With Rewire 2021 just 2 days away, take a look at another one of our ‘Festival Routes’, giving you some tips on things to check out during the festival weekend. This year’s programme features a number of artists who look to push popular music forms into exciting new realms. Playing with song structure, keeping voice and lyrics central to their music whilst teasing them with abstraction, get to know some of the artists who are extending the boundaries of what popular music can be.
→ Attend the Rewire 2021 Facebook event.
“Music knows what she wants,” says Moscow-based artist, Kate NV. On 'Room for the Moon', the lyrical follow up to the buoyant minimalism of 2018’s для FOR, both released on the esteemed RVNG Intl. label, NV follows this muse in fluid expression, harmonizing her lunar lullabies with a starry compositional choreography. NV says, “I always let music express herself without pressure, and with or without voice.” For Rewire 2021 Kate NV presents a recorded performance with music from 'Room for the Moon', which you can listen to here:
Smerz are the Norwegian duo of Henriette Motzfeldt and Catharina Stoltenberg. Known for the 'carefully shaped, deconstructed pop' (Boomkat), Smerz seamlessly weave together techniques and sounds pulled from chamber and classical music, hip hop, R&B, and hard electronics, with the end product always resulting in something altogether uncanny. After a run of releases for London's XL Recordings in 2017, their full length debut ‘Believer’ was recently released, combining their love of Norwegian traditional music with the gauzy imagery of filmmaker Peter Greenaway and blurring the line between dream and reality. Listen to ‘Believer’ here:
Rewire has commissioned The Netherlands-based Scottish artist Genevieve Murphy to develop an exclusive concert version of her latest theater piece 'I Don't Want To Be An Individual On My Own'. Murphy, who lives in Amsterdam, channels her fascination with psychology and disability into performance and visual art that intersect with her training as a contemporary classical composer and performer. Listen to her track ‘Your Feeling’:
UK-based multidisciplinary artist GLOR1A crafts sizzling experimental Pop/ R&B music rooted in concepts of Black futurism and the transformative power of technology. For Rewire 2021, she is working alongside Japanese- based VR developer and visual artist alpha_rats on SWARM 2.0, an interactive prototype game that fuses digital art and live performance. Listen to some of her work:
No Plexus is a genre-queer electronic duo comprising of vocalist and composer Bec Plexus and producer No Compliments. In collaboration with Roel Wouters of interactive design studio Moniker, No Plexus have set their music to the tensions between nature's brutal powers and our need to tame, control, and ultimately manicure it.
Watch "Manicurism (Trailer)" by "No Plexus" on https://www.youtube.com/
Amsterdam-based visual artist and producer Joris Benjamins, aka Bby Eco, makes utopian music he describes as eco-pop. Benjamins just released his debut LP "Grow!" a narrative-driven album full of hymn-like songs that tell a story of personal transformation, love, dreams and our spiritual connection to nature. He uses his own falsetto vocals to offset the music's psychedelic, synthesized textures, communicating the perpetual back-and-forth between the natural world and the digital world. Listen to ‘Grow’ here:
As Show Pony, Laura Nygren combines her innovative playing with vocals and synthesizer to explore a vividly personal artistic universe. At Rewire 2021, the Amsterdam-based, American-born artist will be collaborating with design duo Tereza and Vit Ruller, aka The Rodina. The three artists will be presenting a unique 3D online environment to launch Show Pony's self-titled debut EP, with exclusive media and live audience participation. Listen to the EP here:
It was a childhood obsession with the guitar that set Satomimagae off on her musical journey. Poring over delta blues music her dad had brought home to Japan from their travels in the US, Satomi began to experiment with writing her own songs, using a computer to develop her sound. Her latest album is this year's ‘Hanazono’, Satomi's first release on the RVNG Intl. label. Adding electric guitar and bird sounds from Hideki Urawa, the record is a deceptively low-key tribute to everyday mysticism that's solitary and private, but simultaneously generous. Listen to ‘Hanazono’ here:
In the cracks that sprawl between electronic and analog music, visual art, and craft creation, Yamila dances on the edge of sound and conceptual heights. The Spanish composer, cellist, singer and producer will present ‘Eyelidless’ at Rewire 2021, a multidisciplinary performance. Decentralising the stage and the performing artist, the piece challenges the notion of the concert. The performance combines oneiric images from the artist’s imagination by playing pieces of her new album, and mysterious sonic landscapes. Listen to her album ‘Iras Fajro’ here:
Check out the full line-up here.