Simon Crab is probably most well known as the founder and main-man of the power-electronics/Industrial, Post-rock, neo-no- wave, electro-acoustic, gabber-techno, dub-ethno-jazz-funk band—Bourbonese Qualk, as well as Sunseaster, an experimental-improvised-electro-acoustic noise project. Crab also learned traditional African and Middle Eastern music and is a member of London’s Gamelan orchestra.

Chinese artist Pan Daijing lives in Berlin and is known for her incisive ritualistic experiments in music. Her live performances consist of theatrical performances with sounds inspired on the tribal industrial music of the 80’s, Tibetan music and field recordings of temples. Pan Daijing makes her audience go through a gripping catharsis of ecstasy and claustrophobia.

Perched on the cutting edge where Berlin’s music and art scenes blur into one another, Pan Daijing‘s music is steeped in dark noise and cinematic atmospherics, drifting into eerie drone and twisted beats. EP releases on Noisekölln and Bedouin Records have worked as enticing stepping stones towards the Chinese-born artists debut LP ‘Lack 惊蛰’, out on PAN in July 2017.

Culminating as the ‘finale’ to her improvisational live performances, the album also offers an insight to her future works. The process was intuitive and raw, born out of her previous explorations. Over the past 2 years, she has composed, recorded and edited different concerts and field recordings across Europe, China, and Canada, forming the basis of the record; ‘Lack 惊蛰’ was crafted from this long, painstaking mental and physical practice. The narrative of the album presents a perspective of the world as ‘the theatre of our minds’ – where Daijing sees the record as an ‘opera piece’ in its storytelling and drama.

Daijing’s pieces are created around a very intense and intimate mental catharsis, often expressed through a close physical interaction with strangers in her live sets which seek to engage them in a highly personal way. “When I was finalising this album, they didn’t feel like tracks to me anymore, but more like a psychoanalytical process,” she says. “I saw myself being this absurd, mad person ‘acting’ out the sounds… It’s rather physical, and became like a mindgame. All things came out naturally as part of me.”

Her purgative, often physical performances have recently pummelled the festival stages of CTM, Sonar, and Atonal, whilst also crafting sonic installations for exhibitions and live scored art performances and dance shows.

This remarkable new musical endeavor is a joint effort by Massimo Pupillo (Zu, Triple Sun) and Thighpaulsandra (Coil).

Massimo and Thighpaulsandra met in 2016.

Massimo being a longtime fan of Coil, and Thighpaulsandra a longtime fan of ZU, it was clear there was a common ground to go and create new music together.

Echoes of Coil music and Zu music appear here and there but the duo maps an uncharted territory. This is organic electronic music.

Their debut album will take you to dark and daring places — just as you’d expect of these joint forces. But even more, URUK is a challenging yet immersive listen of exceptional depth. The album is slated for a December 8th release on Consouling Sounds.

Lumisokea is a Belgian-Italian duo, formed by Koenraad Ecker and Andrea Taeggi. For the festival the band will turn into a quartet emphasizing their rhythm based trance inducing electro-acoustic improvisation. The duo has formed a four-piece band with percussionists Onno Govaert (NL) and Luca Marini (IT/DE) and will perform their special show ‘Dervish’. .

This project dives deep into Lumisokea’s trademark version of polyrhythmic intricacy and industrial sound design, using live drums, bass guitar, gongs, electronics and self-built percussion to push beyond the constraints of sequenced music. After a year-long preparation, Lumisokea is now proud to invite the audience for an extended session of snaking rhythms, spectral shimmers, growling synths and clanking copper plates.

Skullflower is a British noise-rock band, now a duo, that was founded by Matthew Bower in 1987. During the years the combination of evaporative wall-of-sound riffs and transgressive noise-rock has crossed all boundaries of rock music. The noise-rock, experimental sounds and even free jazz of Skullflower come from the debts of the dark psychedelic abyss. Their ritualistic and occult take on their rare live performances as a loss of self for both the band and the audience has gained them a cult-following.