CONTAGIOUS, based in Berlin, is a solid blending of avant-garde experimentation and electronic music. Formed by two innovative voices from the Improvisation scene of Berlin (Andrea Neumann and Sabine Ercklentz) and Mieko Suzuki, a well-crafted and creative DJ and musician who’s operating in Berlin venues and festivals since a long time.
Contagious is one of the most forward thinking, mind-melting projects to hit the electronic music scene. Intense and powerful, yet rooted in a tradition of crafting and sculpturing of in the most creative ways, all this building up within a solid structure of instant composition and improvisation. The trio plunder each other’s musical spheres, appropriate them and switch roles. Andrea Neumann on her infamous Inside Piano, an instrument she pioneered and crafted, is applying the most creative feedback processing to simple piano strings and sending them occasionally to Mieko Suzuki’s processing rig, who also uses her own pre-recorded sounds and her skills on turntables, while Sabine Ercklentz’s trumpet sounds blast through her processing system and altogether the three musicians communicate into logics of composition and futuristic structures, where fragile sound textures and pulses become monumental.
“Contagious” is also the debut album (released in 2019 on Morphine Records), recorded and produced by Rabih Beaini. The Trio wanders in new aesthetic areas, sound is a texture where the processing rigs are constantly developing new forms and evolutions. Structures and grooves implode in noisy fragments, growing into a deep trance state.
Sabine Ercklentz – trumpet, electronics
Andrea Neumann – insidepiano, mixer
Mieko Suzuki – turntables
facebook.com/contagious.berlin/
youtube.com/watch?v=FCbocxoAiA0
Martin Khanja aka Lord Spike Heart and Sam Karugu offer nerve-shredding noise from guitars and synthesizers, competent black metal-style art grunting, but also nasty high-pitched overdriven screeching like in older power electronics and tribalistic drumming from African traditions. Duma come from the Kenyan capital Nairobi, they are part of East Africa's blossoming metal scene, but their debut album Duma was released on the more club music-oriented Ugandan label Nyege Nyege Tapes: For all the seemingly off-putting harshness of their music, they are open and receptive; and their cosmopolitanism of musical chaos mirrors the chaotic globalisation in which we live.
nyegenyegetapes.bandcamp.com/album/duma?from=footer-cc-a504143940
youtube.com/watch?v=zd35MhHqjhc
“I’m Lu Rizzo, a young artist from Buenos Aires, Argentina. I’m a composer, drummer, performer and sound artist. My solo set is based on drums, feedbacks, convolutions, a kalimba, samples and field recordings from my world that together create a personal and deep atmosphere, where sound comes from wildness, improvisation, noise and mistakes.”
Solo set
youtu.be/Z4vxIyOmyn0
youtu.be/8nS9zCQ1ErM
More music
lurizzo.bandcamp.com/album/l-r
youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_vfAJkckuCq6vjxyLIR9iALoCturD_PR
The old gurnard growls and
creaks with rotary knob lyre and creaky board.
facebook.com/donnersperg/
discogs.com/artist/115018-Ditterich-von-Euler-Donnersperg
is Damian B.
carthage rolls through the low-end ambience, stolen/found sounds, and murmured texts of a civilization well past having crossed the rubicon with a precision and deliberateness that belies uncomfortable truths.
Most recent release is ‘Midnight White’ on Avalanche Recordings.
carthage.bandcamp.com/releases
Has also played in Khost, 16-17, Cortex amongst others.
louderthanwar.com/carthage-midnight-white-album-review/
youtube.com/watch?v=cBjCVRH6Fdk
is a sound artist from the North of England. DJing since the 90s, he could once be found working as vinyl buyer in various Leeds record stores while ingesting a steady diet of bleep, metal, hip hop, bass music and avant garde electronix. He was also part of the city’s vital v3ctor crew who hosted a tonne of forward looking electronic music events, forming early alliances with fellow northerners Skam Records and snd.
SDEMs music has found its way onto records, tapes and CDs on Superpang, Opal Tapes, Central Processing Unit, Seagrave, and the artists own MEDS label. DJs like Autechre, ZULI and Afrodeutsche have been heard spinning SDEM tracks in their sets.
Shapeshifting through various zones, his productions have meticulous attention to detail with intricate hiphop informed rhythms and liquid metal sound design. Beatless excursions create sonic microcosms not of this time or space, while elsewhere dismantled rugged street beats intersect with mutant computer music. SDEMs soundworlds feel like living organisms or entities… objects and places that exist in a world beyond our own.
m3ds.bandcamp.com/album/syncav
soundcloud.com/sdemsdemsdem
is an artist group consisting of several members among other Daniel Weissbach (∗1976 – †2020), Markus Mai, Osif Seiksuh, P. Vector Codierer, Tryone and Buzzer. Each of the six is rooted in Berlin’s parallel and sub worlds, particularly in graffiti writing.
However, their work differs considerably with regard to technique and artistic approach. In 2007, they formed the group, declaring the aim to discover and develop new forms of imagery by combining each individual’s expression and methods.
The collective authorship functions as a catalyst, adding a new and fresh approach to each contribution while simultaneously challenging each author to lend his individual view to the new context. The process of the writing itself – notions and abilities, handling of typographic characters, a fast and focussed labour, immediate reactions – expresses an important element of the workflow that is visibly imminent in the works.
Manifested in overpainting and abolishment, one feels the apparent confrontational character of the works. The images convey fastness and suspense, reflecting the tension in the convergence of different influences and experiences. They result in graphical experiments, rudimentary characters and quotes from pop culture. Improvisation and spontaneity are deliberately and pointedly applied elements of the creative process. The resulting works are rather complex visual worlds, presenting the viewer with new and multi-layered pictorial experiences.