#ritual electronica

[bodhi-ryuchai]

Saturday night at La Zorba in Paris......

Finally, I was able to crawl out of the shed of Reille – without my backpack for once, what a relief – and walked down the street to the metro station on Saturday night before Daylight Saving Time on Sunday – you know longer days & shorter nights – to take a few trains up to Belleville to catch a proper experimental music event. And, this was definitely that type of event to catch!I had the…

[iamlisteningto]

Massive Attack's Ritual Spirit

[thekultofo]

Ladies and gentlemen, get ready for another enchanting journey.

From the darkest depths to the celestial heights, we explore the musical balance between the light and the dark !

Join me, as we embark on this odyssey to uncover these hidden musical gems.

#ambient

Original artwork: William-Adolphe Bouguereau - Alma Parens

I'd like to thank my Patreons who supported this show: Dafreeze, Strayd0g & R. Relique.

If you also want to support The Kult of O, and get more content, then consider becoming a Patreon:

Docetism - Station III Aphotic Apathy - Evolution Temple ov Saturn & Dead Editor - Black Sun (Dead Can Dance Cover) weldroid - Comatosed Disruption (AN MOKU Remix) Kloob - Bleak Area The Implicit Order - Across The Burning Fields Skink - Feb 21st: In a Tube ATTRITION - Invocation V Zonal - Body of Wire (featuring Moor Mother) Niundi - Mother of Reckoning Hybryds - Wailing for the Fallen Angels

Blog https://www.thekultofo.com/horae-obscura-alma-mater/

[pesura]

album stream: Jon Hopkins - Ritual (Domino, 2024)

[stardust-bridges]

Club Furies Premiere: Divide - Prometheus [Prophet Recordings]

Here comes the next release from Prophet Recordings, the Italian label created by the need to express music without market filters, for an artistic techno expression. Focused on electronic-techno sound research, being able to give an outlet to hypnotic, dub, and Detroit sonorities, presents the edition number five of its Various Artists series entitled Ritual Act. From different parts of the…

[ofb1t]

✸ The new music video "The Metamorphosis I" will be available very soon.

🜍 ◐𐍆ᛒ1𝚪 🜍

#ritual #rite #rituales #electronicmusic #darkwave #expressionism #performanceart #dance #contemporarydance #conceptualart #butoh #ankokubuyou #theatreofcruelty #ambientmusic #theatre #musicvideo #dreampop #idm #electronica #downtempo #death #danceofdarkness #darkmusic #darkambient #darkart #magic #witchcraft #witch #theatre #hechizos #dsbm #dark #magic #darkmusic #glitch #glitchart #lofi #lofiedits #surrealism #dreams #triphop #goth #gothic #ofb1t

[bestsnubbedeurovisionsong]

Propaganda under the cut

Samo Mi Se Spava:

I don't think it's my first place bias saying that this really is SUCH a creative and unique Eurovision entry. It's something new and so incredibly effective. Everything was pulled off to the complete best degree it could be and it was frankly perfect. SUCH a strong performance of such a strong song. I understand that some people don't like songs unless they have a pop belt vocal but I just think everything about smss is perfect. I genuinely cannot believe it placed bottom 5.

Vote for the Lobster Twinkovič or the lobsters will come for you 🦞🦞🦞

Gamer boy 🥺🥺

Fulenn:

It’s such a good and cool and fun song ?? Like, the genre is Celtic electronica which already just sounds super cool as a name, but it’s also just cool. The vibes were immaculate, they were serving that satanic ritual vibe that I know I’m not the only one to like. Also, the song is in Breton which is cool, like, yes, that’s also a part of the country !! The lyrics are about a legend from Brittany !

For the first time in years France brings a song that isn't a ballad and that isn't in French, but in the regional language Breton which is wildly underrated. The song, the act, the vibes, all of it was top five worthy! I will forever be bitter

Forest witch ritual music. Nothing more needed

[joemuggs]

Heavy footsteps in your attic means a spectre telepathic

Been thinking a lot about hauntological things lately, especially vis-a-vis 90s electronic music due to this compilation I reviewed. And I also did a little essay for State51's Greedmag, about the Ghost Box reissues and what it all means. The mag is sold out, so reposting the text here.

👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

When the Ghost Box label arrived it seemed, appropriately enough, like an apparition. Springing out of nowhere with its perfectly realised audio, visual and phrase making aesthetic, it was an uncanny (or unheimlich as its fans loved to say) weird and wobbly echo of the British past. It melted together drizzle on the downs with Pelican books, municipal library leaflets, Ceefax, public information films, folk horror, the Radiophonic Workshop, local news segments about mummers and morrismen, trippy bits of the avant garde that got slotted into odd cracks in TV programming: things which in the mid 00s seemed so very far away in a distant, misty past. These references came, after all, from a time before websites, before rave and jungle, before lads’ mags and EasyJet: from The Old Days. 

It's funny, then, listening to those first few Ghost Box releases, when they’re ticking towards two decades old themselves: steadily approaching being as old now as some of their references were when they were made. First up, very pleasingly, they still sound deeply weird. The gently disturbing folk melodies played on rudimentary retro synthesisers on Belbury Poly’s first EP and album, and the tiny disjointed collages of half-glimpsed children’s TV scenes, hippie films and rituals on The Focus Group’s Sketches and Spells retain all their power to open up little portals to parts of your mind you didn’t even know existed, to pasts you’re not sure whether you ever experienced or not. Second, and perhaps even stranger, they sound less archaic and perhaps less kitsch than when they first emerged.

There are reasons for this. First of all, it’s worth noting that, although the way it turned up fully formed with artwork, music and website all as one gesamtkunstwerk could make it seem so, Ghost Box didn’t materialise out of a vacuum. Aside from obvious contemporary allies like Broadcast and Trunk Records, the sense of a historically deep British folklore blurring into the eeriness of pre-digital-era pop culture was humming in the background already. Julian Cope’s The Modern Antiquarian had come out in 1998, its pages laid out and mock-faded to look like a 60s/70s guidebook, mysticism and mischief interwoven throughout it. Coil’s turn of the millennium output too – notably the Musick to Play in the Dark series – brought together English pastoralism, dark futurism, deep-dive psychedelia, old synthesisers and a commitment to being deeply disconcerting.

Musically you could hear precursors to Ghost Box in 90s electronica outliers like Plaid and Ultramarine, and in oddball retro ephemera collagists like Solex, Tipsy and People Like Us. And on the fringes of folktronica in the early 00s, acts like Tunng, Colleen and Neotropic were likewise using technology to open up cracks that let stranger parts of the past leak out. But looking back, now that all of this stuff is the past, maybe it’s a little bit less defined by its source material than we thought at the time. Maybe this wasn’t just about accosting the past in its weirdness and absurdity, but filtering, preserving and channelling it forwards, making sure that the chosen parts continued haunting the future?

Remember, this was a time of a very dramatic material shifting in relationship to the past. From 1999 Napster – quickly followed by AudioGalaxy, LimeWire and the rest – presented the opportunity to access a vast swather of recorded music, and what you couldn’t find there you could increasingly on specialist blogs. At the start of 2005, just before these first Ghost Box releases, the launch of YouTube marked the first creak in the opening of the floodgates for video too. Even though internet was still creaky by today’s standars, you could still discover an obscure artist and have their entire discography within hours. 

All of this led to bafflement, derangement, even anxiety. Received wisdom in mainstream – and even much alternative – culture media was that this glutting would lead to a homogenisation or levelling of culture. Everything being available all at once meant there was no longer a clear distinction between populist and underground, new niche aesthetics would not be able to develop before they were assimilated, it was, perhaps, a cultural End of History. And in a sense this was true. Certainly, to the horror of inky press commentators who’d earned well from the certainties of the post-1950s definitions of youth culture and subculture, there was no “new rock’n’roll”. There was no new punk, no new acid house, no single sound that rewrote the rulebook. 

Of course, change hadn’t come to a halt. The future was just increasingly, in William Gibson’s unforgettable phrase “unevenly distributed”. Cultural evolution was no longer defined by single radical paradigm shifts in a single, central pop culture, but rather moving forwards in syntagmatic shifts: the piecing together of what would become new traditions. This is the reason young people today talk in terms not of genres or scenes, but “aesthetics”. And this is where we come back to our folktronicists and hauntologists: in this everything-all-at-once deluge we needed people to coalesce aesthetics that we could cling on to. 

When Belbury Poly mapped harpsichords onto analogue bass, or made audio allusions to Delia Derbyshire and John Baker, they were reinforcing connections, between fey psyche pop, cartoons, dramas, leaflets, animated geometry from 5am Open University broadcasts, in the way that synapses are strengthened during dreaming. The same when The Focus Group created micro fragments that were Polish Jazz, Italian horror, Dr Who and J Dilla all at once: this was creating a grammar of weirdness, a very specific binding together of sound, image and idea that could withstand the surge of undifferentiated information swirling around it in the outside world. These records didn’t just create sounds that still sound good now, they didn’t just set a grammar of peculiarity in motion that echoes through today via all kinds of odd internet moments and disparate creations from Scarfolk to chillwave. They also gave us a toolkit: a post-postmodern set of methods for coherently blending together the our hyperspecific special interests into new essences and letting them leak forward into the future, unleashing brand new hauntings. 

[uselessidea]

Artists: Useless Idea Title: Glitch in the Colors Label / CAT#: Suction Records / suction057 Format: Vinyl 2x12”/Digital LP Release date: November 11, 2022 Digital Master by Cesare Bignotti ® 2022 

BUY VINYL Comes with a Bandcamp download card: https://useless-idea.bandcamp.com/alb... https://bleep.com/format/1148347-glit... https://suction.shop/products/useless... https://suction-eu.shop/products/usel... 

 “Glitch in the Colors” is the debut full-length vinyl release by Useless Idea, aka Italian artist and producer, Cesare Bignotti. Useless Idea debuted on Suction Records in 2021, with a limited-to-300 12-inch sampler (alongside Bignotti’s alter-ego Seven Nights Alone), which Bleep.com named as their “EP of the Week” upon release, writing “Useless Idea’s widescreen array of hazy synthesized atmospheres, intricate samples and processed recordings … conjure thoughts of a fictional past in another dimension.” With previous under-the-radar cassette album releases on WéMè Records (2018’s “Acid Hologram”) and EVES Music (2020’s “Xa Peh”), Useless Idea has been quietly recording his own brand of inventive, playful, and melodic IDM/braindance for more than 20 years. We’ve been slowly compiling Glitch in the Colors for several years now, and the result is a varied, yet cohesive, collection of instrumental electronic beat-scapes recorded over the span of 13 years, with influences ranging from the classic braindance sound of Aphex Twin and Cylob, to the hazy hip-hop electronica of Boards Of Canada, but with a depth of programming and sound design that is all his own. From the melancholy, orchestral hip hop of the title track, to the videogame symphonics of “Yster Know”, to the delicate piano-house reductionism of “Moon Dog”, the scope and variety found on Glitch in the Colors is a revelation. 2x12” vinyl LP is limited to 500 copies, and adorned with the artist’s own original artwork, Bignotti is an accomplished, and highly sought-after, visual artist. (Words by Suction Records). 

Released a handful of lowkey limited tapes prior, multidisciplinary artist and producer Cesare Bignotti has found a new path with his output on Suction Records. His work has remained mostly undercover for 20 years, until it would begin to see the light of day with the diligently compiled Acid Hologram and Xa Peh for WeMe and EVES. Two of his aliases were introduced to Suction with a split sampler EP earlier in the year, and his Useless Idea project receives its debut full-length vinyl treatment with Glitch In The Colors. With this album, Useless Idea curates a series of careful braindance susurrations, containing synths washed in cathedral-scale ambience and beats crashing humbly along with them. The material was recorded over a 13 year timespan, evident in the jumps it makes from the ambling hiphop shuffles of the title track, complete with quaintly sparkling melodies, to the solemn, whispering vespers of the penultimate ‘Bright’. Even with the heavier ricocheting beats and turbulent breaks of the opening ‘Remember This’, there is a breezy attitude in its murmuring, crystalline synths, forecasting the idyllic microbeat worlds that Glitch In The Colors explores. The blossoming piano cuts of ‘Moon Dog’ form a kind of “happy softcore” beat with blissfully chugging house rhythms and peacefully echoing vocals, meanwhile tracks like ‘Maat (Version)’ carry a darker, more mysterious mood, with its submerged thunking and breathy atmosphere evoking ancient night rituals, or perhaps an alien transmission. All of this is testament to Useless Idea’s versatility as a producer, as Glitch In The Colors makes for an enraptured mix between braindance-inspired beats and worldbuilding melodies. (Words by Bleep). 

Hot on the heels of a split 12" with himself as Seven Nights Alone, Canada's excellent Suction Records present 'A Glitch in the Colors', the vinyl album debut from Italian producer Cesare Bignotti as Useless Idea. The artis has previously appeared on WéMè Records which like Suction does a fair amount of Rephlex worshipping. Melodic electronica is the order of the day, clearly inspired by Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada et al. but with Bignotti's own musical voice shining through the influences. Features ace artwork by the multi-talented man himself. (Words by Norman Records). 

[thebandcampdiaries]

Third Development presents: “Our Parallel Worlds.”

Third Development has recently released a single named "Our Parallel Worlds." The song combines alternative aesthetics and psychedelic overtones with intricate percussive patterns and modern electronic soundscapes. As a result, the sound of this release is catchy but also very sophisticated and experimental. The beat has a very soulful and funky twist, partly due to the swing of the drums and especially due to the juicy bass line that drives the mix. The addition of unique instruments, such as the sitar and several synth string sections, add more depth to the music, making "Our Parallel Worlds" a timeless and unpredictable song while still retaining a very grooving cruising pace throughout.

Third Development created a truly mesmerizing vibe but retained the song’s immediacy and broad appeal with a killer vocal performance. The operatic singing section in the bridge is another unexpected yet absolutely genius moment, which brings yet another layer to this song. Third Development’s music is highly recommended to fans of artists such as Massive Attack, Portishead, Dead Rituals, Active Child, or The Smile, only to mention a few.

FInd out more about Third Development, and listen to “"Our Parallel Worlds",” which is currently available on online streaming services.

[agendaculturaldelima]

 #SinMusicaNoExisto

🎶 “LET YOUR BODY BEAT / THE WORKING PARTY” 💃🦇🕺🥳🍻

💥 Disfruten de una delirante noche bailando hasta el amanecer, celebrando el Dia del Trabajador, en la terraza con dos ambientes y con la música New Wave // Synth Pop // 80s, 90s, 00s // EBM // EuroDance // Dance Rock // DarkWave // Electronica 90s // UltraHits /  Tributo a Pet Shop Boys.🎉🥳

🎩 Feria de accesorios Dark & Gothic: @Xickath13 / @Alicia Echegara darkich / @eurekamanoslibres / @magicbrownieskenny / @Motava.parfum / @Ron King Express /  @el_cuarto_azul / @Miss.psychoart / @hazelsgarden.pe / @el_mundo_gotico_de_pandora

🎁 Regalos al mejor Outfit / Fotos / Musica y Videos / Sorteo de un Vodka Ruskaya Manzana🥂

👗Dresscode (no requerido pero apreciado): Gothic / Darkwaver / Post-Punker / Industrial Raver / LatexLover / Vamp / Extravagance

🎧🎹 Dj Darklands y Dj Julián Discjektor @Djdarklands @dj_discjektor

© Producción: Darklands y Fiesta Ritual.

📌 FIESTA!

📆 Martes 30 de Abril

🕘 9:00pm.

🏟 Fabri-k Underground de Yacana (jr. De la Unión 892, 7º Piso, frente a la Plaza San Martin – Centro de Lima) @fabrikunderground @fabriklima

🎫 Entrada: S/.15

🖱 Reservas:https://wa.pe/LaFabri-k

📱95122 7777 [Plin / Yape]

[independentartistbuzz]

Indie 5-0: 5 Qs with Sound Strider

Sound Strider is no ordinary artist; he's a sonic explorer traversing the globe, leaving his creative mark in the most extraordinary places.

Humbly taking 2023 by storm, Sound Strider took on quite a few diverse roles – from traveling to Spain to DJ in a castle, to exploring the prestigious exhibits at La Biennale di Venezia in Venice, to fully immersing himself in Burning Man, and lots more.

His music compound, La Briche, nestled in the heart of France, serves as a creative sanctuary where various projects come to life. However, his global ventures don't stop there. Sound Strider curated, created, and hosted the Music, Magic, Medicine event in Germany this past summer, bringing together a tapestry of sounds and experiences that transcend the ordinary.

Sound Strider isn't just an artist; he's a visionary, host, musician, and entrepreneur. His journey is an odyssey through the uncharted territories of music and mystery, consistently pushing boundaries and creating a legacy that resonates globally. The world may not always see the unsung heroics, but Sound Strider's impact is felt across continents, making him a true maestro of sonic exploration.

Sound Strider just released his latest single, Psychedelic Ritual, and we are super happy to catch up with him for Indie 5.0 - please enjoy!

Can you tell us about your journey as an artist and how your diverse musical influences have shaped the unique sound of Sound Strider? 

I started out learning drums as a kid. My dad was a classical musician so he hooked me up with an orchestral percussionist who taught me the fundamentals of rhythm and I also spent some time studying under a jazz drummer who introduced me to the african american greats Art Blakey and Bernard Purdie who remain key influences today. I played in a few different bands through my teenage years mostly punk and jazz and although I had been to a few rave parties it wasn't until around 2004 that I got heavily into electronic music. I started out with a pirate copy of Fruity Loops and learned how to DJ on vinyl quickly getting involved in the NuSkool Breaks scene in Sydney. Not long after I went to my first Earthcore and immediately fell in love with Doof culture; a uniquely Australian take on the global psytrance phenomenon where I started playing parties with a unique blend of breaks and psy. The next big change came in 2008 when I decided to move to the French countryside to turn a decaying agro-industrial ruin into a recording studio and artists hub. Not long after arriving I fell in with the French free party crowd which was a much harder and more brutal version of the australian doof, maintaining a strong emphasis on psychedelics and connection with nature but with much higher BPMs, straighter grooves and more aggressive textures having evolved out of Punk and specifically the seminal french punk bands Ludwig von 88 and Berurier Noir who used drum machines instead of actual drummers. This twisting path through different landscapes of underground electronica is I think what gives Sound Strider its unique flavour and probably why people seem to have a lot of trouble finding a genre that fits my work.

Your passion for travel and immersion in foreign cultures is well-known. How have these experiences impacted your music, and could you share a memorable cultural encounter that inspired your work? 

Probably the most impactful encounter has been my connection to Santiago de Cuba where my sister was living and working as a dancer for over a decade. I visited regularly over the years and became quite intimate with the musical culture surrounding Santeria, a syncretic Afro-Cuban religion based on Yoruba mythologies and rhythms. This was my first time encountering a musical culture which was also a powerful spiritual technology. I witnessed possessions, healings and other phenomena which definitively broke my belief in western materialism and turned me on to the immense transformative power of music and the nascent potential of the psychedelic rave movement as a vehicle for re-establishing communication with the living cosmos.

As the owner of La Briche, how has this venture influenced your music production process and collaborations with other artists? Are there any exciting projects currently underway at La Briche that you'd like to mention? 

The residential studio, at least in its most recent incarnation which dates to around 2019 has been something of a double edged sword. On one hand it has introduced me to dozens of fantastic musicians, given me an excuse to buy all sorts of wonderful gear (nothing quite like the sound of a real hammond/rhodes) and given me a huge space to experiment with techniques that go far beyond the laptop and monitor approach that most electronic musicians today are using. On the other hand I have found my creative energies being sapped by the fact that I am constantly working to help other people bring their creative visions to life. I think its no coincidence that my last EP was released in 2018 just before the studio business got underway. That said I am managing to balance my time better now and the production process has definitely evolved. I am using a lot more live instrumentation and really learning how to use the space as an instrument as opposed to doing everything 'in the box'. As for exciting projects in the pipeline we are looking to host our first mini festival onsite in May 2024, I'm also currently working on preproduction for a grand 'live in pompeii' style filmed performance of a musical project called Metabards which I started many years ago that takes its inspiration from greek mythology.

Your interest in alternative spiritual practices and the occult adds a unique dimension to your art. How do these elements connect with your music, and what messages or experiences are you aiming to convey to your listeners through this aspect of your work? 

In my understanding music has always been deeply connected to the unseen dimensions of our existence. If you look at history or towards non western cultures it's quite rare to find music that isn't connected in some way with religion or spirituality. The western abstraction as I call it, evolves out of the general split that European culture made with its christian roots giving birth to the concept of music as merely entertainment, a kind of amusing distraction from the serious business of life. I contend that music is in fact very serious business and has deep and profound effects on individuals and cultures. What I hope to convey is whatever the muses tell me to! The deeper I get into the creative mysteries the more I try to in some ways to erase myself from the process and attempt simply to serve as a conduit for whatever information wants to pass through. I think music is a huge part of that vital link between humans and the rest of the cosmos which in my understanding is densely populated and very much alive.

Could you shed some light on the meaning and creative techniques behind your latest release, "Psychedelic Rituals"? What can listeners anticipate from future Sound Strider releases?

Psychedelic Ritual is the first track I've released in almost 5 years and will be the first in what I hope to be a steady stream of ouptut going forward. I've decided to get with the times and bypass the EP/Album format and will instead be aiming to put out a new track roughly once a month for the foreseeable future. This new material is the result of a hybrid production process that has been developing in the studio over the last 5 years. Essentially everything starts out as a jam, I hook up some drum machines, synthesizers and microphones with whoever happens to be around and record these epic multitrack sessions which often go for hours.  The next phase involves listening back and pulling out ideas and loops which I think have the potential to turn into polished tracks. I then enter a back and forth stage of sitting at the computer and arranging and doing live takes of various instruments or synths which get hacked down to the best bits before final polish and mix. As for the meaning behind the method I am a great believer in the power of improvisation, especially as it relates to my previous comments about connecting with the living cosmos. Within a lot of electronic music today I feel improvisation has been replaced by a kind of over obsessive detail oriented production process that leaves very little room for the muses to get their message across.

Don't miss a beat! Be sure to follow Soundstrider today via:

Instagram | Spotify | SoundStrider.org

[stardust-bridges]

Club Furies Premiere: Beyond Humans - Ritualistic Light [Indefinite Pitch]

Indefinite Pitch‘s Selected Works reach their third edition with twenty exceptional tracks with all the soulful influence of the platform currently based in Yantai, China. Plastered with talent from around the world, we turn our attention to the track from the Colombian duo, currently based in Chile, Beyond Humans. Formerly known as Geometric89 for years, the Chilean duo redefined their musical…

[bmobeaumont]

Tracklisting: Edgar Froese - Pinnacles

Black Uhuru - Apocalypse

Powerman - Love Whisperings

Cabaret Voltaire - Safety Zone

Steve Hillman - From Distant Shores Pt 1 - Chamber Of Bells

Andrzej Marko - Dhamma

Ensemble Pittoresque - O.B.W.T.

Yoshi Ojima - Club-B

Wally Badarou - Keys

Grace Kale’s Dubset - Schwaiia-Mü (Government Dub)

Stratis - Humanly Possible

Stratis - Birds In A Cage

Andre Mikola - Osmosis

Playgroup - Ballroom Control

Clara Moonshine - High Moon Enters Heaven

Rock Master Scott & The Dynamic 3 - It’s Life (You Gotta Think Twice) (Instrumental)

Wavo - Real Life (Instrumental)

The Assembly - Stop-Start

Prince Jammy V King Tubby - King Tubby’s Salute 

Grace Kale’s Dubset - Endpiece

Edgar Froese - Pinnacles

Black Uhuru - Youth

Yoshi Ojima - Days-Man

Powerman - Loving Was Easy

Wally Badarou - Mambo

Rex Illusivi - SNP 1

SPK - Metal Field 

Lol Coxhill & Morgan Fisher - Matt Finish 

Tik & Tok - Soulless Synthetic Heart-Steps Of Unconcerned Androids

K. Leimer - Three Forms of Decay

K.S.B. - Misaluba (Dub Remix)

Eberhard Schoener - Systeme

M Basic - Ok. Run (Cut Version) 

Marzio Dance D.J. And Gang - Rap-O-Hush (Another Version) 

Cosey Fanni Tutti - Ritual Awakening 

Den Harrow - To Meet Me (D-Version)

The Manicures - Let This Feeling Carry On 

Ingram - Smoothin Groovin

Colors - Am I Gonna Be The One (Colorful Dub / Break For Dayze)

Brando - What Now My Love (Flemming Dalum Instrumental Edit) 

Starr's Computer Band - Computer Rock Control 

Michael Garrison - Upon The Horizons

Hypnosis - End Title (Blade Runner)

Sauveur Mallia - Synthetic Suspense

Telex - La Conversation 

Gary Wilson - Chrome Lover

[musicblogwales]

ARA DEG FESTIVAL LINE-UP ANNOUNCED

Yann Tiersen, Gruff Rhys, Deerhoof, Cerys Hafana and more announced for ARA DEG 2023.

Yann Tiersen, Gruff Rhys, Deerhoof, Cerys Hafana and Rozi Plain are among the local and international artists performing at the fifth edition of Ara Deg Mae Dal Iâr (AD23), an accessible, all-ages festival in Bethesda, north-west Wales on Thursday 24th, Friday 25th and Saturday 26th August 2023.

Ian F Svenonius and Escape-ism, Quinquis, Cathead and Permanent Draft are also set for this year's Ara Deg, which aims to stage experimental and eclectic offerings that will open minds in the Gwynedd quarry town on the edge of Eryri National Park.

Performances will be held at community arts hub Neuadd Ogwen, Bethesda's original cinema and village hall, with the Fic pub next door hosting a record fair on Saturday August 26th and broadcasting Radio Ara Deg throughout the festival. Further pop-up events and associated goings-on will be announced in the coming weeks.

A mix of acts with international careers spanning decades such as Tiersen, Svenonius and Deerhoof with newer names such as Hafana, Quinquis and Cathead, the artists on the line-up, selected by the AD23 decentralised planning committee, are united by a sense of experimentation and curiosity - not just in terms of their own creativity but also in relation to the wider world of 2023.

Opening the festival will be the mesmerising electronic soundscapes and Breton songwriting of Quinquis aka Émilie Tiersen, who sails to Ara Deg with world-renowned artist-composer Yann Tiersen on their boat Ninnog, named after Saint Ninnoc, a mediaeval abbess reputedly born in Wales who travelled to Brittany to become a protector of women, agriculture and woodland. Having already voyaged from their island home in Ushant to perform in Ireland, the Faroe Islands and Shetland, the Breton artists view their Ninnog tour as a political statement challenging the ecological impact of established large-scale touring and as a means to establish connections with new communities.

In 2022's ‘Seim’, her debut album for Mute as Quinquis, Émilie's haunting, evocative electronica explores nature and the stories and culture of Breton, the only Celtic language remaining in use in mainland Europe. Quinquis will be followed by Permanent Draft, the queer record label, micropress and live project founded by writer/poet Fanny Chiarello and musician Valentina Magaletti a London-based drummer, percussionist and composer whose work is informed by folklore, collaboration and endless experimentation with new materials, sounds and stories.

Thursday's concert will end with the emotive harmonies and switched-on, stream-of-conscious songs of Rozi Plain, who returns to Ara Deg following her 2022 visit playing bass with her band This Is The Kit. With ‘Prize’, her recent fifth solo record, Plain explores the calm reflection of the present moment as a way to begin to navigate the uncertain future.

Opening Friday's performance will be Cathead aka Gwen Siôn, an experimental composer and multidisciplinary artist from the nearby village of Rachub. Currently being mentored by Brian Eno, Siôn works with sound, film, sculpture and installation to create works inspired by ecology, mythology, ritual and transformation, often using non-traditional composition methods, field recordings and hand-built instruments and electronic sound devices using physical fragments of the landscape.

Also performing on Thursday is young Machynlleth artist Cerys Hafana, a master of the triple harp. Though commonly known as the Welsh harp, the three-rowed instrument originated in Italy before being adopted by Welsh musicians in 17th century London. In 2022's ‘Edyf’ ("thread"), a Guardian Folk Album of the Month, Hafana investigates the contemporary resonances of songs unsung for 200 years she found in the archives of the National Library of Wales with lithe, textural vocals, glistening melodies and a raw, percussive edginess that's sharply contemporary. Writing in 2022's ‘Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales’, Hafana explains how Welsh folk music can be told "as a story of change, of new influences and ideas being brought in by people from other places, and a story of new struggles and challenges that will inevitably enact changes over the centuries."

Hafana is followed by a set from Yann Tiersen, himself a lover of Celtic languages, including his native Breton. Though best known across the world for film soundtracks (eg Amélie, Good Bye, Lenin!), Tiersen has been involved in music for most of his life, forever pushing boundaries of genre and instrumentation as a recording artist, live performer and collaborator with a galaxy of artists from Dominique A and Françoiz Breut to The Divine Comedy, Elizabeth Fraser, Sage Francis and the late Jane Birkin. His set coincides with the release of ‘Kerber Complete’, a CD box set charting the evolution of his Kerber project from stripped-back piano work to its electronic resolution ‘11 5 18 2 5 18’.

Like Tiersen, the ever-evolving careers of Saturday's performers stretch back to the 1990s, with Ian F Svenonius making his album debut in 1991's post-hardcore teen rebellion manual ‘13-Point Program To Destroy America’ as part of breakneck Washington DC noisemakers The Nation of Ulysses. Svenonius has headed several similarly irrepressible outfits over the years, such as The Make-Up, Weird War, Chain and The Gang, and current project Escape-ism. Svenonius, also a published author and online talk show host, will open the day with a lecture relating to his latest “book to end all books” ‘Against The Written Word’ and a screening of ‘The Lost Record’, his first feature length film made in conjunction with Alexandra Cabral, shot on 16mm about a girl torn between revealing a lost masterpiece album to the world or keeping it all for herself.

Svenonius will subsequently perform as Escape-ism, their abrasive, high energy rock 'n' roll offering contrast to the sweeter, though similarly omnivorous vibes of Gruff Rhys whose recent work includes 2021's ‘Seeking New Gods’, a visionary psychedelic pop album inspired by Mount Paektu, a desolate stratovolcano on the North Korea-China border, and ‘The Almond and The Seahorse’, a teaming, evocative soundtrack to Celyn Jones and Tom Stern's 2022 film about rebuilding life after brain injury starring Rebel Wilson and Charlotte Gainsbourg.

Ara Deg's final live performance of 2023 will come with Deerhoof, the influential San Francisco experimentalists whose recent nineteenth album ‘Miracle-Level’ was described by Under The Radar as "a celebration of the human spirit, one that offers optimism and wonder in the face of pessimism and hopelessness."

Radio Ara Deg will be broadcasting throughout the festival live from the Fic pub via Soho Radio including interviews and live sessions with AD23 artists.

Other events and pop-up performances will be announced in the coming weeks taking place in and around Bethesda, a creative quarry town located close by the splendour of Eryri's multiple mountain ranges, tranquil valleys and ancient woodland.

Camping can be found at Eagle Camping at nearby Bethesda Rugby Club.

Since 2019 Bethesda has welcomed acclaimed artists such as Aldous Harding, BCUC, Jane Weaver, mùm, N'famady Kouyaté, Sage Todz, Snapped Ankles and Troupe Djéliguinet for Ara Deg, which is planned and run by a collective centring on community arts space Neuadd Ogwen.

As well as a £50 weekend pass offering access to all three days' performances, tickets are available for each day, with concessions for unemployed people, pensioners and students and discounted prices for those aged 6 to 15. Under 5s go free.

Gruff Rhys, part of the AD23 decentralised planning committee, says: “The idea with Ara Deg is to put on good music, but not to the point of fatigue or to have too many acts to digest meaningfully.

We invite musicians to play longer than a usual festival set if they want to, and nobody is going to clash with another act. We hope to expose local ears to diverse sounds and ideas from across Wales and the world and expose our guests to the cultural, scenic and linguistic wonders of Eryri. It’s a small 400 capacity festival so hopefully it doesn’t overwhelm the area either.”

For tickets visits https://neuaddogwen.com/en/ara-deg-2023/

[bestsnubbedeurovisionsong]

Propaganda under the cut

Fulenn:

It’s such a good and cool and fun song ?? Like, the genre is Celtic electronica which already just sounds super cool as a name, but it’s also just cool. The vibes were immaculate, they were serving that satanic ritual vibe that I know I’m not the only one to like. Also, the song is in Breton which is cool, like, yes, that’s also a part of the country !! The lyrics are about a legend from Brittany !

For the first time in years France brings a song that isn't a ballad and that isn't in French, but in the regional language Breton which is wildly underrated. The song, the act, the vibes, all of it was top five worthy! I will forever be bitter

Forest witch ritual music. Nothing more needed

Eastern European Funk:

This was a fun song :D

Oh my god, this was such a fucking good song. It's brilliant, there's all sorts of levels of piss take & protest going on here, we've got them taking the piss out of how Eurovision doesn't have live instruments anymore by first miming instruments and doing the noises acapella, then they bring in some foam stand ins a little later and the only real instruments they bring are two kazoos. Of course there's some theatre in there as well, can't go wrong with a little bit of a sparkly shorts reveal, but there's more to this than just that. Of course there's the lyrics about how Western Europe looks down on Eastern Europe and doesn't treat them as equally. Of course some of this could be said to be borne out in the competition seeing as this comes only a year after the EBU introduced juries to the comptetition, ostensibly to ensure "musical integrity" or somesuch but well look how far we've got with that lately hmm? Rather it seems that the juries are there to stop the naughty televoters voting for their neighbours regardless under critique of Eastern bloc voting as if it's that surprising that people living next to each other might share musical tastes and of course never mind that Western countries do that too. Presumably also Western countires were throwing their toys out of the pram cos Eastern entrants were taking the contest seriously and sending.... good songs. And winning. A lot. Shocking.