Friday 8 April

Rewire 2022 Prelude: The Garden of Ryoan-gi A Louis Andriessen piano retrospective

On the eve of this year’s festival, the Royal Conservatoire presents a special prelude concert with free admittance on the 7th of April in the Ensemble Hall of the Royal Conservatoire in Amare. The programme, labelled “The Garden of Ryoan-gi”, offers a retrospective of the nearly complete piano (keyboard) oeuvre of the late composer Louis Andriessen. Besides key works such as Trepidus and Image de Moreau, other relatively unknown works by Andriessen will be performed by piano students of the Royal Conservatoire. A unique addition to the programme is a performance of the staggering composition De Staat for two pianos by Gerard Bouwhuis and Ellen Corver. No official release of this version, created by alumni Gerard Bouwhuis and Cees Zeeland — that has been explicitly approved by the master himself — exists to this date. Keynote: Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta

Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta is a Lecturer in Ethnomusicology and Popular Music Studies at the University of Birmingham, with previous appointments at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (Berlin) and the University of Groningen (NL). His research focuses on urban electronic dance music scenes, with a particular focus on affect, intimacy, stranger-sociability, embodiment, sexuality, creative industries and musical migration. He is currently conducting research on “techno tourism” and other forms of musical mobility in Berlin; he has a forthcoming monograph based on earlier research, entitled Together Somehow: Music, Affect, and Intimacy on the Dancefloor (Duke University Press). For this Keynote on the opening night of the festival he will share an online keynote lecture on his notion of “Stranger Intimacy” and will offer an introduction to affect theory and its relationship to sound and music.

In conversation with Stine Janvin & Ula Sickle

Artists Stine Janvin & Ula Sickle will have a discussion on connectivity, memory, touch and other senses that filter into their installation “Echoic Choir,” which they present during Rewire 2022. Their collaborative performance evokes the ritual of coming together on a dance floor around music in the late hours of the night. While gathering in a nightclub has been almost impossible over the past years due to the new reality brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, “Echoic Choir” takes on the challenge of using “physical distancing” rules as artistic parameters. A Symphony of Noise: Matthew Herbert’s Revolution Film Screening

A Symphony of Noise takes the viewer on a journey with Matthew Herbert, the revolutionary British musician and composer. Step into the mind of the artist known for his political pieces, combining music derived from real life sounds with politically sensitive issues. Herbert’s premise is that music has undergone a revolution. Instead of making music with instruments, we can now use anything that makes a sound. The film captures creativity at its core. After watching A Symphony of Noise we will listen to music, but also to the world, in a way we have never done before. Enrique Sánchez Lansch, 2021, Germany, 101 min

FRI APR 8

Alabaster DePlume

The British artist, poet and multi-instrumentalist Alabaster DePlume crafts experimental and gentle pop music, inspired by jazz, punk, indie and Asian music, combined with spoken word. He has been praised as one of the most vital and adventurous artists to emerge from the UK in recent years, known for his fluid and intimate live performances. For Rewire 2022, Alabaster DePlume will be joined by his band to perform a live set that includes material from his album GOLD, released on renowned Chicago label International Anthem.

aya ft. Sweatmother

Emerging from the UK as one of the most exciting and innovative new artists, producer aya — formerly known as LOFT — has found ways to contort her poetry, voice and production skills into freakishly beautiful electronic pieces. Fusing the growling low frequency ranges of dubstep, grime and drill with alienating sound design and hyper-personal lyrics, aya warps her club music inspirations into a nightmarish world of art and critique.

aya will perform her Hyperdub debut Im hole at Rewire as a special A/V performance in collaboration with London-based artist and filmmaker Sweatmother. Just like in aya’s music, the video work of Sweatmother subverts hegemonic representations of voice, body, gender and gaze, carving out an artistic and demonstrative space where representation can be freed of objectification. Presented in collaboration with Carhartt WIP

Bang on a Can All-Stars & Ensemble Klang “Forgiveness & Forgetting” World premiere

The forces of two of the most thrilling and adventurous ensembles unite on stage, during the world premiere of this new piece by The Hague-based composer Pete

Harden. Written specifically for New Yorkbased Bang on a Can All-Stars and The Hague-based Ensemble Klang, Harden’s composition, titled Forgiveness & Forgetting, explores the unique, collaborative dynamic between these sextets on stage. It’s an exciting musical endeavour for all involved parties, as both of these chamber music ensembles are praised for their collaborative nature and playful, audacious approach to music. Bang on a Can All-Stars also performs Meredith Monk’s MEMORY GAME alongside Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble on Saturday 9 April.

BFTT

Both BFTT’s productions and DJ sets glide through techno-club conventions with playful and personal innovations as heard on recent releases with ANSIA & Polity. 2022 will see the release of a debut album on TT and a club focussed 12" on DJ Python’s worldwide unlimited label. BFTT is also co-curator and resident DJ for North UK based multi-media collective Mutualism, who hold a monthly residency with NTS Radio, as well as running the club focussed “YCO” label with frequent collaborator aya. Presented in collaboration with Carhartt WIP

Blackhaine

With his latest EP And Salford Falls Apart, the performer, choreographer and musician Blackhaine has established himself once again as one of the fiercest embodiments of British counter-culture. A sensational multi-disciplinary artist that manages to channel British desperation and austerity in gripping and cinematic music, choreography and video work, Blackhaine is heavily inspired by the modus operandi of the 1995 black-and-white film La Haine. Just like the seminal film, Blackhaine voices the angst of the marginalised in ways both sensitive and aggressive, resulting in captivating songs and performances that fuse rap, spoken word, trip-hop, ambient and drill into a thrilling new whole. Presented in collaboration with Carhartt WIP

Circuit des Yeux Featuring Residentie Orkest strings

As Circuit Des Yeux, the American vocalist and composer Haley Fohr combines the adventurous spirit of experimental music with the emotional proximity of pop, folk and rock. Since establishing the moniker in 2007, her expressive and versatile voice remains a powerful tool of composition, employed alongside a wide-array of musical styles, instruments and collaborators. Her sixth and latest album -io reflects on loss, grief and isolation, resulting in an intimate epic that works its way through unsettling emotional lows and dizzying highs. Circuit des Yeux will be joined at Rewire 2022 by a quintet of string players from Residentie Orkest, the renowned philharmonic orchestra from The Hague. claire rousay + ensemble World premiere

Based in San Antonio, Texas, percussionist, improviser and producer claire rousay creates sound that magnifies the importance of everyday life’s often-ignored moments  — from voicemails to whispered conversations. She has released a run of albums over the last two years for labels like Longform Editions, Astral Spirits and American Dreams, notching up a significant amount of positive critical attention from Pitchfork, NPR and elsewhere. During Rewire 2022, she will perform material from her upcoming album Everything Perfect is Already Here alongside a small ensemble that interprets the album arrangements live for the first time. The ensemble includes Mari Maurice from More Eaze on violin, Harpist Marilu Donovan and violinist Adam Markiewicz from NYCbased duo LEYA.

DEBONAIR

Few enjoy such a cherished, credible and powerfully engaging position asDEBONAIR. The DJ and radio host is regarded as one of the hardest digging selectors in the underground with a formidable knowledge of post punk, new wave, body music, proto techno, the avant-garde and off-kilter house and she delivers these exquisitely during her incendiary DJ sets, which take place everywhere from subterranean sex clubs to post modern art spaces. DEBONAIR’s selections always captivate the dancefloor. Presented in collaboration with Carhartt WIP

Dali Maru & The Polyphonic Swarm World premiere

Dali Muru & The Polyphonic Swarm (formerly FITH) channel panoramic film scores, faded Carpathian travelogues, and blistered n’ lurching beats on their kaleidoscopic self-titled LP, recently released on Belgian electronic music label STROOM. Consisting of filmmaker and poet, Dalia Neis, and musician and producer, Enir Da, this eclectic musical outfit crafts a lyrical and cinematic patchwork that giddily breezes through jerky samples and hyper visual poetry that masterfully piece the album together. During Rewire they will translate their ambitious debut record into an expressive and immersive live show featuring guest musician Chris Lamouroux.

Helm & Nate Boyce World premiere

Following the release of his thrilling new album Axis, the British noise experimentalist Helm joins forces with the American visual artist Nate Boyce for an immersive A/V performance based on Helm’s newest work. A propulsive, throbbing and convulsing piece of harmonic noise and spelunking audio design, Axis proves to be a fascinating sonic framework for Boyce’s tactile and uncanny approach to (digital) imagery. Known for his solo exhibitions, visual work and frequent collaborations with musicians like Matmos and Oneohtrix Point Never, Boyce is an established figure in the worlds of contemporary art and experimental music. He also made the music video for Repellent, the lead single from Helm’s Axis album. Commissioned by Rewire

Jameszoo’s Blind Group World premiere

In an ongoing quest to bypass preconceived notions of music and to circumvent creative blind spots, Jameszoo (Mitchel van Dinther) embarked on a sonic journey for one of his most rambunctious albums to date. Blind—released on Brainfeeder— is a gleefully quick-witted tour de force through Jameszoo’s musical brain. For his playful and unpredictable compositional work, Jameszoo contracted trusted collaborators like long-term writing partner and keyboard whizz Niels Broos, Swedish bassist Petter Eldh and drummers Richard Spaven and Julian Sartorius, alongside a bunch of motorised instruments like the Disklavier that generate unhuman, yet acoustic arpeggio’s that elope over the tantalising music. During Rewire 2022, Jameszoo will present the world premiere of a live performance based on his new album with an ensemble consisting of Mitchel (electronics), Niels Broos (keys), Richard Spaven (drums) and Frans Petter Eldh (bass) and a Disklavier. Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble “Cellular Songs: Concert Version”

As part of a special focus programme on Meredith Monk, Rewire presents a concert version of Cellular Songs performed by Meredith Monk and the women of her acclaimed Vocal Ensemble. A “deeply affecting meditation on the nature of the biological cell as a metaphor for human society” (Financial Times), Cellular Songs features some of Monk’s most adventurous and daring music for the voice to date, paired with violin, piano and keyboard. Over the course of the performance, shimmering, multi-dimensional musical forms evoke such biological processes as layering, replication, division, and mutation. Cellular Songs is the second part of a trilogy of music-theater works exploring our interdependent relationship with nature, following the highly acclaimed On Behalf of Nature (2013) and the recently premiered Indra’s Net (2021).

Marina Herlop

The conservatory-trained composer, vocalist, and pianist Marina Herlop has often toyed with classical composers like Debussy and Chopin, giving a contemporary tip of the hat to canonical, romantic music. Recently she has extended her sonic set of tools to a more cybernetic side of music with miu, her first single release on leading avant-electronic label PAN. On Miu, Herlop experiments for the first time with konnakol syllables and Karnatic rhythms, harnessing processed human voices and synthetic electronics. The playful and experimental music evokes the unpredictable vocal treatments of Meredith Monk. As such, the Barcelona-based artist invites the listener to step into her otherworldly dreamscape, falling down a sonic rabbit hole into a garden of forking paths. During Rewire 2022, Herlop will be performing her stirring compositions with a five piece band. Presented in collaboration with Carhartt WIP Pavel Milyakov & Yana Pavlova World premiere

Prolific Russian producer Pavel Milyakov is perhaps best known under his moniker Buttechno, through which he mines the outer-ranges of contemporary electronic music for idiosyncratic club cuts that resist easy categorisation. Working together with Ukrainian artist and vocalist Yana Pavlova, the playful experimentation of Pavel Milyakov takes a distinctive turn towards analogue instrumentation, vocal manipulation and rhythmic experimentation. At Rewire, the duo will present a live set, created during a residency in The Hague, based around their first collaborative album Blue and the follow-up album Wandering. Even though Blue is a lighter and less moody work, both albums explore the textural sound of droning guitars, shoegaze, ambient, noise and spoken word.

MSYLMA & Ismael

The Saudi Arabian musician and singer MSYLMA channels pre-Islamic and quranic poetry in his deeply personal music that combines R&B and experimental club music. He collaborated with the Cairo-based producer Ismael for his newest album بهاذم نايسنلا / The Tenets of Forgetting. Ismael provides a lush electronic patchwork of swelling synths, emotive sound design and club-adjacent percussion to provide a hypnotic framework for MYSLMA’s soaring, plaintive voice to shine through. During Rewire they’ll perform their album live, accompanied with visuals by Omar El Sadek. Presented in collaboration with Carhartt WIP Myxomy (James Ginzburg & Ziúr) World premiere

Emptyset’s James Ginzburg teamed up with producer Ziúr for a seemingly effortless, intuitive approach to hazey pop, broken trip-hop and near-apocalyptic club music. Their shared output as Myxomy is a cathartic tour-de-force through the margins of pop music and the depths of electronic experimentation. During Rewire, Ginzburg and Ziúr will present the inaugural live performance of their shared moniker, a live show that sounds like a vibrant club event and feels like a forward-thinking rock concert. Commissioned by Rewire

Ryoji Ikeda & Les Percussions de Strasbourg “100 Cymbals“

The renowned Japanese-born and Paris-based visual and sound artist is mostly known for his compositions in the field of experimental electronic music and computer art. Groundbreaking works like +/-, Dataplex and Test Pattern play with the binary nature of 0s and 1s, producing synthetic sounds that are often almost bordering on the edges of human perception. For this Dutch premiere of a special collaboration with prestigious ensemble Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Ryoji Ikeda brings his grid-like approach to music to the realm of analogue and physical instrumentation. Employing ten percussionists in a geometrical set-up consisting of one hundred cymbals, this captivating performance subverts the audience’s expectation of the metallic instrument that’s often used for its rhythmic signposting. Here the cymbal becomes a site of harmonic tension, producing alluring and hypnotic sounds that verge on droning synthesizers. In the process, 100 cymbals is as much a stage performance as an audiovisual installation, a highly compelling hybrid experience that invites us to rethink the overlap and differences between electronic and analogue music and art. Co-presented by Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag and Amare Coproduction: Les Percussions de Strasbourg / Festival Musica Commission: Los Angeles Philharmonic, 2019 With the special help of Yamaha and Turkish cymbals

Sofie Birch & Johan Caroe

Formed out of two collaborative sessions on three analogue synthesizers, musicians Sofie Birch and Johan Carøe crafted their collaborative album Repair Techniques as a spontaneous, yet delicate ambient piece. As the title implies, the work is a soothing balm for disruptive and chaotic life events, a testament to putting the pieces together through love and support from friends and loved ones. Faint echoes of new age shimmer in this gentle meditation on healing and care that remains engrossing and moving throughout its eleven tracks. Bringing along a collection of synthesizers and analogue instruments, the duo will re-shape and re-perform this airy, intricate and intimate album in The Hague’s Lutherse Kerk.