For its 13th edition happening between 4 and 7 April 2024, Rewire will return to the city centre of The Hague to present forward-thinking and genre-crossing music that’s brimming with exploratory spirit. Today the first artists and projects for Rewire 2024 are announced. Reduced 3-Day Passes are on sale until 11 November via rewirefestival.nl/tickets.
Rewire is proud to present a focus programme around the pioneering composer, sound artist, and musician Annea Lockwood. The moving, curious, and ever-innovative work of Lockwood has spanned over 50 years. With an ecological sensitivity running through her music and an unparalleled attention to listening to and understanding sound as an autonomous part of our lives, Lockwood’s music is deeply rooted in contemporary ideas. During Rewire 2024, Lockwood will be presenting works on all festival days, including Piano Burning on Thursday 4 April to kick off the festival. Furthermore, Lockwood herself takes to the stage for a rare performance with MAZE Ensemble, while Yarn/Wire perform recent music by Lockwood especially written for the quartet. On the final day of the festival, Lockwood will present Tête-à-tête. An artist talk and additional events will be announced at a later stage.
For Rewire 2024, several celebrated artists make their Rewire debut with new audiovisual performances premiering in the Netherlands. Oneohtrix Point Never, coming off the back of the immaculate new album Again, will present his singular baroque electronics with accompanying visuals by Freeka Tet. While Ben Frost will be joined by guitarist Greg Kubacki to bring Frost’s upcoming album to life in a performance that masterfully combines ambient texture and industrial tone with visceral, throbbing power chords from Kubacki’s metalcore guitar and visuals by Dutch visual artist Tarik Barri. Guardian of the Miami club sound Nick León teams up with designer and artist Ezra Miller for a world premiere of a new collaborative A/V show, while 33EMYBW, who endlessly brings a ritualistic and percussive intensity to dance music in her performances, presents a new collaboration with artist Joey Holder. Although audiovisual projects may sometimes seem abundant these days, Warp Records icons Autechre are here to make their Rewire debut with an incomparable live show – one performed in total darkness.
Gazelle Twin makes sounds that are somewhere between a nightmare and a dream, always shifting tectonically. In her new album Black Dog, ghostly, soil-drenched, industrial tones contrast eerily with energetic, dancey drums. Ever present are her distinct, unsettling, and alluring vocals. At Rewire 2024 she will premier the album live in the Netherlands.
Rewire is excited to announce it will host Jenny Hval’s new interdisciplinary performance I Want To Be A Machine, which considers the animatronic implications of pop performance, asking what stories artists can tell in a moment when popular music has lost many of the aspects that make it a visceral and philosophical experience. Taking chamber pop sensibilities and pushing them to their exploratory outer bounds, Amor Muere come to Rewire: a Mexico City–based experimental music supergroup consisting of musicians Gibrana Cervantes, Concepción Huerta, Camille Mandoki, and Rewire alum Mabe Fratti. The poetic, sparkling musical concatenations of Ukrainian artist, musician, and singer Svitlana Nianio also grace the festival. A mainstay of Kyiv’s independent music scene of the 80s and 90s, her minimal, slow pop for piano, voice, and electronics rings out with deafening clarity and subtle introspection.
With the highly anticipated release A Grisaille Wedding right around the corner, Rewire is excited to announce the collaborative performance of Space Afrika & Rainy Miller. Also performing is Iceboy Violet, the British rapper and producer whose unique music is tinted with nostalgia but truly forward-looking, brimming with warm synths and tectonic bass. The unparalleled Nigerian sonic trailblazer Aunty Rayzor, will bring her exhilarating mix of Afrobeat, R&B, hip-hop, pop, and grime. She is sure to obliterate sound systems and audiences’ minds alike. A wonderland of diverse ghettotech sounds awaits with Detroit trio HiTech, whose music is rich with sped-up samples, smooth piano chords, catchy hooks, and memorable hip-hop verses. Their tracks pulse with a playful energy that spans deep house to techno, even veering in some moments toward R&B and footwork territory. Blending ceremonial sounds with an all-encompassing, maximalist, drum-filled electronic cacophony, Lila Tirando a Violeta & Sin Maldita will perform live for the very first time together in a world premiere at the festival.
Joining the lineup is Slauson Malone 1, whose Warp Records debut EXCELSIOR (2023) has been making waves with its delicate, broad sounds that span experimental hip hop, introspective ambient, and lush, psychedelic, crooning soul. The music of Niecy Blues explores themes such as grief, self-acceptance, lineage, ritual, and emotional vulnerability. At Rewire 2024, witness their special blend of ambient and R&B wherein their reverberating voice smothers the sparseness of their production in a close embrace. Careening sonic flourishes are underlined by droning loops full of rattling texture and tender orchestral currents in MIZU’s music. Formerly known as Issei Herr, she performs at the festival with her moving compositions that hold a generative sort of possibility. Also performing at the festival is experimental musician and composer Laura Ortman, whose thrilling performances show her commitment to pushing the violin to its utmost noisy, vibrant intensity.
Cello Octet Amsterdam and audiovisual artist Nick Verstand, present the world premiere of their new live collaborative performance titled Cocon, featuring specially commissioned pieces written by internationally renowned artists Caterina Barbieri, Kara-Lis Coverdale, KMRU & Abul Mogard, Jesse Broekman, and Qasim Naqvi – all of whom are writing for cello for the very first time. The performance takes place within a large installation that envelops the eight cellists in a grasping cocoon of eight robotic arms that interact autonomously with the performers – moving, unfolding, and holding them.
A throughline for Rewire in recent years has been artists whose work is grounded in traditional music but which expands into the present day and the speculative. The beautiful piping of Brìghde Chaimbeul takes the bagpipe’s drones out from an ancient-sounding habitat to somewhere startlingly contemporary, while Maria W Horn & Sara Parkman’s Funeral Folk does something similar with Swedish folk music: blending traditional folk elements with experimental electronic composition and doom metal to create a sparkling, ritualistic fantasy. They will perform in the grand surroundings of The Hague’s Grote Kerk. A founding member of experimental folk group Lankum, Ian Lynch brings his immense project One Leg One Eye to The Hague. Careening with abounding, black metal noise and abyssal, squalid drones, it is truly of the current moment – yet it is entrenched too in a traditional air that conjures the rueful spirits of Irish history and myth. Palestinian artists Maya Al Khaldi & Sarouna also build a future from echoes of the past, using archival recordings and melodies, and taking inspiration from Palestinian folklore to imagine a sonic tomorrow.
Saint Abdullah & Jason Nazary will premiere a special live set based around the eviscerating drums and gnarled feedback of their noisy, free jazz album Looking Through Us. In contrast to these chaotic timbres, Cole Pulice brings the warm, bright tones of their improvised ambient and experimental jazz music, which they will perform live for the first time in the Netherlands. Amirtha Kidambi's Elder Ones also make their Netherlands debut, where Kidambi’s frenzied and powerful vocals collide with and complement the free-jazz backing of her ensemble. Joining the festival are cult favourites The Necks, whose decades performing together have formed a rare bond between them that carries through their minimal and ambient longform improvisations. Another group with a reputation for unforgettable live performances is goat (jp), whose immense tightness sounds almost digitally sequenced in their jazzy, cyclical, kraut-tech songs for guitar, saxophone, percussion, and flute.
An artist who celebrates 25 years of making music is the prolific Dutch musician and composer Sietse van Erve, aka Orphax, will premier his collaboration with MAZE Ensemble that marks a new step in his artist practice. Working with ambient and drone sounds, van Erve has developed a fascinating body of music that reaches slowly in all directions, moving itself in slow-motion in a way that plays with time, existentialism, and the eeriness of nostalgia. At Rewire 2024, his work is given new life through collaboration and intervention from MAZE Ensemble. Last but not least, Phew – a buried gem of the experimental music canon whose works span from no wave to pop to industrial to drone – will present a new live set for voice and electronics.
More artists and projects, as well as an extensive context programme, installations, workshops, and screenings will be added in the coming months. Keep an eye on Rewire’s social media pages and rewirefestival.nl for upcoming announcements.
First artists and projects for Rewire 2024:
33EMYBW & Joey Holder
Amirtha Kidambi's Elder Ones
Amor Muere
Annea Lockwood ‘Piano Burning’
Annea Lockwood ‘Tête-à-tête’
Aunty Rayzor
Autechre
Ben Frost ft. Greg Kubacki & Tarik Barri
Brìghde Chaimbeul
Cello Octet Amsterdam & Nick Verstand ‘Cocon’ world premiere
Cole Pulice
Gazelle Twin
goat (jp)
HiTech
Iceboy Violet
Jenny Hval ‘I Want To Be A Machine’
Laura Ortman
Lila Tirando a Violeta & Sin Maldita world premiere
Maria W Horn & Sara Parkman ‘Funeral Folk’
Maya Al Khaldi & Sarouna
MAZE Ensemble & Annea Lockwood
MIZU
Nick León & Ezra Miller world premiere
Niecy Blues
One Leg One Eye
Oneohtrix Point Never
Orphax & MAZE Ensemble world premiere
Phew
Saint Abdullah & Jason Nazary world premiere
Slauson Malone 1
Space Afrika & Rainy Miller ‘A Grisaille Wedding’ world premiere
Svitlana Nianio
The Necks
Yarn/Wire performs the music of Annea Lockwood
Tickets
A limited number of Reduced 3-Day Festival Passes for Rewire 2024 are available until 11 November, granting access to the festival programme on 5, 6, and 7 April. Book now via rewirefestival.nl/tickets
Please note I: for the concert of Autechre on Friday 5 April and the concert of Oneohtrix Point Never on Sunday 7 April, a Plus Ticket (€5, including service and transaction costs) is required. You will receive a drink voucher in return. Please read the reason behind these Plus Tickets here.
Please note II: Tickets for Annea Lockwood's 'Piano Burning', happening on Thursday 4 April, will go on sale at a later date.