Today we announce the first artists and projects for Rewire 2019. Taking place in The Hague from 29 to 31 March, the ninth edition of Rewire festival upholds our tradition of presenting adventurous music; highlighting multidisciplinary crossovers and forward-thinking artists who push boundaries and rewire the idea of what music and performance can be today. Musicians who embrace innovation, explore new artistic directions and collaborations, seek out new forms of performative expression, use emerging technologies such as AI, or invent their own instruments. Rewire 2019 will explore how these artists disrupt the status quo and intervene across a spectrum of musical outputs and artistic disciplines. These developments will materialise through an extensive festival programme of concerts, interdisciplinary performances, talks, workshops, screenings and more.
Reduced price Festival Passes are available for €75, until 31 January (midnight CET) at Tickets.
Andrea Belfi & Valerio Tricoli
Astrid Sonne presents Cycles of Lost and Found
Bamba Pana & Makaveli
CURL
Diamanda Dramm
Eli Keszler
Flohio
Gazelle Twin presents Pastoral
Giant Swan
Haron
Henry Vega & Jan-Willem Troost
Ipek Gorgun
Jessica Sligter presents Polycrisis:yes!
Jlin & Company Wayne McGregor present Autobiography Edits
John Bence
Kampire
Kelly Moran
Kit Downes & Ensemble Klang
Lafawndah
Lotic: ‘Endless Power’
Low
Mohammad Reza Mortazavi
Nicolás Jaar
Otim Alpha
Sinjin Hawke & Zora Jones
Tashi Wada Group
Tim Hecker
William Basinski & Lawrence English
YEK: Mohammad Reza Mortazavi & Burnt Friedman
Yves Tumor
More artists and projects, as well as an extensive discourse programme of talks, workshops and screenings will be added in the coming months.
Nicolás Jaar is an artist who consistently pushes his practice into new territories. Whether it’s his acclaimed solo releases, the alternate score to Sergei Parajanov film, The Colour of Pomegranates, his improvised, durational sets at venues like MoMA PS1, interdisciplinary collaborations involving contemporary dance or running the Other People label, the Chilean-American musician and composer has always embraced a strong explorative approach. At Rewire 2019, Jaar will present several projects that epitomise his experimental spirit, including a new work for piano, saxophone,and electronics as well as an artist talk and additional programme contributions to be announced at a later date.
Legendary slowcore trio Low head to Rewire 2019 in support of their widely-acclaimed new album, Double Negative. The twelfth record in an ever-evolving, twenty-five-year career that’s seen the Minnesota band cultivate a deeply emotive brand of harmonic, minimalist indie, Double Negative throws out the playbook in favour of a radical new sound. Rooted in snarling static and shattering electronic beats, the resulting record is their most brazen and empowering to date and one of the best song-based releases of the year.
Autobiography Edits is a unique collaboration by Jlin and Company Wayne McGregor. Stepping further outside the club context, Autobiography Edits, sees Jlin’s visionary use of percussion and meticulous production come together with award-winning choreographer Wayne McGregor, whose works have revolutionised contemporary dance. Built around the sequencing of McGregor’s own genome, the performance brings dancers from his world-class dance ensemble Company Wayne McGregor to the stage with a live score of sinuous electronics and ambient minimalism by Jlin herself.
Like Jlin, Berlin-based DJ and producer Lotic has evolved into one of the most important voices in avant-garde club music. At Rewire 2019, Lotic transforms their recently released full-length debut – a work that features their first ever recordings for voice – into an ambitious new a/v collaboration with visual artist Emmanuel Biard. Co-produced by Rewire, Endless Powerexplores the many ways in which power can be expressed and experienced.
British performance artist Gazelle Twin presents her new project, Pastoral. Gazelle Twin’s latest incarnation deconstructs English identity in Brexit Britain to a frenetic soundtrack of rural 90s rave and house, ritualistic choral infusions and antiquated instruments like the harpsichord and recorder. Dutch-Norwegian electro-folk experimentalist Jessica Sligter approaches the crisis from across the channel, performing her terrifying and brilliant new album, Polycrisis:yes!, coinciding with Brexit-day: 29 March.
One of the most consistent and exciting sound artists of our times, Tim Hecker has cultivated an intensely physical and profoundly emotive breed of ‘ambient noise’ over the course of his nine albums. For his exclusive Dutch performance, he adapts his most recent release Konoyo – a critically-acclaimed collaboration with a Japanese gagaku ensemble – into a solo live show.
Released without warning in September, Yves Tumor’s Warp debut is widely-praised as the ‘benchmark for experimental music’. Ushering his audience into a beautiful, primal world of distorted pop, the sonic provocateur and enigmatic performer will transform Safe In The Hands of Loveinto a stunning, live spectacle at Rewire 2019.
Two of ambient music’s modern masters, William Basinski and Lawrence English unite to showcase their first ever collaborative album,Selva Oscura. Inspired by a series of chance encounters, the avant-garde composers adopt an intensely reductionist approach to craft shifting soundscapes of cerebral ambient drone. In addition to the Basinski and English performance, Rewire 2019 also presents a number of other special collaborations.
Uniting as YEK, German electronic musician Burnt Friedman joins Iranian percussionist Mohammad Reza Mortazavi – a virtuosic hand drummer who will also be performing solo. Together they marry timeless percussive sounds with flurries of melodic electronics. Italian artists Andrea Belfi and Valerio Tricoli come together to blend hypnotic drumming and spiraling synths with real-time musique concrète tape manipulations.
Serving as the counterpoint to this heady hypnosis is the dissonance of the Tashi Wada Group. Joined by Julia Holter and Corey Fogel, LA-based composer Tashi Wada and co will perform their newly-released FRKWYS album Nue. Award-winning British composer and musician Mica Levi, vocalist and producer Coby Sey and rapper Brother May come together to represent the progressive, post-genre experiments of newly-minted London collective CURL.
Dutch artist Haron released his debut album Wandelaar to widespread acclaim this summer. Commissioned by Rewire, he will present the world premiere of a new performance for piano, electronics and spatialised sound that combines material from Wandelaar with new compositions.
Together with fellow The Hague festival Dag in de Branding, Rewire 2019 will also present a day-long programme of contemporary music. The collaboration features a special commission for organ and ensemble by British jazz pianist Kit Downes and Dutch new music group Ensemble Klang. The programme also features American percussionist, composer and visual artist Eli Keszler, Dutch violinist Diamanda Dramm, and the union of electroacoustic composer Henry Vega and cellist Jan-Willem Troost.
For the Rewire 2019 club programme, we shift our focus to East Africa’s flourishing electronic music scene and the outsider sounds of Uganda’s Nyege Nyege Tapes. Hailing from Kampala, the homegrown label will bring along the blistering 180 bpm singeli sounds of Tanzania’s Bamba Pana & Makaveli, Otim Alpha’s electronic adaptations of Northern Ugandan wedding songs, and resident DJ Kampire bridging the two.
A burgeoning talent from New York’s classical music scene, Kelly Moran’s critically-acclaimed new album Ultraviolet experiments with electronic sound and traditional prepared piano. Wading deeper into the electroacoustic realms, Danish electronic composer Astrid Sonne presents a new piece entitled ‘Cycles of Lost and Found’ for electronics and strings, while Bristol-based composer John Bence performs his epic sonic narratives. Drawing from musique concrète, noise and field recordings, Turkish electroacoustic composer Ipek Gorgun brings to life her newly-released Touch album, ECCE HOMO.
Hunched across a table of machines and pedals, techno-not-techno duo Giant Swan unleashes their electrifying dance music, quaking bass and hypnotic electronic noise with telepathic intricacy, while Sinjin Hawke & Zora Jones unveil an audiovisual experience that combines motion capture technology, dance, and new strains of club music. Joining them are Flohio, a British-Nigerian rapper, an artist steeped in grime tradition and armed with a poetic, rapid-fire flow, and globetrotting singer and producer Lafawndah.
Rewire 2019 Festival Passes are now available for the reduced price of €75. Regular festival passes (€82.50) will be sold from 1 February on. Individual Day and Club tickets will be available from early 2019.
Festival Passes are available at Tickets.