Lineup
Fronted by Kenia-born musician Ajay Saggar, King Champion Sounds are an impetuous, eight-headed band from The Netherlands and England. Fronted by the inimitable G.W. Sok (former singer of the iconic D...
Oiseaux Tempête’s cross-cultural, multi-genre improv rock has a tendency to unfold in places of turmoil, recording records in Greece, Turkey and Lebanon in the past. The core duo of Fr&eac...
Since its inception a decade ago, King Midas Sound’s gloom-ridden transmutations of dub, lover’s rock and ambient music have made an unyielding impression. Producer Kevin Martin (The Bug)...
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In recent years, Ghanaian star King Ayisoba ascended the West African pop charts with his futuristic approach of traditional styles. A master of the ancient kologo instrument - a two-stringed lute -,...
Insert Blank Records is very proud to present to you their very first real-life showcase event. The new record label worked hard to build a diverse and joyful organization that represents the exciteme...
Somewhere close to the sounds of trains leaving and entering Utrecht Central Station, you can find the Ping Pong Club. Ping Pong & DJ’s will take place in this industrial former warehouse. P...
Great pop songs with magic sprinkles of Eastern soundtracks, Spaghetti Western’s spacious twang and some grooving yé-yé sounds, that’s Khana Bierbood in a nutshell. Not surpr...
King Hannah are Hannah Merrick and Craig Whittle, a dynamic, creative duo hailing from Liverpool. “If we hadn’t found each other, we don’t know where we would be”, says Craig o...
Musician Arish Ahmad Khan – better known as King Khan – will read ‘Black Power Tarot’ cards for festival visitors. It’s a series of tarot cards he created with filmmaker...
In one corner, the shamanistic Saul Williams, actor, screenwriter and renowned harbinger of noise poetry and hip hop futurism. In the other corner, cleric of eclecticism King Britt, accomplished Phill...
Hidden Musics
Christopher C. King’s relationship with the folk traditions of Epirus, a mountain region connecting Greece with the southern parts of Albania, occupies a special place in his hear...
Paul Clipson is a San Francisco-based experimental filmmaker who often collaborates with sound artists and musicians. His Super 8 and 16mm films aim to bring subconscious visual abstractions to light....
Under supervision of surrealist filmmaker and spiritual guru Alejandro Jodorowsky, King Khan and Game of Thrones-designer Michael Eaton created ‘The Black Power Tarot’. The cards are depic...
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...
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...
While the festival’s numerous performances spread all over the city of Utrecht, there will be one moment we all come together, and that is at the afterparty. The line-up will feature dub-king Ke...
The King of Keyboard himself, Rizan Said, remains one of the most famous and influential musicians from Syria. He’s made a name for himself as composer for all kinds of Syrian artists, as well a...
‘The Invaders’ talks about a generation of civil rights activists who originated from Memphis in 1967, consisting of students, Vietnam veterans, musicians and intellectuals who were inspir...
As one of the many groundbreaking brainchilds of renowned Philly producer and musician King Britt, Fhloston Paradigm will return to Utrecht to host a DJ set featuring impulsive experimentation, cosmic...
Justin 'KUTMAH' McNulty was born in Brighton, England to an Egyptian mother and Scottish father. After moving to the United States at twelve years old, KUTMAH ultimately made a name for himself as an...
Fhloston Paradigm is one of the many groundbreaking excursions of renowned Philly producer, musician and DJ King Britt. Hyperdub debut ‘The Phoenix’ and this year’s follow-up ‘...
Movement alters sounds, sounds alter movement, this is what Pablo Molina and Vincent Schoutsen envision behind their collaboration, Sound in Motion. They are shaping each other's realities via a micro...
When Alogte Oho was a boy, all he ever dreamt of was to join the church choir. When he turned thirteen, he did so and quickly ascended to stardom as a Frafra-Gospel artist. But in his twenties, a seri...
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...
Music as Spectral Infrastructure
As a culmination of the two-day program, Lynnée Denise and Edward George play tracks and music that manifest the strangeness and wonder of sound system culture...
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 the small inland town of São Domingos on Cape Verde's Santiago Island, The Ano Nobo Quartet delivers a fresh take on Koladera, a guitar-driven, subtly rhythmic sound of a lighter spirit. The...
KULTUS, a solo project by Otto Kokke, is exploring the lines dividing music from sound. Stripped of all rhythm and melody, KULTUS songs are all about creating a physical sound that is much larger than...
Music as Spectral Infrastructure
In Turntable Epistemologies, artist, scholar, writer and DJ Lynnée Denise discusses her research into sound system culture during the rollout of neoliberalism...
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...
Le Guess Who? welcomes ‘Dykegeist’ - a new choreographic work from UK performance-maker Eve Stainton, with live sound conceived and performed by musician Mica Levi. ‘Dykegeist’...
Cinema Perdu is the moniker of Utrecht-based Martijn Pieck, who has also been involved in woodbender and the [law rah] collective. Fascinated by urban found sounds, he works with manipulated samples a...
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...
The ongoing project Nonsense Note began with several pages of notes with instinctive drawings. The album is a collaborative work composed of sounds and videos created by various musicians from around...
Do you know what total destruction sounds like? It’s sounds like MC/singer Miss Red, aka Sharon Stern, and producer The Bug, alias Kevin Martin, hitting the stage. The Bug’s monstrous, all...
So what do inventive New York-based sound wizard Sarah Hennies and avant-folk/electronic artist Jessica Sligter have in common? Well, they’re both reality-augmenters: Hennies can use any space t...
Colombian experimental producer Lucrecia Dalt creates multilayered and surreal dimensions through sound. Whip smart electronic compositions are shaped into atmospheric sounds, complemented with tradit...
As Olan Mill, UK sound artist Alex Smalley’s work holds a sublime measure between the realms of modern neo-classical composition and ambience, with tender and elegant clusters of sound. His late...
Cindy Lee is the 60s girl group persona of Pat Flegel, once the voice of now-defunct indie pop outfit Women. Though his former band flirted with sounds of the past, Flegel now follows through, bending...
With his nimble improv playing, composer Eli Keszler can make an average drum kit sound like electronic textures. It’s not much of a surprise that sonic contortionists such as Oneohtrix Point Ne...
Originally a punk band, Lola’s Dice have evolved into a tropical, funk, and psychedelic rock rhythm machine. With sounds that are rooted in Latin American percussive music, Lola’s Dice is...
Be it through stumbling, decaying melodies, or menacing flurries of percussion, Mexican singer and sound artist Camille Mandoki explores the wildest shores of catharsis. Her voice may very well be her...
“I want to make more music,” was the reaction of Japanese composer and musician Ryuichi Sakamoto when he was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014. Not long after his treatment he started m...
“Ceramic popcorn exploding in craniums.” This is just one of many lyrics that encapsulates Orchestra Of Spheres’ strange but infectious experimental pop, sounding like a Moebius sci-...
Colombia-born, Berlin-based experimental producer and sound artist Lucrecia Dalt has developed an enigmatic sound marked by tactile and hypnotic layers, synthesizers and vocoding. With compositions th...
With over twenty releases under a closely-related variety of names – Orinoka Crash Suite, OCS, Orange County Sound, The Ohsees, The Oh Sees, and Thee Oh Sees, and now just Oh Sees – f...
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...
The Amsterdam-based trio Marathon started out as a psychedelic shoegaze band, until they got a taste of the exuberance of garage punk. This discovery eventually led to the sound that characterises Mar...
Composer and cellist Leila Bordreuil grew up in rural Aix-en-Provence, France, before moving to Brooklyn in 2012. Having composed in silence for most of her life, the bustle of Broadway didn’t d...
Koen Boeijinga plays saxophone and wind-instruments. At Wishing Well West he explores various eclectic sound worlds through improvisation using saxophones and a wide range of wind-instruments. A conte...
In 2020, Lyra Pramuk published a picture of her vocal cords on Instagram – a display-case of the force behind her debut album ‘Fountain’, arranged entirely from the sound of her...
The duo Ko Shin Moon are entertaining in a similar way as back when you changed the instruments of sample tracks on a keyboard, just out of sheer curiosity how it would sound. Musicians Axel Moon and...
Jazz musician, composer and visual artist Matana Roberts nosedives in concepts of ancestry and creative expression. The stories she tells through music; of human experiences, spirituality, improvisati...
For musician, composer, and new media artist Antye Greie (aka AGF), limiting sound to music is too meek. The self-described sonic sculptress frequently utilizes her recordings to capture everything fr...
It is no wonder that this Spencer Clark project is inspired by eighties cult horror movies, such as ‘Hellraiser II’ and ‘Pin’. Every album released under Typhonian Highlife sou...
Le Guess Who?-curator Patrick Higgins, visual artist Matthew Schreiber and choreographer Monica Mirabile will present the European premiere of their awe-inspired audiovisual project DOSSIER X, immersi...
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...
Born to a Gabonese father and a Singaporean mother, Devi Mambouka is a quintessential child of the world. After relocating to the United States at twelve, she found singing an unlikely refuge. Nowaday...
‘Erratic Weather’, the digital art project of French digital artist Mathieu Le Sourd (Maotik) and Dutch cellist, composer and producer Maarten Vos, is a sonic picture of the chaos of clima...
Rarely has a band sounded so much like their name. It’s as if Egyptian-Austrian artist Leila Hassan and collaborator Francesco Cavaliere picked it out before the instruments themselves. Just lik...
Although best known for his work evoking the sounds of classic country music, Daniel Romano has always been a free and restless spirit, as well as a gifted and masterful musician. His new brainchild i...
[ THUS TIME GOES BY ] is a new durational sound work by Midori Takada, consisting of four parts, created especially for the Jacobikerk and Le Guess Who?.
1 – THUS TIME GOES BY is based on...
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...
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...
Japanese musician and sound artist Haco received international recognition as the founder, singer, and composer of legendary avant-pop group After Dinner. Hailed as one of the first female proponents...
Cengiz Arslanpay is a multi-instrumentalist, sound designer, music technologist and a composer. For this performance Cengiz teamed up with Klaas Hekman, a phenomenal improvisor from Rotterdam. Togethe...
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...
Ambient drones, cowboy psychedelia and fuzz folk - that's how singer-songwriter Bart de Kroon AKA Homemade Empire from Utrecht describes the sounds with which he takes us back to the future. With his...
Inkhorn Controversy is a band from Utrecht that plays both Dutch and English alternative pop rock. Their sound is Britpop/Postpunk-like with some Progrock influences. With theiridiosyncratic texts the...
Triggered by various Latin American rhythms and tremendous joy, a Meridian Brothers concert always results in one big dance party. Led by composer and multi-instrumentalist Eblis Álvarez, this...
Lucy Railton’s voice has bloomed from the root of more than 25 years of classical instrumentalism. The cellist and electronic composer’s acclaimed 2018 solo debut 'Paradise 94' marks a new...
Equal parts acoustic guitar visionary and urban mythologist, South-Africa’s Sibusile Xaba creates a wonderful blend of African folk, flamenco and jazz. Supported by expressive fingerpicking and...
If you were to compare the world of noise music to our physical world, Prurient occupies the very bottom; the deepest and darkest dwellings in our oceans. Sound artist Dominick Fernow's output of obli...
As kaleidoscopic as tUnE-yArDs manages to sound, it's always remarkable how she seems to pull sounds out of the hat by sampling a modest drum set, a small detuned ukelele or her own elastic vocals. On...
Tutto Questo Sentire is a collective started in 2014 by experimental opera singer Olivia Salvadori, composer and cellist Sandro Mussida, and video and sound artist Rebecca Salvadori. Although disparat...
Lebanese producer and hybrid DJ Liliane Chlela makes purposeful music; be it as a soundtrack to film and dance or to make listeners reflect through a cutting-edge sonic experience. Her sound - self-de...
Bolstered by diverse global sounds and powerful female vocals, this thrilling Tokyo-based tribal-psych trio draws from each of the member’s distinct musical influences to create a dreamy tale so...
Dutch musician/composer Martijn Comes specializes in new media, sound design and electronic-acoustic compositions. Some of his harmonies sound as if they’re being exhumed from the dregs of harsh...
In his 45 years as a musician, Japanese sound wizard Keiji Haino devoted himself to one constant: to never repeat himself. To this day, Haino has done just that, always walking the unexplored passages...
Rabit is the moniker of Houston producer, composer, DJ, and record label owner Eric Burton. He combines industrial, hip hop, noise, and sound collage to foster sonic spaces for the exploration of sexu...
As a full-time member of Utrecht-based folk/slowcore formation I Am Oak, Dutch musician Robby de Selby is a versatile talent with an ear for both delightful melodies and foggy atmospherics. De Selby h...
Step into the boundless and ambient-overlaid world of Chihei Hatakeyama; a sound artist, mastering engineer and record label founder from Tokyo, Japan. By processing acoustic instruments such as guita...
Alabama-born, Marseille-based artist and musician Turner Williams Jr. (formerly Ramble Tamble)’s latest record, 2021’s ‘Let It Warp’, was shaped by the thirty-two winds of the...
Djibouti's largely unknown sounds come from a unique cultural context, as the country is one of the last in which music is entirely the state's domain. In 2019, Ostinato Records, upon becoming the fir...
Dutch media artist Mark IJzerman and French sound designer Sébastien Robert team up to present ‘As Above, So Below’, an exploration of the changing landscape of La Araucanía...
There is something odd, but at the same time staggeringly honest, about Klein’s music. Her tracks sound delightfully disheveled - ghostly R&B tracks not meant for the world to listen to. It&...
When Kelman Duran was first invited to play at a party, he opened the set with Biggie’s brooding ‘Suicidal Thoughts’. Over the years, his music has become decidedly more festive. Sta...
Born to Moroccan parents in Barcelona, Ikram Bouloum began to sprout out of the local music scene much thanks to her ‘sound literacy’ sessions. In them, the artist seeks to create a club u...
Based in London, born in Lagos, Funmi Ohiosumah began calling herself Flohio as a teenager. Nowadays, her self-given alias is synonymous with the harsh, bleak electronic beats that surround her &lsquo...
Set in Swiss Lausanne and Belgian Brussels, Meril Wubslin is the musical project of Christian Garcia-Gaucher, guitarist-composer of Velma and Valérie Niederoest, with Jérémie Conn...
As a member of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, Pascoal was dispatched the world over, collecting music ideas from the Caribbean to the Crimean Peninsula. Today, along...
Chicago-born clarinetist and saxophonist Matana Roberts describes their work as “panoramic sound quilting”: think loops, field recordings, chanting and snippets of spirituals. As their amb...
2019 was quite a different year for ethnographic label Ored Recordings. Instead of setting out on expeditions throughout the frozen Caucasus mountains on a quest to collect traditional music from the...
Oki Kano’s (A.K.A. OKI) identity, as a part of Japan’s northernmost indigenous people, is central to his person and his art - as he says: ‘I might travel on a Japanese passport but I...
Melika Ngombe Kolongo is Nkisi - DJ, producer and co-founder of NON Records, a collective of experimental African artists and of the diaspora. Born in Congo, she adopted the moniker after moving from...
Maëva Berthelot & Coby Sey look at finding ways to dissolve hierarchies and to deconstruct normativity through a compassionate collaboration that explores the synaesthesic relationship betwee...
Joey van der Kaaij and his neighbor Nuno Monteiro began experimenting recording together in a studio in a student building in de Bijlmer, Amsterdam. That collaboration has transformed into Ayman Maas...
Hoping to introduce audiences to ‘new ways of perceiving music’, LA-based artist Maral stitched together Iranian classical music, folk samples, noise, post-punk and dub influences on her s...
Music as Spectral Infrastructure
Radical Spectrality is a session that features a new sound work by Laura Grace Ford, articulating what Grace Ford calls “social forms of “radical spectral...
Luc Bersier’s band Reymour exchanged the quietness of the Swiss Alps for Brussel’s busyness, and out of it came ‘Leviosa’, released under Amsterdam label Knekelhuis. Their debu...
Location: Janskerkhof
For her collages, Jolande Vermeulen draws on modern urban landscapes for inspiration. She uses adhesive plastic, tape and textile. Donie Dubbeldam create multimedia-collages tha...
After attending a workshop in deejaying and music producing by East African platform Femme Electronic, model Anita Kevin decided to try it herself. Watching her do her thing as DJ Turkana, we would be...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Utrecht University
In the wake of his recently published fifth book ‘Silenced by Sound: the Music Meritocracy Myth’ and driven by his ongoing field-record...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver
Franco Rosso’s Babylon had its world premiere at Cannes in 1980 but was deemed “too controversial, and likely to incite racial tension”...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver
In this genre-defying film, Zerzura follows a young man from a small village in Niger who leaves home in search of an enchanted oasis. His journey leads h...
REProduce Live is a peer to peer live streaming platform that showcases left leaning artistic expression within India. Their goal is to weave a new fabric by challenging expectations of what contempor...
Jazz musician and poet Alabaster dePlume is Le Guess Who? 2021’s Artist in Residence. DePlume can be described as many things: a cleric of the written word, a maverick of sound, a conductor of c...
Listening to Mari Kalkun’s beautiful voice and songs, even if just for a brief moment in time, will certainly transport you to the Estonian countryside - even if you’ve never been. It&rsqu...
True child prodigy, German musician, curator and radio host Felix Kubin first began experimenting with synthesizers at the tender age of twelve. Of course, such a keen interest in sound and music coul...
Hailing from the town of Agadez, which is known as “the gateway to the desert”, Etran de L’Aïr capture the pulse of everyday life at weddings, baptisms, political events, outdoo...
As a wind of change blows through Kinshasa - an alternative cultural scene that escapes the restrictive category of ‘world music’ -, the sound of the KOKOKO! project is heard in the air. B...
Revolt comes in all shapes and sizes for São Paolo-guitarist, producer and songsmith Kiko Dinucci. He cut his teeth in various punk and hardcore bands, filtered that subversive spirit through t...
Despite drawing inspiration from multiple musical lineages, Laurel Halo’s consistency has allowed her to form her own signature sound, recognizable to both long-time and short-time listeners. Th...
If you could paint the world black, rediscover it with a flashlight illuminating every single detail and turn each finding into an obsession while gliding across the murk, then you might stumble into...
University Challenged are Ajay Saggar (Bhajan Bhoy), Oli Heffernan (Ivan The Tolerable) and Kohhei Matsuda (Bo Ningen). The trio, which splits itself between the Netherlands and the UK, is also glorio...
I Think I Think is a dreampop duo consisting of Aurelia Wurfbain and Silva Westera. With the technological testcases in their music, like using computer controlled hammers/solenoids, tape loops and li...
This fascinating collaboration marks the novel encounter between experimental Tuvan singer Sainkho Namtchylak and Belgian installation artist and filmmaker Jochem Baelus’ Slumberland. When...
Joshua Inyang and Joshua Reid are not just from Manchester themselves; so is their music. Space Afrika's latest record on Dais Records, ‘Honest Labour’, is their defining statement to date...
Italian sonic shamans San Leo deliver a swarming, uncompromised blend of heavy music and minimalism, with a particular taste for epic, cathartic live shows. Thanks to constant touring and through...
Dallas-bred Liv.e is as much as a crossover between Erykah Badu, DJ Screw, and Sun Ra as she is her own lone breed of lo-fi - making her, according to Afropunk Magazine, ‘one of the most intrigu...
Taking his name from a spot near to his heart and home, Phil Elverum of Mount Eerie and The Microphones makes music heavily imbued with that foggy green mood of Washington state. But far from limiting...
Milford Graves Full Mantis is a portrait of renowned percussionist Milford Graves, exploring his kaleidoscopic creativity and relentless curiosity. Graves has performed internationally since 1964, bot...
On her new album ‘Acquainted with Night’, Lael Neale is looking to untangle the paradox that is the difficulty of thinking, speaking and singing simply. The Virginia-raised, LA-based artis...
Berlin-based, Spanish-born musician Adrián de Alfonso has collaborated with names like Lydia Lunch, El Guincho and Le Guess Who? curator Lucrecia Dalt. However, it is on his own that...
The audio-visual happening of Jerusalem In My Heart has roots in both Montréal and Beirut, also combining the best of both worlds. Figurehead Radwan Ghazi Moumneh has been nursing the craft of...
East Side Radio is an online radio platform streaming from Lisbon’s East Side, Portugal. It’s designed to be a hub connecting widely recognized domestic and international talent. This LGW...
Through live interviews and performances, listening sessions, art exhibitions and all things print and sound, Kapitaal, Utrecht’s beloved independent print workshop, will transform into a three-...
Drawn together through a mutual love of synthesizers, electronics, and trance-inducing music, English electronic musician James Holden and Polish clarinetist Wacław Zimpel spent four days intensely wo...
Composer Mario Batkovic is no stranger to praise from the public and the press; his debut self-titled solo album was listed by Rolling Stone among the best avant-garde releases of the year. In 2021, t...
An international musical threesome made up of members from Ukraine, Catalunya, Turkey, and, all of them also, the Netherlands, comes together in Trio SonCe, who present 'Five Seasons' – a fascin...
Oki Kano’s (A.K.A OKI)’s identity, as a part of Japan’s northernmost indigenous people, is central to his person and his art - as he says: ‘I might travel on a Japanese passpor...
‘Rakka II’ is the follow-up to Sasu Ripatti’s 2020 escapade as alter-ego Vladislav Delay, ‘Rakka’. However, its latest incarnation is not to be seen as a mere sequel, but...
Made up from an ensemble cast of Finish rock musicians – with members hailing from bands like Speedtrap, Maailmanloppu, Perikato, and Kylmä Sota – Kohti Tuhoa is hailed as a...
With their 2021 debut record ‘Dive’, Rotterdam folk outfit Ilsha intend to offer comfort to those who are ‘sad and weeping’; the project, released under the wing of Dutch DIY T...
‘What do you do when your band has crafted such a unique signature sound and the aim is to maintain things at this superlative level without repeating yourselves?’, asked Christoph Clö...
On his 2021 record, ‘Forfolks’, Tortoise guitarist Jeff Parker proves why he is considered one of contemporary music’s most versatile and innovative composers - be it in pop, rock, j...
Kaap De Goede Hoop builds a landscape of warm analog tones, crackling beats and disorienting voices. The live set is always different, reacting to the environment and atmospheres in the room. In a war...
On a quest for the awakening of true beauty on stage and all around us, Mathieu David Gagnon conjures up in Flore Laurentienne’s chamber music the lushness of vintage film, blossoming spring, an...
San Francisco-based artist Victoria Shen opposes signal and information through 'chaotic sound'. Her unconventional sonic havoc is carefully built with analog modular synthesizers, vinyl and resin rec...
Danseruna is an experience happening for the past 4 years in the south of France, in the small village of Capestang. Born from the desire to merge various dance languages, mostly traditional folk danc...
This February, Australian post-punk, atmosphere, and dub-inspired band EXEK released their album, 'Advertise Here', via Castle Face Records. The cheekily-titled record echoes the work of forebearers H...
After attending a workshop in deejaying and music producing by East African platform Femme Electronic, model Anita Kevin decided to try it herself. Watching her do her thing as DJ Turkana, we would be...
‘Dos City’, Tokyo-based experimental hip-hop trio Dos Monos’ 2019 debut album, followed the hype the eccentric group had spawned through their live performances around Japan and in E...
Velvet-Rebel’s dynamic and energetic sounds carry an important message of living fully with a mysterious dark edge. His use of a tight rhythmic spine of drums combined with bass with acceleratin...
Music platform Front hosts live sessions of Anna van Rij and Private Banking in the Marnixzaal, a hidden gem on Utrecht’s famed Dom Square. Pop noir singer, songwriter and producer Anna van Rij...
Dutch composer Wouter van Veldhoven explores the possibilities offered by archaic magnetic sound recording, processing and playback. He uses refurbished/adapted tape recorders, wire recorders and disc...
Paris-based Niamké Désiré began studying graphic design and cinema, but soon enough, he was designing and creating his own digital instruments. After several musical collaboration...
‘Visions of Bodies Being Burned’, clipping.’s 2020 release is another cornerstone in their terrifying discography. The West Coast-based hip-hop trio, made up of producers Jonathan Sn...
Model Home is a hyperprolific experimental hip-hop formation from Washington D.C., instigated by rapper NAPPYNAPPA and producer Pat Cain. The duo recruits an ever-changing cast of collaborators to giv...
Through live interviews and performances, listening sessions, art exhibitions and all things print and sound, Kapitaal, Utrecht’s beloved independent print workshop, will transform into a three-...
Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk's music began as a contradiction; playing as softly as possible in the time of the loudness of grunge. However, never the kind to stick to a label, they have shifted thei...
The music of Plague Organ inspires superlatives of a particularly brutal nature. This mutating self-reproducing entity assimilates the qualities of metal, noise, free-jazz and experimental rock. Often...
Two full decades after their debut, punk group OvO sound just as hardcore as they did back then. Their latest record, 2020’s ‘Miasma’, sees the savage band seeking to represent...
It was at Le Guess Who? 2016 that Niger quartet Les Files de Illighadad made their European debut - and, six years later, after incessantly touring the world, they are back to Utrecht with a brand new...
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...
Collaboratorium
Step inside the tractor beam, because at Le Guess Who?, Mythic Sunship will organize a momentous assemblage of wondrous sound. Of course, this Copenhagen quartet has room aplenty for...
Belgium’s STUFF. is much more than your typical jazz quintet. Adding dazzling layers of hip-hop, funk and electronic sounds to their jazz foundation, the group forges an energetic storm of instr...
New York musician/composer Lea Bertucci threads the needle between the physical and abstract. The soothing movements she creates with alto saxophone, electronics and bass clarinet interact with device...
As a hurdy-gurdy player, composer and sound artist, Yann Gourdon focuses on the various ways acoustic instruments work together with landscapes, objects and man-made structures. Simultaneously, he lea...
Stockholm musician and composer Ellen Arkbro is motivated by generating and absorbing sound. Whether she has her hands on a 400-year old pipe organ or a grid of digital equipment, the results are equa...
Ben Bertrand is a Brussels-based bass clarinetist who cut his teeth in the Belgian modern classical scene. Bertrand once invented a device that enables him to transform the natural sound of his instru...
Hellvete is the solo moniker of Glen Steenkiste. Previously active in Silvester Anfang and one of the founders of the Funeral Folk label, Steenkiste draws influences from early minimalism to old folk...
Driven by trance-like repetition and adventurous spirit, Colin Stetson’s performances are an unworldly display of sonic inventiveness and emotional release. Exploring the full scope of his instr...
Born and raised in China and currently residing in Berlin, Pan Daijing is a groundbreaking artist, composer and storyteller who creates a raw and rare mixture of noise music, performance art, dance an...
One oath sworn by Hello Skinny – founded by Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner – is to create improv music that doesn’t sound improvisational. Inspired by New York’s late &lsquo...
Continuing the legacy of her father, the legendary Ravi Shankar, Anoushka Shankar is considered to be one of the world’s most renowned sitar players. Her music reflects her Indian background as...
Roger Eno is a multi-instrumentalist, producer and composer from Suffolk, England. Known for his minimal approach, Eno crafts an ambient sound rooted in classical music. Together with his original pia...
Gregory Shorter Jr., also known as Ras_G, is an instrumental hip-hop producer, DJ and afrofuturist. Active in L.A.’s avant-garde beats scene since the early 2000’s and associated with the...
Haley Fohr’s Circuit des Yeux creates an unprecedented deep and rich sound. On Fohr’s latest, acclaimed album Reaching for Indigo, she combines 50s & 60s avant-garde with drone, experi...
Founder of the Moving Furniture label Sietse van Erve has been composing under his Orphax-moniker for the better part of the past two decades. Van Erve wields his minimalist music as a stream-of-consc...
We welcome 69-year-old Kadri Gopalnath, saxophone maestro and pioneer from India. Gopalnath’s life’s work is to incorporate the woodwind instrument into the classic South Indian Carnatic m...
Maria Chavez approaches the turntables as an instrument of transmission. This Peruvian artist doesn’t opt for just its function of mixing different types of music. Her approach is more primordia...
In the late 70’s, as member of the notorious Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Lydia Lunch was a leading figure in the rise of New York City’s no-wave scene. Grounded in a dissonant and atonal...
Enter the dark, mythical world of minimalist composer and praised lute-player Jozef van Wissem. Accompanied by his twin-necked, 24-stringed baroque instrument, Van Wissem creates strange, sonic sounds...
Clarinet master Cüneyt Sepetçi and his Orchestra Dolapdere are among the greatest musicians Turkey has ever produced. Not just adept at blasting out Turkish gypsy music with firecracker fe...
Gaining reputation as an ‘all-round musical badass’ and self-proclaimed Synth Queen, SASAMI (Ashworth) is a prolific contributor to the L.A. music scene. On top of that, she’s a musi...
Despite Sun Foot being a three piece, they could easily be defined as the exact opposite of a power trio. Labeled as surf noise and anti-beach pop, the members of Sun Foot play at a low volume, frisky...
In early 2017, modern art rock outfit FACS rose from the ashes of Chicago band Disappears. Joined by Cat Power’s Alianna Kalaba, FACS use minimalism and space to constitute a darker and more bru...
Here’s a first impression of London four piece ensemble Ill Considered to spark your curiosity: their self-titled LP sounds like free-wheeling jams left on the cutting room floor for Curtis Mayf...
Crack Cloud is a rather peculiar project: a multimedia collective that includes members from different cities, ethnicities and origins. Their debut release ‘Anchoring Point’ is based aroun...
Singer-songwriter and producer Emel Mathlouthi combines the vibrant sounds of psychedelic folk with heavy electronics and atmospheric melodies. She gained global recognition when her recording 'Kelmti...
Although Psychic Ills started as a bedroom recording project fifteen years ago, this New York-based band has been in constant evolution ever since. Never one to shy away from experiment, their music i...
Indeed, the voice of Suuns has plenty more junk in his trunk. Ben Shemie’s fascination with classical music, radio art, new technologies and the free-form experimentalism of labels like Warp Rec...
H. Hawkline’s goofball pop has the special ability to make the mundane sound quirky, whether it’s a perfectly formed bit of toothpaste on your toothbrush or shoelaces tied equally tight to...
Hailing from Brixton, vocalist and producer GAIKA developed his own take on the numerous currents of London’s contemporary music scene. With Jamaican and Grenadian roots, GAIKA creates a sonic b...
Julianna Barwick’s neoclassical/ambient compositions revel in the art of reverb, a crystalline pollination of tiny sonic particles into soothing bundles that fill up entire rooms. Having such a...
Grouper, the moniker of Liz Harris, continues to bewilder with the most basic resources: a voice, one instrument and the ambience of her surroundings. Her sparse compositions occupy an intimate space...
Ekin Fil's ambient compositions sound like eerie, disintegrated remnants of a Cocteau Twins tune. Istanbul-based musician and composer Ekin Üzeltüzenci happily chooses full-on abstraction ov...
Best known for his famous four-part masterwork ‘The Disintegration Loops’, William Basinski has been a vital figurehead in the New York art scene for over three decades. Starting his music...
Wolfgang Voigt's groundbreaking project GAS is the sound of organic matter and technology living in perfect harmony. As he himself puts it: 'bring the forest to the disco and vice versa'. Voigt struct...
Renowned for her work with guitarist Sonny Sharrock in the 60s and 70s, Linda Sharrock has become a leading light in the world of experimental jazz and avant-garde. Her vocal delivery is a hallmark of...
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...
Nadah El Shazly is one of the most versatile and progressive Egyptian musicians. The Cairo-based artist garnered that status by immersing herself in many different stylistics, including jazz, classica...
Born Otis Calvin III, OCnotes has been an artist, musician, DJ, author, motivational speaker and vibrant figurehead within Seattle’s music scene since the turn of the decade. An ever-curious art...
Natasha Kmeto's music sounds like pure pop exposing itself under the x-ray machine: fully-formed, but its anatomy and innards laid bare for all to see. Her albums ‘Crisis’ and ‘Inevi...
Libya’s Ahmed Fakroun is a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and pioneer in modern Arabic music. As a rhymist (based on a form of Algerian folk music dating back to the 1920s), he is one of the...
Ben Frost’s interests are as vast as his output is, creating music for dance companies and films, and collaborating with visual artists and poets. Frost’s music is influenced by classical...
Electronic explorer James Holden is not only a musician, he’s also a producer, remixer, and the founder of the Border Community label, where he releases the music of equally genre bending electr...
Jerusalem In My Heart is the main project of Lebanon-born, Montreal-based artist and producer Radwan Ghazi Moumneh. Moumneh collects sounds and melodies, both archaic and futuristic, to create a trans...
Insecure Men is the wacky side project of Fat White Family-member Saul Adamczewski and Ben Romans-Hopcraft (Childhood). First release ‘Karaoke For One’ contains nine stripped cover songs d...
UK-based musical collective Ex-Easter Island Head incorporates multiple prepared electric guitars struck with percussion mallets, creating music that explores group interplay, repetition and melodic i...
Noise brutes Sex Swing violently grasp the listener with a probing sense of acute danger. You can expect no less from an alliance of musicians from bands like Part Chimp, Bonnacons Of Doom, Dethscalat...
Matthew Benn and Christopher Duffin have cut their teeth with psych trailblazers Hookworms and dream pop authors Deadwall respectively. As XAM Duo, they've blossomed into an ethereal electronic jazz o...
Coby Sey is a NTS Radio DJ and musician who released a 5-track record on Young Turks' sub-label Whities this year. A long time collaborator of Mica Levi and Tirzah, Coby now forges his own path as pro...
Toukadime is comprised of two DJs, Krimau and Bachir, with the intent of preserving music from the Northwest African Maghreb region. Both DJs garnered steady following by deejaying and mixing differen...
The steady yet ever versatile Kevin Morby extends his musical range with each project he's a part of. Morby exhibits a fleeting beauty and folk rock romanticism in his songwriting, hypnotically explor...
Muddersten's ambient soundscapes make you feel like you're part of one of an archaic sci-fi flick: gyrating drones, white noise and dissonant tones orbit the brain like satellites and spaceships. The...
Anatolian psych folk revivalists Altın Gün are, most simply put, a power pact between members of Jacco Gardner and Jungle By Night, who wound up crossing paths with musicians Erdinç Ecevit...
The Star Pillow is a drone/ambient moniker of Italian guitar impressionist Paolo Monti. Monti's craft is mainly informed by his research on the relation between sound, space and human emotion. On stag...
Still the crudest, strangest and loudest band from Atlanta. On their eighth LP, the cheekily titled 'Satan's Graffiti or God's Art?', the band unrolled an 18-song epic revelling in Wall Of Sound grand...
Post-grunge/noise/hardcore juggernaut and overall cool Canadians METZ have released two albums worth of aural onslaught. This time around, the band frantically push their well-established sound even f...
Innerwoud is the moniker of Ghent-based double-bass player Pieter-Jan Van Assche. His music is often described as ambient, drone and neoclassical. Drones are layered on top each other, revealing a vas...
Together with three powerful Maghreb voices, the ultra-low TR-808 bass and potent beats, Tunisian producer Sofyann Ben Youssef (a.k.a AMMAR 808) takes you into the dark realms of North African futuris...
Experimental rapper and producer JPEGMAFIA vouches for a stunning and destructive performance, delivering a thorough reminder that in a dangerous world, sometimes nowhere is safe. Earlier this year, t...
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...
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...
The Bandcamp-bio for Petbrick deadpans that it’s just ‘Iggor Cavalera (Sepultura) and Wayne Adams making horrible noises that melt your face’. But press play and you’ll find th...
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...
For a band whose name translates to “Trees, Grass and Stone”, obviously, these lionized Swedish innovators have upheld their utopian ideals both in ethos and sound since the early 70&rsquo...
Michele Mercure’s shrouded cinematic works overlap ambient, abstract, and industrial sensibilities, always with a keen and playful sense of their surroundings and acoustics. Not surprisingly, th...
Minyo Crusaders breathe new life into traditional Japanese folk songs (‘minyo’) by merging them with Latin, African and Caribbean rhythms and flourishes of exotica. By doing so, the 10-pie...
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...
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...
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&...
US-born, Swedish-based artist Kali Malone builds a truly remarkable synthesis of analog and electronic music, drawing in listeners with discernible warmth and timelessness. Whether she’s utilizi...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
Hosted by FACT
Ziggy Devriendt doesn’t exactly tiptoe around his many music-related interests. Whether he’s hosting his monthly show at London’s NTS radio station, running streaming...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
In cooperation with Utrecht Early Music Festival
Olga Pashchenko, one of the world’s most accomplished piano and keyboard virtuosos, will bring a unique take on one of the most famous horror so...
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 &...
Whether they intend to or not, Negativland have bursted many bubbles over the decades with their quizzical remapping of pop culture, media and advertising. Though Negativland consider themselves artis...
The ‘Orchestre de Nouvelles Créations, Expérimentations et Improvisations Musicales’ (ONCEIM) is an orchestra of 34 musicians dedicated to the art of creation and experimenta...
Co-founder of celebrated poly pop duo Cibo Matto and collaborative partner of influential acts as Gorillaz and The Beastie Boys, Miho Hatori is a rare and inimitable talent from New York City. As prol...
Experimental electronic music doesn’t always have to be dark and twisted, such proves Moscow-based producer Kate NV. Normally, she’s a guitar-wielding post-punker and performer within Mosc...
Fela Gucci and Desire Marea are on a mission. As performance art duo, FAKA could just as easily be labeled as a cultural movement. With a combination of sound, live performance, literature, video and...
Queens based artist Alexandra Drewchin, a.k.a. Eartheater, throws you back and forth with her unconventional, tumultuous sound. Featuring bizarre clashes of acoustic and digital music, Eartheater&rsqu...
Rock ‘n Roll revolutionary and punk veteran Ian Svenonius is back in town. The mythical performer, author, and filmmaker is currently taking the world by storm with his solo project Escape-Ism....
New York-based musician Martin Bisi is hailed as iconic producer who defined the sound of New York noise. This year’s release ‘BC35’ celebrates the 35-year Anniversary his of BC Stud...
Hailing from the idyllic Caribbean island of Martinique, DJ Noss’ music is deeply rooted in his Martiniquan heritage. Armed with both turntables and a traditional Bèlè drum, his ec...
In the early 2000s, Hot Snakes rose to combine Rocket From The Crypt’s walloping garage rock anthems and Drive Like Jehu’s feverish post-hardcore stabs. With aforementioned bands reuniting...
Singing in their native language of Portuguese, Boogarins’ music will let you reevaluate the turbulent life of today. On their latest EP ‘Lá Vem a Morte’, the Brazilian psych...
Manchester-based synth pop duo Virginia Wing fully embrace the perfect counterbalance of the considered and the superficial. Wrapped in catchy, playful synth tunes and upbeat drum loops, their latest...
Islaja is the moniker of Finland-born, Berlin-based sound artist Merja Kokkonen. The ever inventive musician often furnishes her malformed pop with surprising influences and bold instrumentation. Isla...
Yonatan Gat became known as a member of revolutionary Israeli punk band Monotonix, as well as an acclaimed recording artist. After powwow drum group the Eastern Medicine Singers initially turned down...
As Teamforest, German musician and filmmaker Philip Bückle already released recordings via internationally renowned labels like Morr Music, Aesthetics and Eglantine Records. In 2014, Bückle...
Writing to us, Mark Wynn mentioned that he “leaves the UK to dance for money when the money is acceptable.” With remarkable British accent and lyrics dipped in parody, Wynn creates noise-r...
During this decade, Atlanta art-punkers Deerhunter have further established themselves as one of the finest bands alive, consolidating an unmistakable sound with restless reinvention. The electronic-d...
With a career that dates back to the 80s, Soichi Terada has long been a bastion of soothing house music in Japan. Thanks in part to Hunee, who provided a showcase of Terada’s work via the Rush H...
Dutch multi-instrumentalist and psych pop traveler Jacco Gardner will be heading back to Le Guess Who? this year, where he premieres the ‘Somnium’ experience. This will also be the live de...
Hidden in the rural area of Limburg until recently, this Belgian post-punk gem is ready to take the world head-on. With their latest release ‘Winter / Milk,’ Fornet displays their nonconfo...
Emerging from Bristol’s thriving artistic community, the four lads of LICE create a rather peculiar and inventive crossing of rockabilly and post-punk, featuring in-your-face lyricism covering s...
Please note: limited capacity, sign up (between 5-7 November) via bit.ly/lgwlonnie
Since 1979, Lonnie Holley has devoted his life to the practice of improvisational creativity through drawing, painti...
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...
Norwegian-born, Berlin-based artist Stíne Janvin has the special ability to morph and manipulate her vocals into beautiful sound abstractions, to the point even where you forget it’s a vo...
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...
Indeed, as adroit players of the harp and the violin respectively, Marilu Donovan and Adam Markiewicz’s joint project LEYA inspired some emphatically gorgeous music. With the help of fellow expe...
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...
Caspar Brötzmann has embraced a similar vocation as his father, free jazz legend Peter Brötzmann: disrupt conventions through the virtues of noise, innovation, and chaotic physical performan...
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...