In recent years, artists have increasingly drawn inspiration from their musical heritages to develop new iterations, often integrating traditional elements and instrumentations with novel and contemporary ways of sounding. This conversation invites artists Sacred Lodge, Milkweed, and Park Jiha to elaborate on their sonic cosmologies, while listening to fragments from their work.

Paris-based producer and sound artist Matthieu Ruben N'Dongo aka Sacred Lodge, who performs with his new album Ambam (2025) at Rewire, combines horrorcore and experimental dub while paying homage to his Equato-Guinean heritage, and the Fang people (from which his father originates) and their cosmogony known as Mvett. N'Dongo's research focuses on the role of music both in ritual contexts and as a social function; as such, his productions proliferate with ceremonial rhythms, and are perforated by screams, hollers, chants, and brutal, powerful bass.

Taking traditional Korean instruments like the Piri (double-reed bamboo oboe), Saenghwang (bamboo mouth organ), and Yanggeum (hammered dulcimer), composer, musician, and performer Park Jiha invokes a careful combination of classical minimalism and improvised contemporary music. After her concert at Rewire eight years ago, she returns to the festival with her band performing her new album All Living Things (2025), which points to the vivid ecologies that spring to life in her music.

Also joining is Milkweed, whose explorations in folk, ritual, and tradition echo with haunting resonances. Distortion and lo-fi production act as a ghostly mask for what are, in many ways, quite joyful reinterpretations of British folk sounds. Their folkloric trip-hop takes existing historical and cultural source material – such as a mid-twentieth-century folklore journal, a book on Welsh myths, and another on Bronze-Age human remains – and drags it into the modern era. They will perform at Rewire with their recent album Remscéla (2025). 

Joe Leonard-Walters and Molly Cosgrove are radio hosts and researchers who are interested in folklore and the ways in which inherited stories, practices, and music shape our understanding of the present and the past.