After learning music production through Youtube-tutorials and self-improvised methods Nilotpal Das made some releases and started doing unpaid DJ performances. After the venture through electronic music, his music shifted towards instrumental and performance-oriented. In 2020 he started his solo project Bios Contrast to seek how he could experiment with storytelling through sonic pieces, real events, physical objects and natural phenomena. 2023 marks a crucial point in his career as he dives into more experimental music and starts a side project under Nilotpal Das where he releases music that doesn’t fall under any genre or description. His performance at the Xciting Festival was his first outside India.
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Pierre Bastien continues to compose with a screwdriver. His sound devices are made exclusively of raw, physical materials: metal, reed, horsehair, water, ebonite, wood... all powered by electric motors. Over the years, these constructions have become increasingly compact and miniaturized, to the point where they can now be inserted onto the small volume of a trumpet mute. The mute on a trumpet dampens and softens the sound of the instrument. But Pierre's mutes do just the opposite. They add explosions of water bubbles, bow strokes, flute flights, percussion, sanza riffs and harmonium chords to the trumpet sounds: extended by the mechanical mutes, the trumpet becomes an orchestra of multiple timbres.
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Susana Santos Silva is a Portuguese trumpeter, improviser and composer based in Stockholm, Sweden renowned for her innovative approach to music. 'One of the most exciting improvisers in the world' (Downbeat), Susana has a singular artistic approach that comes out of a comprehensive spectrum of influences, from classical, improvised and contemporary music to jazz and textural sound art. She is interested in expanding the sonic possibilities of her instrument, and creatively exploring the dissolution of boundaries of perception, genre and media. Whether performing solo, leading her own ensembles, or collaborating with other artists, Santos Silva’s music often transcends conventional boundaries, inviting listeners into new sonic territories.
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Luís Fernandes' artistic activity has been marked by a multiplicity of approaches and formats, divided into collective projects, occasional collaborations and individual work; by performances, composition and exhibition; and by the establishment of relationships with different disciplines. His career has been marked by encounters with a wide range of artists, including Hans-Joachim Roedelius/Qluster, Black Bombaim, Rhys Chatham, Pierce Warnecke, André Gonçalves, Lloyd Cole, Lisbon Metropolitan Orquestra, João Pedro Rodrigues / João Rui Guerra da Mata or Salomé Lamas. In 2019 Fernandes added a new dimension to his individual activity, with the release of "Demora" (Room40) and "Seis Peças Sintetizadas" (Holuzam), albums that he signed, for the first time, in his own name. It is from this body of work that a new stage on his career is settled. His last record "A guide to getting lost" (Revolve) and the exploration of real-time electronics was the starting point for a series of shows, in which Fernandes weaves particular compositions in the moment, walking a fine line between the possibility of error and the dazzle of discovery. His performance at the Xciting Festival 2023 was one of the first in this series.
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Elvin Brandhi is an improvising lyricist, producer and sound artist from Bridgend, Wales, who builds aberrant beats from field recordings, tape, vinyl, instrument and voice. Using sound and voice as an expansive language transgressing intrinsic systemics and inherited syntactical etiquettes, her live shows are unyielding bursts of erupting animation where her caustic stream of consciousness cavorts with restless, glitched out heaviness. Her creative momentum comprises a range of collaborations and an endless nomadism. Her first E.P ‘Shelf life’ was released on ‘C.A.N.V.A.S’ in 2018. She's one half of father / daughter noise-improv berserkers Yeah You who released on Alter, Slip, Opal, Psychik Dancehall and Good Food. She also performs in collaborations such as the Avril Spleen project with Joseph Jadame
(maltash), Bahk with Daniel Blumberg (MUTE), as well as contributions to Drew McDowall’s agalma, just to name a few.
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At the 5th Xciting Festival the internationally acclaimed drummer Lukas König performed as Kœnig. Under this name he concentrates only on a single cymbal (brass plate) as a sound source, messes around with it and therefore discoveres new possibilities for sound developments. According to Kœnig, this reduction in means can be attributed to the loss of his rehearsal room and additionally to an acute lack of space, which is also connected to his constant commuting between New York and Vienna. The warehouse was converted into a quiet rehearsal room, where he explored his dexterity on the cymbal and its tonal characteristics using contact microphones and headphones, and perfected his technique to this end. The results can be heard on the release „Messing“ (Ventil Records) and now for the first time as a live recording.
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Svitlana Nianio is a Ukrainian avant-garde singer-songwriter, during the early 1990s also known as Svitlana Ohrimenko. Svitlana grew up with an interest in religious and traditional music. She attended a music conservatory in Kyiv, where she formed ‘Tsukor bila smert´ in 1988 with Eugene Taran, Oleksandr Kochanovsky, and Tamila Mazur. The group disbanded in 1993. After the end of ‘Tsukor bila smert´ Nianio recorded two albums with Oleksandr Yuchenko. In 1999 she released her first solo album ‘Kytytsi’ on Koka Records. Hard to find performing possibilities after the “Music The World Does Not See” concert series in 2000, lead to her disappearance from the public eye. 10 years later Nianio’s music gained major international interest. Some of her albums were reissued. Since 2017 Svitlana Nianio performs again. On Xciting festival Svitlana Nianio performed supported by the Ukrainian musicians Sergey Khotyachuk and Roman Gens.
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Nina F alias Kikiriki is a musical performer since 20 years in different collectives. First as a vocalist and later as a instrumentalist, since 2009 as a solo noise performer. Focusing on experimenting with sound that's produced live, mostly with analogue synthesisers and DIY electronics. She was a part of many different projects, ranging from making music for a dance show, silent animations and films, accompanying poets, making sound scapes for fire shows to live radio shows and sessions. She was sharing stages with many other artists of the sonic field, on many festivals and events all around Slovenia and Europe. Most of the recordings were recorded live in the studio or at the concert. Besides the experimental sound field, she also dj's in the collective Dubomb under the name Madamdub. In her free time she is a passionate concert goer and stage and sound technician at live shows.
Since 2014 Arnaud Rivière and c_c are joining forces in the Association de Recherche Contre le Concert (Research Association Against Concert). Around a table full of cheap electronic equipment (feedbacking 4-tracks tape, broken turntable, prepared mixer, unsync drum machines,…) they melt beats and noise and also sometimes noise and beats. They’re bursting sloping dancefloor music and noise sharpened sound system. Improvised on the fly and playfully full of energy, musical propositions of the lopsided duo are a matter of gesture and failures. It’s a matter of fact : we’re writing anything!
