Search results for "Escape-Ism"

Presented by Le Guess Who?, Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, No Seat At The Table, BAK - basis voor actuele kunst, Urban Futures Studio (Utrecht University), RAUM “In urban social...

Unconventional and hard to categorize, producer/lyricist Quelle Chris is well-versed in several genres, including punk rock, poetry, abstract soul, and experimental hip-hop. As a beatsmith, he tends t...

Hidden Musics Grammy-winning producer and author Ian Brennan has accumulated a resume that would make anyone in his fields blush. Brennan’s most pertinent and important work, however, isn&rsquo...

Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver Following the footsteps of Islamic mystics on the Indian subcontinent of Pakistan, the Swiss director Annette Berger managed to document the spiritual eve...

As Lone Taxidermist, musician, performance artist, costume maker and provocateur Natalie Sharp relishes in the grotesque. Her unruly and flamboyant electro-punk performances make audiences an active p...

Amnesia Scanner isn’t so much music as it is a movement, one that intrudes living rooms and sweltering, neon-lit dancefloors alike. The Berlin-based duo’s profoundly impressive debut &lsqu...

Presented by Centraal Museum Alles is Rond (All Is Round) was made in the city where Louis Andriessen and Madelon Hooykaas both grew up: Utrecht. Both artists have worked together before, but this is...

Japanese artist Hatis Noit’s accomplished range is astonishingly self-taught. Hoit is inspired by everything she can find from Gagaku — Japanese classical music —, Bulgarian and Greg...

Hidden Musics Lakha Khan is a living legend of Rajasthani folk music. As the undisputed master of the sindhi sarangi, Khan is one of the last remaining Manganiyars to have honed this complex instrume...

Along with Shy Girl and Sega Bodega, French artist and producer Coucou Chloe is the co-founder of burgeoning label/collective NUXXE. Her malformed take on pop music is as mind-melting as it is urgent,...

Presented by Le Guess Who? & Centraal Museum James Merry is a visual artist, originally from Gloucestershire in the UK, who is now based in Iceland where he has been living and working with Bj&ou...

Keys of Light is a piano installation for everyone; it allows the audience to co-create the work by playing the piano. Every note that is played creates a pulse of light or visual element th...

Vivian Wang is one of the founders and multi-instrumentalists of Singapore-based art rock ensemble The Observatory. After initially honing her skills as a classically trained pianist, Wang approaches...

Presented by IMPAKT - Centre for Media Culture The Sound Of One Computer Thinking invokes a paradox or question that is essentially unanswerable. Are love, death or humour uniquely human or biologica...

In cooperation with Gaudeamus AEAEA is the new duo from composers and performers Patrick Higgins and Nicolas Jaar. Utilizing instrumental performance and live digital resampling, the aim of the group...

Whether it’s a stage, a computer screen or a page from a book: Jenny Hval’s multi-disciplinary work aims to break beyond these confining zones to form a deeper connection with her audience...

Presented by Centraal Museum Visual artist Eva Spierenburg from Zeist is the winner of the K.F. Hein Stipendium 2018. Physicality is omnipresent in Spierenburg’s work. Whether it is the visuali...

Lending his singular talents to artists as diverse as Liturgy, Glenn Branca and Colin Stetson, drummer extraordinaire Greg Fox’s rapid fire, blistering playing style is a true force of nature. F...

Mo DJ is one of the first artists to successfully integrate Malian music within the electronic mixing spectrum. His journey began as cassette salesman at one of the station roads in Bamako, Mali, moon...

The sprawling universe that is the great Acid Mothers Temple was formed in 1995 by Kawabata Makoto. This fabled Japanese collective always held a deep dedication and devotion to improvised music. From...

Justin Broadrick (Jesu, Goldflesh, Napalm Death) and Kevin Martin (The Bug, King Midas Sound) initially consolidated their mutual love for abrasive noise, dub and industrial as Techno Animal. If that...

DJ Quesadilla and DJ Fitz, two swashbuckling archeologists of music who habitually turn dancefloors all over the world into journeys of sweet sonic oblivion. The former is one of the most prominent fi...

Composer Maarten Vos is what you’d call a voyager: he transforms traditional instrumentation into newfangled sounds and wields technology like something intricately human. Known as much for his...

Xylouris White is firmly rooted in the past and future: a tight alliance between Greek musician and songwriter Georgios Xylouris and drummer Jim White. Xylouris White reconciles not only the tandem&rs...

Sarah Louise Henson operates from the roots of Appalachian folk music, but is likewise influenced by spiritual jazz, contemporary classical music and even new age. Her music has never sounded as penet...

Psychedelic/krautrock mystics Moon Duo have risen up, understatedly, as one of the most intoxicating live acts of this decade. The Oregon band’s trademark sound is as much acquainted with minima...

Collaboratorium At this year’s Le Guess Who?, drummer Greg Fox (Liturgy, Ben Frost, Ex Eye) will be the festival’s whimsical X-factor. One of the artists he will court is composer and for...

Presented by SPRING Performing Arts Festival Happiness explores the area where man and artificiality converge, where synthetic substances help us to re-humanise, maxi-humanise or, for a while, abando...

Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver The Devil and Daniel Johnston is a stunning portrait of a musical genius who nearly slipped away. Director Jeff Feuerzeig exquisitely depicts a perfect ex...

Cycle or walk through Utrecht suburb Lombok's main street, and you're immediately welcomed by Turkish and Moroccan grocery stores, bakeries, the smell of kebab, and huge piles of colorful fruits sold...

Lombok Festival, one of Le Guess Who?’s satellite events, returns on Friday 8 November. The freely accessible festival is a celebration of the cultural diversity of this city’s district, i...

Spazio Disponibile presents Aimée Portioli, also known as Grand River, is a Dutch-Italian composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer based in Berlin. While mainly connected to the fields of...

Jonathan Bremer and Morten McCoy are two Danish musicians knee-deep in many different endeavors. Bremer is a renowned jazz player, producer and owner of the Unity Rec. label. McCoy, meanwhile, is a pi...

Overviewing the impulsive career of Asha Puthli, it’s dizzying how one individual can encapsulate such a ridiculous range of juxtapositions. Puthli’s notoriety really depends on who you as...

German DJ & producer Mark Ernestus is a sucker for African and Jamaican music. Ernestus’s seven-year collaboration with Ndagga Rhythm Force started during a trip through Senegal, where he wa...

Godflesh is an austere beast that intersects elements of industrial, metal, noise rock and post-punk in truly defiant, engrossing fashion. With its juggernaut drum thuds, shredding bass throbs, cauter...

Like Patrick Higgins, Tyondai Braxton is an innovator in the purest sense. As a former member of Battles, he ventured far beyond the outer dimensions of what we consider pop music. Braxton earned his...

After 15 years of performing for passersby at Paris’s Line 2 Metro, Algerian musician Mohamed Lamouri’s trademark ragged voice and buoyant Casio keyboard melodies are reaching ears all ove...

Canadian artist Sarah Davachi's creates immersive soundscapes with a playful exchange between ancient acoustic instrumentation and analogue synths. Davachi is a real sonic thrill-seeker who enjoys pus...

Producer and musician Cate Le Bon creates a unique vocabulary of freak folk, post-punk and psych pop. Thanks to her jagged guitar playing and Welsh diction, Le Bon is the definition of elusive. Behind...

Somehow, Faten Kanaan composes mesmeric, hypnotic music without the use of sequencers or arpeggiators. With that tranquil sense of endlessness as her core principal, she tells evocative stories with b...

With a super contagious cocktail of Afrobeat, disco and funk, Arp Frique is the past, present and future scrambled together in one groovy, bright-lit musical skirmish. The Dutch producer’s new l...

Embracing music from both bygone and current eras, Miranda Cuckson is regarded as one of the most acclaimed performers of classical and modern music. The New York Times called Cuckson “a prodigi...

Gyedu-Blay Ambolley is the true originator of simigwa-do, a Ghanaian fusion of afro funk, soul and jazz. His work with the Uhuru Dance Band and the The Apagya Show Band (the latter with one-time mento...

Priscilla Telmon & Vincent Moon are a collaborating multidisciplinary artist duo working as independent filmmakers and sound-explorers. Together they produce ethnographic experimental films and mu...

Presented by BAK - basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht Trainings for the Not-Yet is a project convened by artist Jeanne van Heeswijk and BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, in collaboration with many other...

Presented by Le Guess Who? & Centraal Museum  Initiated in 2015, Elegy is a long-term commemorative performance project by South African artist Gabrielle Goliath. Staged in various locations...

Many nomadic Tuareg artists channel and preserve the vibrancy of life that was once the everyday in  Mali. Ahmed Ag Kaedy initially set out to do the same, but instead his haunting eight-track LP...

Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver Lutz Gregor’s documentary Mali Blues takes a vivid look at the West-African nation’s rich and diverse musical fabric, following folk star Fato...

Le Bazarre is a renowned and travelling market inspired by quality vintage, second hand and indie craft. It hosts curated vendors and takes place on a new, inspiring location within the city of Utrech...

Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver This heart-warming road movie, directed by Philippe Godeau, follows the titular protagonist, the 13-year-old Senegalese Yao, in his quest to meet his hero...

Music derived from Rastafarian sound system culture has known many incarnations over time, but Jah Shaka remains true to its spiritual roots and essence. He arrived as teenager from Jamaica in London...

Cellist and composer Mariel Roberts plays her instrument of choice like an actor performs a scene, completely engrossed and enraptured within the composition’s totality. As both solo performer a...

Hosted by FACT Belgrade-based DJ Vladimir Ivkovic sees his chosen profession as a deeper philosophy than just filling up dancefloors. For him, DJing is a way to enter or create new places, to trigger...

Príncipe Discos presents, hosted by FACT DJ Firmeza is a member of the Príncipe Discos crew, one of the most interesting and landmark-shifting movements within the modern European club...

Príncipe Discos presents, hosted by FACT DJ Marfox’s raves are like spinning a Ferris wheel of Afro-Caribbean beats, Kuduro, footwork, grime and urban electronics until it goes supersoni...

Príncipe Discos presents, hosted by FACT “Her music is dazzling in all senses, a trance-inducing tangle of boxy drums, vivid swirls of synthetic melody and buzzsaw grime bass,” The...

Hosted by FACT Slikback is Freddy Njau, an emerging Kenyan producer currently situated in Poland. Associated with the infectious Kampala collective Nyege Nyege, his 2019 EP Tomo renders footwork, gri...

Hosted by FACT As sparkplug of dubstep’s golden age the previous decade, Mala is now part of a select group of producers taking it to thrilling forward-thinking pastures. Responsible for some o...

Istanbul’s Lalalar remind you of your favorite 80’s cult show theme, and simultaneously sound like a delightful dumpster dive of spaghetti western-psychedelics, Anatolian funk, sampling an...

Le Bazarre is a renowned and travelling market inspired by quality vintage, second hand and indie craft. It hosts curated vendors and takes place on Utrecht’s famous Domplein (Dom Square), locat...

One famous sci-fi film once sported the tagline ‘in space no one can hear you scream’, but Prison Religion put that hypothesis to the test and then some. This Richmond, Virginia-based coll...

Naming a band after something concise and universal seems to naturally generate some of the most physically punishing music in existence. If Sunn O))) and Sleep are part of a three-headed beast of &ld...

Zia Anger’s short films have premiered at the New York Film Festival and Locarno. She has directed music videos for an impressive roster of artists, including Angel Olsen, Mitski, Beach House, Z...

Tongue-in-cheek, hilarious and often controversial, Ghanaian duo FOKN Bois coined their sound as gospel porn rap, which might be a cryptic way of calling their art slyly subversive. Their music has be...

Stella Chiweshe, The Queen of Mbira, broke new ground by becoming the first artist to successfully combine the mbira with the marimba. She took up the homegrown instrument back in 1964, originally use...

In 1995, Serbian-born, Brazil-based producer Mitar Subotić – also known as Suba and Rex Illusivii – created ‘Wayang’, an album that would be considered visionary even by today&...

Roberto SOLO Fonseca still lives in the heart of his birthplace Havana, which explains why his adaptation of Cuba’s musical heritage remains so refreshingly renegade and immediate. He spawned ex...

Through live interviews, listening sessions, art exhibitions with select LGW? performers and all things print and sound, Kapitaal will transform into a three-day meeting place for craftsmanship and de...

Presented by Le Guess Who? & BAK - basis voor actuele kunst Le Guess Who? and Jeanne van Heeswijk connected the Chicago-based pianist, clarinetist and composer Angel Bat Dawid with visual artist,...

Moon Duo’s torrent blotchy psychedelics inventively coalesce with meditative, minimalist pop. Indeed, this is inflammatory music that submerges and manifests within the subconscious like a livin...

The power of the imagination is arguably the greatest during youth, and Oslo-based collective DNA? AND? bring this notion into play in the most remarkable fashion. Comprised of special needs children...

Before Vicky Chow's performance in TivoliVredenburg's Hertz (curated by Patrick Higgins), the Canadian piano virtuoso will perform at Domplein as part of the Keys of Light project,...

Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver, hosted by John Doran (The Quietus) Hream follows the 25+ year career male nurse and adult music student Doug Hream Blunt as he embarks on a world tour, p...

In 1979, The Raincoats helped shape the timeless notion that punk is what you make it to be—an act of raw expression, not any one sound. Their anarchy was poetic. The group’s debut album &...

In her home country of Zimbabwe, music icon Stella Chiweshe is endearingly called The Queen of Mbira, becoming the first female artist to gain widespread recognition for a strictly male-dominated disc...

Every year, Le Feast invites you into a living room in Utrecht, to enjoy a feast together with people you don't know (yet). Many Utrechtian home-chefs will transform their living room into a cozy brun...

Having become somewhat of a mainstay in Utrecht, Stranded FM celebrate and share music from all over the globe, becoming the city’s bastion for discovering fresh sounds. During their four-year r...

Presented by Le Guess Who? & Centraal Museum As co-creative director for Björk on visuals, mask-maker James Merry is primarily known for his hand embroidery on sportswear, but he also create...

In the late 80’s, Doug Hream Blunt moonlighted music with a job at a care home in San Francisco. As a relative late bloomer at age 35, he started writing songs after attending a How To Start A B...

Berlin-based, Argentina-born noiseniks Mueran Humanos enlisted Carmen Burguess to direct a companion film for their last LP ‘Hospital Lullabies’, which will be screened before the group&rs...

Prana Crafter summons cobwebbed guitar meditations, kosmische drones, and mystic acid folk mantras. In their 2018 Best Albums-list, Aquarium Drunkard described William Sol’s project as “an...

The story of Somalia’s legendary Dur-Dur Band is one of regrouping and resilience. In the 80s, their vibrant Somali funk music embedded the nightlife of the capital of Mogadishu. Since dictator...

In their four-decade career, The Ex have experimented with countless styles and ideas. They are revered by many of their guitar-wielding peers, notably Sonic Youth, Tortoise, and Steve Albini. But the...

Le Mini Who? is a spin-off festival of Le Guess Who?. It turns venues, cafes, art spaces and even a fire station of the fast-developing and creative area Cartesius into improvised venues for (mainly)...

Collaboratorium With Brian Chippendale and Greg Fox – two figures of drum royalty – are in the neighborhood, we felt a deep urge to bring them together in the same room. Both artists have...

Over the past decade, Malian, Grammy-nominated artist, musician, and actress Fatoumata Diawara has been universally praised as one of Africa’s most trailblazing and outspoken voices. Diawara&rsq...

The most riveting, template-shifting music often comes from a state of displacement or transience, and the Luxembourg-based, Cape Verde-born ensemble Grupo Pilon is certainly no exception. Founded by...

Adrift somewhere in purgatory between Syd Barrett and Robert Wyatt, the immense spacious beauty of Ed Dowie’s debut LP ‘The Uncle Sold’ can’t be overstated enough. Drawing insp...

Musician, producer and composer Kevin Richard Martin’s chosen moniker has always been a fitting one. As a defiant experimentalist ceaselessly exploring sonic extremities, contrasts and frictiona...

Collaboratorium Harpist Mary Lattimore and guitarist William Tyler may have honed radically different string-instruments, their respective cunning for vivid storytelling with instrumental music is re...

The ever-versatile Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe is a soul that keeps creating, with each undertaking achieving new depths, textures and vocabularies. Lowe's been a mainstay with math rockers 90 Day Men and...

Hidden Musics If it makes any sense – mystical phenomena rarely do – Octavia Mendoza Anario, aka La Bruja de Texcoco (‘The Witch of Texcoco’), reinvigorates the canon of Mexic...

Fashion designer Iris van Herpen and sound artist Salvador Breed curate a lineup of artists and performances symbolizing their highly intertwined aesthetics, developed over years of collaborating on n...

As Yves Jarvis, Jean-Sebastian Audet’s gauzy post-R&B vignettes are driven by color, both as a visual and thematic component. His 2017 album ‘Good Will Come To You’ (released und...

The title track of Lifafa’s most recent album ‘Jaago’ tells you all you need to know about the Indian producer, veering from its swooning, rustic flirtations to joyous electronic res...

After initially cutting her teeth with critically-acclaimed drone ensemble Vibracathedral Orchestra, Bridget Hayden’s first solo outing ‘An Indifferent Ocean’ turned a lot of heads w...

Drone-based music often wields the power to blur that stark hierarchy between audience and stage, to level everyone in the room as both participant and listener. Korean duo TENGGER are no exception to...

Taiwan duo Scattered Purgatory is named after a Taoist ritual that redeems and releases souls from a state between life and death. As it turns out, they adopt this notion quite literally in both perfo...

Together, the most revered merchant of noise and two of the most resounding voices in grime form an alliance of gritty UK fringe music that simply knows no equal. These three artists will stretch the...

Spazio Disponibile presents Crossing Avenue is one of the central projects of Donato Dozzy's and Neel's Spazio Disponibile label. Debut EP ‘Malandra’ provides a taste of what to expect: a...

The words ‘holy minimalist’ immediately jump out when skimming the artist biography of Mexican producer Murcof. Fernando Corona appears to shift techno music from its hedonist, more secula...

Some bands exist to obey your sweetest aural proclivities, but Mueran Humanos is no such band. This Argentinian, Berlin-based duo aims to unnerve and shudder with their strangely fascinating, queasy c...

Mary Lattimore is a Los Angeles-based musician and composer who uses her Lyon and Healy concert grand harp to conjure up beautiful glacial melodies that evoke a host of memories, landscapes and allusi...

‘FIS’ stands for ‘forever in search’, and in all respects, this is exactly the intent of producer Olly Peryman. The monumental soundscapes of FIS highlight that sense continuit...

Blazing Suns is an ever-evolving entity of artists, musicians, audiofreaks and sound explorers orbiting around it. At Le Guess Who?, the quartet of Salvador Breed, Boris Acket, Nick Verstand and Maart...

Brain-melting psychedelic pop that trespasses your neurons like a dream machine on some spaceship. Argentina’s Los Siquicos Litoraleños is truly a baffling operation, embracing wacky expe...

In the vocabulary of Icelandic artist dj. flugvél og geimskip – translation: ‘dj airplane or spaceship’ – the notion of choice is pretty overrated. Why not rapturously e...

Collaboratorium The cartoon physics of Brooklyn experimental outfit Zs, the Lovecraftian doom tandem Ex Eye with Colin Stetson, the blast beat barrages of Liturgy; Greg Fox has an uncanny knack for t...

Efterklang singer Casper Clausen presents his (yet to be released) solo music, made up in a small studio by the river in Cacilhas (Lisbon). With songwriting still in progress, Casper has only played s...

Russian collective Shortparis is all about tension, friction and disruption, obscuring the boundaries between audiovisual theatre, techno raves and punk rock performance. Whether it’s shattering...

Violinist and vocalist Sudan Archives writes, plays, and produces her own music. Drawing inspiration from Sudanese fiddlers, she is self-taught on the violin, and her unique songs also fold in element...

Tropical Fuck Storm’s wailing backing harmonies sound like a coven chanting hellish incantations, and the filthy percussive thrusts, the otherworldly synth flourishes of the band’s debut L...

The words ‘wacky’ and ‘profound’ often walk hand-in-hand in the world of Gruff Rhys. The Welsh artist is best known as spearhead of perpetually wry pop oddballs Super Furry Ani...

YĪN YĪN is a jam-packed romp of South East Asian psych pop, funk, disco grooves and electronic music. The project was conceived by Kees Berkers and Yves Lennertz, two familiar faces in the Maastricht...

Regarded as one of Chicago’s most versatile and in-demand drummers, Makaya McCraven moves between genres like jazz, hip-hop and funk at lightning speed. Unquestionably respected as a jazz artist...

Joseph Shabason demonstrated his mastery of woodwind, horn and brass instruments on iconic records such as Destroyer’s ‘Kaputt’ and The War On Drugs’ ‘Lost In The Dream&r...

Acid Rooster are pretty much a wet dream for heads who cram their cabinets with Amon Düül, Spacemen 3, Wooden Shjips and Magma. The dynamics of this band diverge from weightless, spaced out...

French sound sculptor Félicia Atkinson once curiously speculated that “music always existed, even before humans appeared." She might be onto something: under her spell, a seemingly random...

Cate Le Bon is celebrated for her playful lyricism, and her inventive pop melodies combined with post-punk takeoffs. Last year, the Welsh avant-pop songwriter released her most tantalizing record yet...

Group Listening is a joint project by UK-musicians Stephen Black and Paul Jones. Black and Jones met at music college before their respective paths strayed. Reconnecting years later after various ende...

Holly Herndon’s vital album ‘PROTO’ is an inquisitive, affirmative work that interplays elements like Sacred Harp choirs with an A.I.-entity called Spawn, therefore splicing the orga...

Holly Herndon’s vital album ‘PROTO’ is an inquisitive, affirmative work that interplays elements like Sacred Harp choirs with an A.I.-entity called Spawn, therefore splicing the orga...

Holly Herndon’s vital album ‘PROTO’ is an inquisitive, affirmative work that interplays elements like Sacred Harp choirs with an A.I.-entity called Spawn, therefore splicing the orga...

In cooperation with Gaudeamus Ivan Vukosavljević’s brand new work arms Ensemble Klang with an array of deconstructed electric guitars, the ensemble reborn as prepared/tabletop/eBow guitarists....

Few musicians are as versatile, risk-taking and compulsively explorative as Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe. This nomadic musician redefined math and noise rock with 90 Day Men and helped spearhead druidic dr...

Conrad Tao first touched a piano as a one-year-old toddler, and by the age of eight, he already performed Mozart’s Concerto No. 12. So, becoming one of the most exciting new faces in classical m...

Loving is an experimental pop collaboration between musicians David Parry, Lucas Henderson and Jesse Henderson. Latest release ‘If l am only my thoughts’ marks a newfound appreciation for...

Deerhoof is one of those fantastic beasts the world has been lucky to find, an anomaly of a band that can twist any crunch of noise into saccharine hook-heavy pop euphoria. Their wide-eyed trial-and-e...

The Chilean colossus known as Föllakzoid, are clerics of both the cosmic heritage of Can and the more progressive electronics. The trio are no longer bound by concept or narrative on their latest...