Archipelago 2018

6:30 pm – 7 pm
Janneke van der Putten

Janneke van der Putten is a Dutch performer and visual artist. Employing techniques learned during years of training, she uses her voice as an instrument in order to explore different environments physically, sonically and emotionally. Her work moves away from the usual modern parameters of amplification and synthesis, focusing instead on the body’s resonance in the here and now.

7 pm – 7:30 pm
Agnès Pe

Madrid-based musicologist of the non-common, Agnès Pe’s work transcends all genre boundaries. After her eclectic and overwhelming session in Archipelago’s first edition, this year she presents an intense performance where MIDI files will be twisted beyond recognition while generating new (a)rhythmic forms and structures. Low-fi and hi-physicality computer music with a playful and unstoppable attitude: all or nothing.

7:30 pm – 8 pm
Hashigakari

Hashigakari take his name from Japanese noh theatre. Based in Madrid, their members David Area (electronics) and Tomás Gris (miscellaneous instruments and objects) focus on free improvisation and reductionism. They draw inspiration from the Onkyo Japanese music movement and the work of the likes of Wandelweiser, for whom silence is not only an aesthetic resource but also the origin of an event. Area and Gris run Ex-Nihilo record label and are also members of maDam ensemble, GRS collective, and Nanimo Quartet.

8 pm – 8:30 pm
Clara de Asís

Clara de Asís is a Spanish composer and guitarist based in France. Her performances highlight simplicity and active listening as means of music-making. Asís uses electroacoustics to manipulate combinations of objects, materials and sound sources from a minimal approach. Her last album, Do Nothing (2018), is a suite in which the sounds produced between two actions are let to “live” by themselves, with revealing results for the listener.

8:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Cedrik Fermont

Born in former Zaire (Democratic Republic of the Congo), brought up in Belgium and currently based in Berlin, Cedrik Fremont went deep into the domains of electronic music and noise in 1989. His performance in Archipelago will consist of a session based on the research and dissemination of different experimental music scenes from a number of African and Asian countries. Fremont has curated several anthologies through his record label Syrphe and is the author of various essays, including Not your world music. Noise in South East Asia (2016), co-authored with Dimitri della Faie.

7:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Tutu

Based in Barcelona, dj Gemma Planell (Tutu) has travelled extensively performing in some of the festivals (Atonal, TodaysArt, Sónar) that set how part of the music currently made in Europe is understood. Her sessions usually begin with recordings of bird noises and morning races, whose rhythmic patterns provide a base from which she builds a continuum of dark and intense textures. The starting point of her performance in Archipelago will be an outdoors sunset, a listening environment very different from that of electronic music clubs.

8:30 pm – 10 pm
Toukadime

Toukadime means “to present” in Arabic. It is a term that can be frequently heard in many Maghrebi analogical recordings from the 20th century. Since 2011, it is also the name of a project by French djs Bachir and Krimau aimed at preserving and disseminating this sound heritage, which they have gathered together in an imposing vinyl series as well as in online digitisations, radio shows, and sessions for the dance floor as the one they will be presenting at Archipelago.

10:15 pm – 11:30 pm
Ammar 808

Tunisian producer Sofyann Ben Youssef re-interprets traditional Maghrebi compositions from a futurist perspective, while he denounces the cruelty of frontiers and struggles to overcome separatism by valorising differences. In Archipelago he will be presenting the first release of his project Ammar 808, Maghreb United. In Maghreb United the hypnotic sound of the gasba and the zokra intermingle with the legendary 808 drum machine, a device essential for genres such as electro and techno, which are now well-established but were ground-breaking at their beginning.

4:30 pm – 5:30 pm
Áine O'Dwyer

Áine O'Dwyer is an Irish harp player, singer, composer, improviser and visual artist with a reputation in experimental music for her unusual approach to organ. Her heterodox work explores the acoustic potential of the instrument without leaving aside the organ’s relationship with its habitual spatial contexts and their sacred dimension. In Archipelago, O’Dwyer will present a site-specific performance on the organ of Manuel de Falla Auditorium.

6 pm – 7 pm
Tarawangsawelas + Rabih Beaini

From Indonesia, Bandung-based Teguh Permana and Wisnu Ridwana will perform together their unique rendering of tarawangsa, a ritual and ceremonial music from Sunda, in West Java. They will play the tarawangsa (a two-stringed violin of sorts) and the jentreng (a seven-stringed zither), accompanied by the unclassifiable Lebanese artist Rabih Beaini, also known as Morphosis, who will process the duo’s sound and take it to new, unexpected paths.

7:15 pm – 8:15 pm
Nadah El Shazly

Cairo-based singer and multi-instrumentalist Nadah El Shazly’s first release, Ahwar (2017), has been critically acclaimed in the specialised media and is an excellent introduction to Cairo’s vibrating music scene. Yet to be discovered in Spain, in Archipelago Shazly will present the personal musical discourse that articulates her songs: impro strategies and electronic music intermingle with elements of 20th-century Arab folk music and do so without nostalgia, making the most of this heritage’s relevance and renovating power.

8:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Errorsmith

After a 13-year wait, we celebrate the release of the latest solo album of German musician Erik Wiegand (Errorsmith), Superlative Fatigue (2017). The album’s title, which refers to its extenuating creative process, could also describe the tiredness induced by the repetition of out-dated and predictable formulas in some music genres – something from which Errorsmith has always exceled at escaping. Wiegland is the creator of the Razor synthesiser – a cornerstone of the album sound – and member of MMM (together with Berghain’s resident dj Fiedel), and of Smith N Hack (together with Frank Timm from Soundstream)

9:45 pm – 11:15 pm
DJ Lag

Gqom is a music genre from the suburbs of Durban, South Africa, which uniquely blends broken beats, percussive minimalism and a variety of elements from hip-hop, house and even maskandi (Zulu folk music). At his young age, Lwazi Asanda Gwala (Dj Lag) has managed to catapult this eminently local style to a global scale, thanks to overwhelming and effervescent sessions like the one that will be closing this edition of Archipelago.