL Recordings. An experienced DJ, Powell will use this opportunity to test the waters with his first live set, pulverizing with his trademark combative approach to D&B, techno, and industrial EBM.
Michail Stangl aka Opium Hum will grace the evening with his fanciful and broad-scoped imagination and act as the generous, adaptive glue amidst a host of uncompromising acts.
Gábor Lázár is presented within SHAPE, a new 3-year initiative co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, which unites 16 likeminded organisations in supporting emerging experimental sound-based artists in Europe .
Egyptrixx[CA]
As Egyptrixx, Toronto-based DJ/producer and Night Slugs affiliate David Psutka combines elements of club music – techno, house, dubstep, pop, and drones, with heavy bass, thick drums, and spectral synths to create his own chrome-plated, industrial strain, described as "dissonant, rapturous, and antisocial" and as "jeep music for a Saturn desert."
Gábor Lázár[HU]
Gábor Lázár is a sound artist living and working in Budapest. He studied electronic music and media arts at University of Pécs. Gábor’s works are real time recordings of specific combinations of synthesis and compositional techniques.
Opium Hum[DE]
Opium Hum, aka Michail Stangl, builds his DJ sets using sombre, hazy drones and fantastical soundscapes permeated by deep and shifting rhythms, creating what can only be called a waking dream.
Maelstrom[FR]
With his emergence on the scene, French producer Joan Mael Péneau has branded a new type of club sound – an aptly titled maelstrom of electro-hypnotic techno under his artist name, Maelstrom. Releasing on labels such as Dirtybird, Boys Noize Records, ZONE Recordings, and Sound Pellegrino since 2011, Péneau defines his work as “bass music with a techno aesthetic.”
Prostitutes[US]
As Prostitutes, Cleveland's James Donadio has garnered a wealth of attention from myriads of rubberneckers far and wide for his gravelly, abrasive oscillations.This laud is all the more notable considering Donadio's unwillingness to self-promote outside of the reaches of his label's humble blog- any google searches turn up little more than the facebook and wikipedia pages of other bands called Prostitutes.
Aleksi Perälä[FI]
Finland native Aleski Perälä is a UK-based experimental electronica artist, sometime identified within the IDM genre and prestigiously signed to Aphex Twin’s Rephlex label as well as his own AP Musik. Having launched his career under the glitchy melodic pseudonym of Ovuca, he has also produced as Astrobotnia, and is fueled by his passion for the physics of sound.
Powell[UK]
With a diverse sound that incorporates New York no wave, industrial/EBM, post-punk, late 90s drum n’ bass, and ascetic European electronics, Powell's thoroughly emaciated, obtuse, and primitivist take on techno (merging club music, noise, and experimental electronics) has provided the foundation for his own Diagonal label and been tipped by the likes of Downwards founder Regis, PAN head Bill Kouligas, Raime, and Blackest Ever Black.
