2023

Alvin Curran (US)

In his own words, Alvin Curran, born 1938 in Providence RI, (USA) has since the age of 5 continued to make music with all sounds, in all places, with all people, at all times. After 60 years of composing, performing, releasing records and pushing boundaries, it seems fair to say that Alvin Curran is one of those singular artists who always seems to be not just one but two or three steps ahead of their time.

As a co-founder of the radical music collective MUSICA ELETTRONICA VIVA (with Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum) Curran crossed musical territories and blurred the lines between composed and improvised music - a path he further explored on his highly influential (and now minimalist classics) solo records of the 70s like Songs and Views of the Magnetic Garden and Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri.

Alvin Curran's music-making embraces all the contradictions (composed/improvised, tonal/atonal, maximal/minimal) in a serene dialectical encounter and in a volatile mix of lyricism and chaos, structure and indeterminacy, fog horns, fiddles and fiddle heads. His more than 200 works feature everything from taped/sampled natural sounds, piano, synthesizers and computers to violin, percussion, accordion and chorus.

Whether in the intimate form of his well-known solo performances, or pure chamber music, experimental radio works or large-scale site-specific sound environments and installations, all forge a very personal language gathered from all the languages through dedicated research and recombinant invention.

But maybe more than anything else, Alvin Curran is dedicated to the restoration of dignity to the profession of making non-commercial music as part of a personal search for future social, political and spiritual forms. In other words, it’s difficult to think of a more vigorously inspirational artist to present at FoEG.

Annea Lockwood/A Film About Listening (US)

Annea Lockwood/A Film About Listening is a short film by Oscar nominated director Sam Green. It is an intimate portrait of New Zealand-born American pioneering experimental composer and musician Annea Lockwood that gives a glimpse into the enthralling world of sound that she has been creating and exploring for more than 50 years.

A lifelong friend of fellow composer and ‘deep listener’ Pauline Oliveros, Annea Lockwood has for decades studied how sound can have profound effects on attentive listening bodies. Her work ranges from concert music, featuring prepared piano, glass, and other instruments, to surrealistic performance art, field recordings of natural found sounds, and multimedia installations.

Lockwood’s deep affection for all things water-related is evident throughout her catalog. Her attention to performance works focused on environmental sounds and life narratives began in the 1970s and ’80s with World Rhythms and A Sound Map of the Hudson River. A Sound Map of the Danube weaves field recordings of the rivers with recorded stories of the people living and working on the water.

This film is the perfect way to tune into Saturday’s program at FoEG. Not only is it a warm and heartfelt insight into one of the most interesting experimental artists, it is also a movie that calms you and sharpens your senses. Highly recommended for anyone interested in “deep listening” and the positive effects it can have.

Barbara Skovmand (DK)

Artist Barbara Amalie Skovmand Thomsen has been working with many different media like photography, video, poetry, installations, and performance. The central approach in her work has been to seek tactile ways to express a sense of cohesion and belonging to the world. This has been very apparent in her latest endeavors as well, creating sophisticated sound sculptures inspired by the two visionary French Baschet brothers in collaboration with Rafael Fernández and Martí Ruiz.

Skovmand has built several of these instruments, and for her opening performance at FoEG, she will present her latest creation: the Ctenophora, an angelic sound sculpture, which resembles a kind of acoustic synthesizer. Vibrations are created by rubbing glass with watery fingers, which are then channeled towards large screens made of mirror-polished stainless steel, enhancing and distorting the sound. Drawing inspiration from our closest planktonic ancestors – a gelatinous predator, the comb jellyfish or Ctenophora, which has survived the five major mass extinctions – Barbara Skovmand's newest work conjures up a new atmospheric world of spherical tones.

Dania (IQ)

Born in Baghdad, raised in Tasmania and now based in Barcelona, Dania moves between cultures and continents with her amorphous creative vision directly tied to her transient existence. In her musical practice, Dania is an architect of textured, neo-ambient soundscapes, where she is preoccupied with harmonics and tonality, while exploring both sound and identity.

Her debut album, Foreign Body (released 2023 on Ecstatic recordings), was written and recorded at home in Barcelona, using a 4-track tape recorder. Using vocal looping techniques, modular synthesis and collaged samples of Iraqi musicians and poets from the post-Gulf War era the tracks have been weaved together into a cloud of magnetic drones and soft hypnagogic vocal textures.

DJ Marcelle (NL)

Although DJ Marcelle has been collecting music longer than most of us have been alive, she still feels like The Netherlands’ sweetheart. She’s an artist with a mischievous, rule-bending and almost ironic approach to her DJing, producing and radio hosting – cut with her trademark wit yet supported by an unquestionable amount of skill.

Well known for her three-turntable setup, DJ Marcelle makes compositions out of songs and symphonies out of mixes – colliding disparate genres, appropriated vocal snippets and warped soundscapes into a giant Frankenstein-like melting pot.

Having a déjà vue? 👀 DJ Marcelle was supposed to play at FoEG in 2021 but unfortunately had to cancel. Therefore we’re absolutely thrilled to invite her for a second time to close this year’s festival with a massive dance party.

Grev Trold (DK)

Grev Trold is nothing short of a one-man dungeon black metal band from the south eastern part of Jutland. The band has been aptly named after Grev Trolle, a local pirate known for his brutality and the protagonist of a legend featuring extraordinary cunningness, family revenge and cut-off heads. Like most pirates, Grev Trolle was both an integrated part of early capitalist history and at the same time a figure of resistance and transgressing standard capitalist ventures.

While 'Offerbugten' is the debut of a new project, it is far from the first time the artist behind it has gone to this place for a cathartic outlet, with dungeon synth project Henbane and the black metal of Seiðr being closely related. Featuring chilling shrieks and frenetic guitar bursts, the deranged sounds of Grev Trold descend into eerie feverish hallucinations about brutality and sacrifices in a cold distant mythological past.

Institute for Certified Nomadic Illicit Sonic Practices (BR)

Inspired by drawings from a handbook about calisthenics and gymnastics (published in 1864!) Institute for Certified Nomadic Illicit Sonic Practices came up with a series of musical exercises to stay healthy and fit during the continuous lockdowns over the past few years. These exercises later turned into their debut album released earlier this year.

Consisting of Marina Cyrino and Matthias Koole, both originally from Brazil but now based in Berlin, Institute for Certified Nomadic Illicit Sonic Practice play an energetic mix of electric and acoustic free music. With their primary instruments - guitar and various flutes - often manipulated, the duo’s music reveal completely new sides of otherwise well-tried instruments, where sonic perspectives are shifted and instrumental identities displaced. Throw the calisthenics in the mix and you’re in for some deeply nourishing sonic exercises.

Jules Reidy (AU)

Jules Reidy originally headed to the German capital for a short break from their jazz guitar studies in Sydney, but was electrified by the Berlin scene and have now been living there for almost a decade, a period in which they have undergone a process of musical reorientation.

In their approach, Reidy could be said to be re-imagining a DIY indie aesthetic with an emphasis on techniques usually reserved for classical minimalism. Surreal auto-tuned vocals, strummed strings in just intonation and dubby delays create vast spheres of sounds on top of each other, while delicately picked twelve-string guitars in the midst emphasize the subtlety of their compositions with a rare, open-hearted emotional honesty.

Recent records include In Real Life (Black Truffle, 2019), Vanish (Editions Mego, 2020) and World in World (Black Truffle, 2022), Their newest solo record, Trances, is set to be released via Shelter Press in October 2023. Jules Reidy also performs in various duo formations, and is a member of Oren Ambarchi’s band Carpe Diem.

Lenhart Tapes (RS)

Get ready for a perfect blend of sophisticated, wild world-noise-ethno-industrial-folk zombie music hailing straight from Belgrade, Serbia. Lenhart Tapes is a one-man-cassette-tape-manipulator known for his striking and unforgettable live performances. Walkmen are his trusted instruments and with them he mixes selected material from his cassette collection on top of groovy rhythmic loops fusing local folk tunes and screechy noises into obscure soundscapes.

As a passionate collector of audio cassettes Vladimir Lenhart has collected everything from field recordings, rare folk music, spoken word and propaganda material. His grandfather was a well known performer of traditional Slovak folk songs in the 1950s. When the project Lenhart Tapes was born in 2010, Vladimir found a way to rediscover and fuse his musical heritage with the noisy music he’d been performing in his formative years.

Lukas De Clerck (BE)

Beyond merely resurrecting ancient, bloody myths, Lukas De Clerck uses every single breath to give the aulos a different kind of renaissance, where its penetrating and alluring qualities have been excavated to pave new grounds in the practices of old.

The aulos is an ancient-Greek double reeded double pipe which went extinct more than a millennium ago. Inevitably auto-didact and equipped with the artful sense of devotion, De Clerck has dug deep into the technical and cultural peculiarities of this long-silenced instrument. Under the moniker Bloedneus & de Snuitkever he has released several albums of disorienting hymns and improvised sound worlds.

As legend has it the Satyr Marsyas, playing the aulos, challenged Apollo to a musical contest. Apollo and his lyre beat Marsyas and celebrated his victory by stringing his opponent up from a tree and flaying him alive.

While we’re not hoping for any blood on stage, we do expect nothing less than myth-shattering, pure blasts of sound that will rejuvenate both body, mind and soul.

Moundabout (IE)

Moundabout is a new folk project based in Ireland by Paddy Shine, of psychedelic powerhouse GNOD (who performed at FoEG back in 2017), and Phil Masterson, of cult groups Los Langeros, Damp Howl and Bisect. A couple of years ago the duo set out to explore a new form of psychedelic Irish folk music where the listener is invited to see folk as a continuum stretching way back beyond the revival of the 1950s and 1960s to an eternal vibrancy that predates classical antiquity and Irish civilisation itself.

With a backdrop of the Galtees, Ireland's highest inland mountain range, the duo recently recorded their second album, An Cnoc M​ó​r, with a set up of guitars, vocals, old analogue synths and a sparse electronic accompaniment from an antique Hammond drum machine, which Shine found in his auntie’s attic. Getting lost in liminal zones, at thresholds, where boundaries merge, the pair seek to push even further out than ever before where folk meets free psych music.

Piotr Kurek (PL)

Hailing from the musical hotbed of Warsaw, the Polish multi-instrumentalist and composer Piotr Kurek creates vibrant, hypnotic music often revolving around the captivating allure of the human voice.

Like a sonic alchemist of sorts, Kurek weaves an intricate tapestry of synthesis and vintage electronics, vocals and acoustic instruments on a bed of a diverse range of influences - from baroque and renaissance music to musique concrete, krautrock and psychedelic music.

Occasionally composing for film and theatre, Kurek already has a diverse output on his resume, with music released by Hands In The Dark, Black Sweat Records, Dunno, Sangoplasmo and other labels. His latest record, Smartwoods, has just been released on Unsound. But whether he's delving into ominous soundscapes, pulsating synth lines or uncanny and otherworldly vocal arrangements, Kurek’s gentle signature is present with an adept sense of combining melody and mystery in uncharted territory.

Rick Myers (UK)

Hailing from Manchester, Rick Myers now resides just a stone's throw away from FoEG’s very own city of birth; Brattleboro in Vermont. Here Myers delves deep into simple concepts, inviting any curious mind to explore alongside him through his hyper-intimate books, sound editions, visual art and captivating performances - from groundbreaking sound collaborations with Andy Votel, Sean Canty, and Matt Krefting to his audacious attempt to complete the legendary filmmaker Luis Buñuel’s project of creating a bullet possessing such a weak charge that it would simply bounce off the filmmaker’s shirt when fired at him.

Rick Myers has graced solo exhibitions at The National Poetry Library at Southbank Centre and Printed Matter, and he has performed and screened videos at institutions such MoMA Library and Whitechapel Gallery while his artist books and interdisciplinary project archives are part of the permanent collections at Library of Congress, Harvard University, MoMA, Tate Britain and many other prestigious institutions.

Sosena Gebre Eyesus (ET)

The begena, a 10 string Ethiopian bass lyre, is one of the world’s oldest and most beguiling instruments with an ambiguous origin story, why it also carries the name The Harp of David. Since ancient times it has been employed as an aural balm and a soother of evil, anxious spirits to calm them down.

Sosena Gebre Eyesus is one of the most enthralling practitioners of the begena, with her trance-inducing harp playing, which found its way to a stunning album released by Little Ax Records in 2018. Accompanied by the low, buzzing strings, Eyesus performs her devotional Ethiopian hymns with a soft, soothing and utterly beautiful voice filling the void between the World of the living and the dead. Extremely rare in concert this is not to be missed!

Spost (DK)

What makes a band? Is it the presence of a certain combination of instruments? An unpredictable frontman accompanied by noisy guitars, bass and drums? Or is it when a group of people transcend what you see on stage and turn the collective sound making into an entirely new creature, seemingly taking on a life of its own?

Spost is an ever-morphing and ever-growing configuration of people, making music - or something else - depending on the situation. From surrealist trance-funk to action paint and sticks ‘n’ stones jams, the floor is open when FoEG welcomes back one of the true great free entities of the Copenhagen music scene.

kristian poulsen · SPOST - MONKEY FACE - SIDE A

Thulebasen (DK)

Refining the art of spontaneous composition since the mid 00s, Thulebasen is a 3-piece band with familiar faces from the Copenhagen scene at the helm. After a long hiatus, Nis Bysted, Niels Kristian Eriksen and Felia Gram-Hansen reappeared this summer at Badesøen Festival to bring their unpredictable avant-rock back on stage for the first time in several years.

Just like the original Thule Base (now renamed to Pituffik Space Base), located far up the North-Western part of Greenland, the band find themselves at the remote borders of known and unknown territory, with a closely tuned, all-channels-open approach and a zen-like musical communication between the three members.

Thulebasen strikes a perfect balance between utilizing their deep knowledge of music history, letting curious minds roam free and deploying tightrocking riffs, purehearted melodies and kickass grooves just at the right moment. A FoEG-approved cocktail in other words.