Subbacultcha magazine – Issue 03

Hopelessly Devoted to Music and Art — Subbacultcha quarterly magazine Spring 2016

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01 + 02 JULI 2016 WESTERGASFABRIEK AMSTERDAM

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Editor’s note

Dear reader, Artists fall off the map, they fall off the face of the earth as far as we’re concerned, if they have nothing new to show. When it comes to the industry, we are very much caught up in the politics of visibility. Who gets promoted when, what gets released where, who gets booked - it’s all part of a very big schedule that has everything timed for maximum impact.

Inadvertently, we’ve grown oblivious to those in between press releases. LL Cool J said it back in 1991, ‘Don’t call it a comeback, I’ve been here for years,’ and it still holds true. Yes, LL, you’ve been here for years, and so have all the others. Needless to say, several of the artists featured in this issue have albums coming out.

Take note of that, but also pay attention to what has happened in between. Hannes Norrvide of the appropriately-named Lust For Youth has inevitably started to feel old, Jessy Lanza has embraced being a homebody, Elysia Crampton is finding herself leaning more and more on her friends’ work, while Jimmy Whispers is happy in a dress. It’s small confessions like these that truly show you artists coming into their own. So don’t call it a comeback.

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Contents

For your consideration

Unfair Amsterdam

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Interview by Floor Kortman Photos by Valentina Vos

Lust For Youth

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Interview by Floor Kortman Photos by Josefine Seifert

Helena and Lena

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Text by Sophia Seawell 69

Jimmy Whispers Text by Roxy Merrell Photos by Lonneke van der Palen

In Defence of Violence

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Elysia Crampton

Broadcasting Yourself

Interview by Stefan Wharton Photos by boychild

Text by Jo-anna Kalinowska

30 Rooms of Now Story by BEA1991 Photos by Maurice van Es 38 Viet Cong Photo essay by Isolde Woudstra 44 Jessy Lanza Interview by Zofia Ciechowska Photos by Aaron Wynia 54

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Text by Deva Rao

73 Shut the Fuck Up Text by Carly Blair 75

1–3 April 2016 The Hague

rewire festival.nl

Animal Collective James Holden & Maalem Houssam Guinia Battles Mica Levi & Stargaze present Under The Skin Teho Teardo & Blixa Bargeld Xiu Xiu plays Twin Peaks Vessel + Black Rain + Pete Swanson Gazelle Twin: Kingdom Come Ben UFO Factory Floor Lena Willikens • Jlin • Babyfather • Colleen • Ash Koosha • Matana Roberts Amnesia Scanner • Total Freedom • Roly Porter • Mikael Seifu • Emily Wells Beatrice Dillon • Pierre Alexandre Tremblay • Kara-Lis Coverdale • Via App Lussuria • Anna Meredith • Yannis Kyriakides & Andy Moor • Paul de Jong Michel Banabila & Oene van Geel • Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith • Ricardo Donoso Ensemble Economique • Norberto Lobo & Joao Lobo Sextet • Not Waving Alessandro Bosetti • In Code [Wentink, Snoei, Hulskamp] • Bas van Huizen Felicia Atkinson • Poppy Ackroyd • Glice • Gerri Jäger • plus more to follow

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Colophon

Subbacultcha quarterly magazine Issue 03, Spring 2016 Front cover: James Cicero (Jimmy Whispers) shot by Lonneke van der Palen in Amsterdam, Netherlands Editors in chief: Leon Caren and Bas Morsch Editor: Andreea Breazu Copy editor: Megan Roberts Art director and designer: Marina Henao Advertising and partnerships: Loes Verputten (loes@subbacultcha.nl) Contributing writers: BEA1991 Carly Blair Zofia Ciechowska Jo-anna Kalinowksa Floor Kortman Roxy Merrell Deva Rao Sophia Seawell Koen van Bommel Sander van Dalsum Stefan Wharton Contributing photographers: boychild Lonneke van der Palen Josefine Seifert Valentina Vos Isolde Woudstra Aaron Wynia Contributing artists: Sophie Hardeman Maurice van Es Valentina Vos Printer: Drukkerij GEWADRUPO, Arendonk, Belgium Distribution: Patrick van der Klugt (patrick@ subbacultcha.nl)

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Thank you: Francesca Barban, Ida Blom, Jan Pier Brands, Pia Canales, Alex Christodoulou, Esther Crookbain, Cherelle de Graaf, Daniel Encisco, Saar Gerssen, Rose Guitian, Sascha Herfkens, Karolina Howorko, Maarten Huizing, Laura Huppertz, Maija Jussila, Ilias Karakasidis, Robert Lalkens, Niels Koster, Loulou Kuster, Crys Leung, Jacopo Manelli, Flora Nacer, Melanie Otto, Randy Schoemaker, Bart Staassen, Orla Tiffney, Aglaya Tomasi, Marilon Tresfon, Jan van der Kleijn, Ilse van der Spoel, Luuk van Son, Merinde Verbeek, Annemijn von Holtz, Valérie Vugteveen, Marijn Westerlaken, and Sandra Zegarra Patow Subbacultcha Office Dr. Jan van Breemenstraat 1 1056 AB Amsterdam Netherlands Contact: editorial@subbacultcha.nl © photographers, artists, authors, Subbacultcha quarterly magazine, Amsterdam, March 2016

Subbacultcha We are an independent, Amsterdam-based music and art platform devoted to emerging artists. We organise progressive shows, make print publications and curate art exhibitions.

We are supported by our members, who for €8 a month, have first-hand access to everything we do. Sign up online and we’ll love you forever subbacultcha.nl

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oude kerk XXX

germaine kruip

Germaine Kruip Geometry of the Scattering On view untill March 27 + Public program Come Closer – Four meetings in the twilight Feb 6, Feb 20, Mar 12 + Mar 26 8 oudekerk.nl 8

Art patch by Unfair Amsterdam Photo by Valentina Vos 9 See full feature on page 52

For your consideration

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Subbacultcha quarterly magazine

For your consideration Recent finds from our editorial team Artist: Rezzett

Like a manipulative lover, Rezzett reels you in with the promise of silencing the roaring void within, if only temporarily. But proceed with caution: his tunes - abstracted, blown out subversions of jungle and techno - come close to cutting sonically via their almost irresponsibly lo-fi presentation.

Thankfully, he’s worlds removed from the oppressive bludgeoning of most ‘aggressive’ club music, a precision flaying rather than a heavy-handed pummelling, and I keep coming back for more. Call me a masochist.

performance by the artist Joseph Beuys, Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee is a platform for broadcasts from art institutes and regular shows, talks, interviews and audible works of art. So far, we’ve been surprised with amazing audio pieces by artists, great interviews and wildly improvised broadcasts, live from art fairs.

Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee is a very welcome and much needed bridge between art and the people. jajajaneeneenee.com Artist: Mikael Seifu

rezzett.bandcamp.com Artist: Resom Long term ://about blank resident, Workshop affiliate, gender equality campaigner (and contender for best hair in music), Nadine Moser is best known as Resom. Finally gaining some well deserved recognition, she’s set to pop up on more club and festival programmes this year. Her association with Kassem Mosse and Mix Mup should say it all but there’s also a genuine humility in her approach to music. Though hard to classify into a genre, each encounter with Resom is atmospheric, honest, and high in emotion.

If you’re stuck in a rut, look into Mikael Seifu and his ‘Ethiopiyawi Electronic’, a genre he coined to describe the music he and his peers are producing in Addis Ababa. His upcoming release, Zelalem, is a blend of estranged styles, paying tribute to Ethiopian musical traditions while at the same time creating something new, befitting of the times.

Trained in the tradition of drone composer La Monte Young and signed to deconstructionist label RVNG Intl., Seifu has all the right credentials to blow your mind. soundcloud.com/mikaelseifu Artist: Bert Scholten

soundcloud.com/resi-resom Online radio: Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee Amsterdam has sprung an all new online radio station dedicated to the sound of art. Named after a

Bert Scholten, the unconventional wunderkind from Groningen, has finally found time to clean up his surroundings. To celebrate his newfound tidiness, he has made a seven-inch that is neatly packaged within a book that contains drawings he made.

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For your consideration

The drawings look a bit like road signs or infographics, but stripped from meaning. The seven-inch contains the song ‘Orde Schepper’, which ends with a fragment of a voicemail left on Bert’s phone by an anonymous person at 7.21 pm on an undisclosed date. The song is about creating order and trying to put things into perspective.

Online radio: Sega Bodega’s Soundtrack Series If you’re still ambivalent about Sega Bodega’s Sportswear EP, we feel you. Perhaps you have fonder memories of his SS (2015) mixtape featuring reimagined soundtracks for cult films like Akira, A Clockwork Orange and Eraser, among others.

It might be even the case that if you search deep within yourself, you’ll find that the Glaswegian producer really knows how to tug at your heartstrings.

Well then, we’ve got excellent news for you: the Activia Benz signee has taken his film score obsession to the next level with a monthly show on NTS. Guaranteed to make you weep.

Artist: Private Agenda If you’ve been having trouble speaking out your irrepressible desire for a Wham! revival, please, look no further. While the Berlin-based trio that goes by the name of Private Agenda doesn’t quite give you George Michael and his cohorts in the flesh, it does offer the similar disco-infused balearic grooves that used to turn up night clubs in the mid ‘80s. The band’s two EPs have been released on the wonderfully curated International Feel Recordings, breathing new life into what once was considered to be the pinnacle of pop music. soundcloud.com/privateagenda Artist: Demo Taped

nts.live/shows/segabodega Artist: Chunyin

Sydney-based musician and producer Rainbow Chan takes her esoteric pop to electronic heights with a new side project, Chunyin. Leaning away from the heavy vocal harmonies that characterised her earlier work - this is a darker, exclusively electronic sound - though it’s clearly influenced by her love of harmony, layers and off-kilter sampling.

Rhythmically driven and heavy with percussion, it’s a chunky, eclectic mix that’s a little bit weird, a little bit groovy, and always supremely danceable. soundcloud.com/chunyin

An Atlanta-based producer so fresh he’s only got six tracks up on SoundCloud and only just celebrated his 18th birthday. Adam Alexander, aka Demo Taped, builds his ultra-catchy brand of electro-soul with sultry vocals, textured rhythms and a genre-defying experimentation. His Amsterdam debut is just around the bend, opening for fellow emerging pop-funk singer/producer NAO (Melkweg, 08 April). And actually, while we’re at it, if you aren’t familiar with her already, plug: endorsing her tunes heavily too. soundcloud.com/demo-taped soundcloud.com/thisnao Artist: Angel 1 Do you like exercises in futility? If you said ‘yes’, I highly recommend you attempt to deconstruct the thinking behind the ‘enigmatic’ (i.e. under-interviewed) Angel 1’s music - chances are you’ll emerge one confounding experience richer. Recently released full-length Rex fragments the musical

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For your consideration

underpinnings of his 1080p-facilitated microbreakthrough ‘Allegra’, resulting in a dizzying, compositionally deranged aural patchwork coming off like an unreasonably blissful cognitive meltdown. Rarely has ‘experimental’ (electronic) music forged into territory so totally unexplored – glory be to Angel 1. soundcloud.com/angel-uno Art: Panoramical Listening to music and looking at art can be good fun, but making your own is undoubtedly even better. Now, we don’t all possess the intricate skills to embark on such a creative endeavour, so having a tool like Panoramical is the perfect alternative.

With his earlier work released on Oneohtrix Point Never’s Software label, David Kanaga composed the music for this art-meets-video game project, together with Argentine DJ and programmer Fernando Ramallo. With a few clicks of your mouse, you’ll create psychedelic land- and soundscapes that you’ll be lost in within mere seconds.

lead vocalist and drummer Julien Ehrlich speaks of the fictional, hard-knock character the band’s sound is trying to capture. Recently released track ‘No Woman’ unfolds like a daytime lullaby with aching vocals, guitar jangles and waves of emotive trumpets. Keep your eyes peeled for their upcoming debut album this spring or for their set at Where The Wild Things Are Festival 2016. soundcloud.com/secretlycanadian/ whitney-no-woman Artist: Never

panoramic.al

‘Does a man fall in love, only so he can be loved?’ is what London-based duo Never dares to ask the listener on one of its refreshingly honest songs. That question might be best left unanswered, if only so that we can keep singing along to those sadly endearing lyrics on the group’s Don’t Touch Me Now debut EP — which is weirdly uplifting despite its mournful tones. This heartache healing collection of soft spoken art-pop is out now on DEEK Recordings, and is recommendable for anyone who’s been left feeling blue by this week’s Tinder date.

Collective: Discwoman

nevernevernever.bandcamp.com

Focused on elevating the status of women in the electronic music scene, Discwoman is a music community set up by Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson, Christine Tran and Emma Burgess-Olson in New York but quickly gaining ground internationally. They run an all-female DJ booking agency with the intention of claiming more control in the scene and influencing change. To give you a clue of the type of programming they promote, here are some names to remember: The Black Madonna, Juliana Huxtable, Umfang, Hannah Daly, Volvox, and Smokin Jo. Don’t sleep and check their soundcloud for more radness.

Label: NON

soundcloud.com/discwoman Artist: Whitney Seven-headed Chicago outfit Whitney strums out soulful country with a feel for heart-torn lyricisms and sweet indie hooks. ‘Whitney’s not living well,’

It sounds like Amsterdam’s Non Records, but it’s actually NON Records, a collective of artists from Africa and of the African diaspora, filled to the brim with revolutionary élan. It’s a call to arms where sound is a weapon used to deterritorialize and destabilize the Western modes of representation in order to reorient the listener to NON WORLDWIDE views. It is equally an invitation to solidarity held up first and foremost by ANGEL-HO, Chino Amobi and Nkisi for the proliferation of Pan African ideological and economical unity. We salute you. soundcloud.com/non-records-1

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Interview

Hannes Norrvide on Compassion and answering fan mail in Berber

Lust For Youth Skype interview by Floor Kortman Photos shot by Josefine Seifert in Copenhagen, Denmark

Lust for Youth is Hannes Norrvide, Loke Rahbek and Malthe Fischer. But they are also Norin, Croatian Amor, (half of) Damien Dubrovnik and Scandinavian Star. It’s hard to keep track of who is doing what exactly in the Copenhagen scene, they all do so much. As the perfect embodiment of the self-deprecating but hopelessly romantic millennial, we could mistake their appearance to be somewhat lacklustre, but we could never not call them prolific.

Lust For Youth’s previous record, International, aspired towards Italian aesthetics and expensive sweaters, something we learned the enigmatic Hannes was obsessed with during a night of party-crashing that left us wondering if doing coke with Miley Cyrus was maybe a bad idea. But Compassion, also released on the unbeatable Sacred Bones Records, marks a new chapter for the 16

band. With eight of their best tracks to date, the band shows progression in songwriting, and allows more room for Hannes to drag out his sad but, beautiful voice. He sings exactly about what you would expect from a singer born on Valentine’s day – love.

Hey Hannes! How are you?

I’m good. It’s freezing though, I’m cold.

What is your new record called?

Compassion. [Laughs] That’s sweet. Why are you laughing?

Because we thought... it sounds kind of like an asshole thing to call it, Compassion.

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Lust For Youth

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Interview Well… maybe it doesn’t sound very compassionate.

of travelling, which also takes a lot of energy.

Just waiting around for flights and shows.

No. But that was actually the goal, for it to sound compassionate. It was just a quick reflection on our lives and the world. It needs more compassion at the moment. I think this record has more and bigger emotions, more varied feelings at the same time, compared to the last one. And it has a bigger sound, like an arena sound.

How long is your set now?

Oh, about an hour. It sounds long when I say it out loud, but it doesn’t feel long. It’s strange because we started out doing 20-minute shows. I thought a 30-minute show would be impossible, and an hour would be outrageous.

And now it’s like… people would be pissed off if we only played 30 minutes.

We should book you an arena. Do you think you could fill one?

I think after this record comes out, it shouldn’t be a problem.

Okay, we’ll try to find you an arena. Where’s the rest of your band now? They didn’t want to be interviewed?

Maybe. I think they would like to be part of it.

It’s just that all of us are really busy, it’s hard to get together.

Yet, there are only three people in your band…

I think we’re very lucky to be only three people actually – the perfect amount. You can go away for a longer period of time, it’s easier to get around on tour. Having more people on tour must be hard.

‘I don’t really want to be famous’

The older you get and the more songs you write, so you have to play the hits.

Yes, and include songs from different albums as well.

On the previous record, International, there were quite a few collaborations. Can we expect any more on this record?

Yes, we worked with Soho Rezanejad again, who also sang on ‘Armida’. We’re doing a duet.

Still, maybe you should get a drummer. What do you think?

Wow, that’s pretty old-school. What is this duet about?

Soundcheck would be so long. And they hit on everything, like when you’re waiting for the plane.

It’s very old-school. it sounds very cliché but it’s about love and its struggles. It’s called ‘Display’ and it’s about keeping up a kind of front when you’re in a relationship.

With this record coming out in March, is this year pretty much filled with touring?

Is this whole record about love?

I think we’re going to try to do less touring actually. Touring is hard. It’s very nice and it’s very luxurious to be able to do it, but it’s a lot

It’s all about love, but in a teen movie kind of way. I can’t answer for the others but a lot of the songs should be good to make out to.

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Interview Any other collaborations?

Oh my god, I love your Twitter account.

Yeah, there’s a song called ‘In Return’, which is actually a collaboration with a friend from France who speaks Berber. It’s an old African language, like before Arabic. People speak it in Algeria and Morocco.

It’s very hard work to take care of the Twitter account.

But seriously, are those your ambitions, for Lust For Youth to fill up arenas? Be big-time famous?

Is it a kind of a spoken-word song?

Yes. It’s actually a way of answering all the emails we get from fans. It’s our reply to them.

What kind of emails do you get? Is it fan mail?

Yes, some are nice and some are a bit crazy.

They’re all nice in a way. People just tell us about the food they ate, dinners they had.

Do you ever reply?

We don’t reply. You can’t reply, because you can’t pick. You would then have to reply to everyone.

[Laughs] No… no, it’s not. It would be nice to be able to do this for a living and make a good amount of money from it. Then you can do whatever you want, make music just for fun. I don’t really want to be famous. It’s nice to do what you want to do, without having to think about economics. I don’t want to be rich either. Just comfortable.

Last time I saw you in September, the first thing you said to me was, ‘Floor, I’m so old now.’

I did? I am getting older. It sounds very dramatic to say now.

Are you scared of getting older?

So you wrote a reply in the form of a song… in Berber?

We wrote it and then our friend translated it.

Berber has a nice sound to it.

No, not yet. Maybe that starts when you’re, like, 40 or 50.

Until what age do you think you can be in a band called Lust For Youth?

How about your Italian obsession? Are you still We named it that in 2009, when we started. trying to become an Italian?

I think it changes meaning. It’s longing for something you don’t have any more, I guess.

No. It can evolve. It’s also meant to sound a bit creepy. Romantic and a bit creepy.

What do you want to be now?

Famous.

Thanks for talking to me, Hannes. I’m super curious about the new record.

Just famous?

I think you’ll love it.

Rich and famous.

What are you doing to become famous?

We started a Twitter account.

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— Lust For Youth’s Compassion is out on 18 March 2016 via Sacred Bones Records.

Lust For Youth

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Field trip

Jimmy Whispers Text by Roxy Merrell Photos shot by Lonneke van der Palen in Amsterdam, Netherlands 22

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Jimmy Whispers

Master crooner of confessional pop, Jimmy Whispers is shivering and smoking in the bright morning light. His frazzled bed hair and slight tremor tell me he’s had a good night. Last night, he kicked off Subbacultcha’s first gig at De School, Amsterdam’s new hotspot, and it couldn’t have been sweeter. This man knows how to let loose: coercively crowd-surfing atop five unsuspecting audience members, climbing on to speaker towers, clumsily disrobing his iconic Summer in Pain white tee and denim combo to reveal a blue-and-yellow Dirndl dress.

In the hazy Sunday aftermath, we’re back at De School to explore the premises and learn more about this offbeat heartthrob.

We ease into the day with coffee and a stroll, taking in the old technical school’s distinct artdeco aesthetic. We accidentally stumble straight into the full sweat of a kickboxing lesson in Het Gymlokaal, panic and take cover in the empty gymnasium next door. The striking primary colours and adrenaline evoke that classic PE fear. But there’s a sparkle in Jimmy’s eye. The thump of a basketball echoes as he reveals his moves – turns out, he spent his high school days playing. ‘I just did normal kid things. Smoking weed, driving girls around in my car, getting in trouble, playing basketball, y’know?’

At some point, there was even talk of a sports scholarship. Noticing my surprise at learning that about Jimmy the Jock, he quickly straightens me out. ‘Cool kids play basketball! It’s not so much a jock thing, like American football fraternities that are, like, “Uhh, smash shit!” Basketball is all about, “I want to be graceful and jump through the air.”’ He tells me that basketball is the professional sport closest to dancing. I ask him if that’s what he has to thank for his killer dance moves. ‘I guess so,’ he laughs. ‘Thanks, basketball!’

It comes as no surprise that a young Jimmy was also a drama buff, I think to myself as I observe his blond hair elegantly bobbing up and down while he confidently bounces on a trampoline in the dirty dress he rolled across stage in last night. He’s a sight for sore eyes.

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‘I was always acting and putting on costumes, being a weird little kid.’ Come grammar school, he was taking part in musicals, scoring minor roles in plays like The Wizard of Oz and Oliver. ‘That was the thing. I never got the good roles because of basketball practice – the times were conflicting. I really, really wanted to have a leading role but I couldn’t quit basketball because my dad would be upset.’ Turns out, the athletic scholarship wasn’t exactly his idea. ‘I never really wanted to do that. It took so long for me to do what I wanted to do.’ He loved playing basketball, but dreamt of pursuing more creative goals. We’ve heard this story before: the young boy is pushed down a masculine path, while he dreams of singing in musicals. This plot started early for Jimmy: ‘I remember putting on my mom’s make-up and stuff at, like, five years old and my dad being, like, “What the hell is wrong with you? Go wash your face!”’ He laughs at the memory.

In between playing with gymnasium props, we talk performance and the immense energy Whispers is armed with as he climbs on to the stage. ‘I’m in entertainment mode when I’m on stage. I want people to move. It feels good to move. It’s good for your body.’ He delivers these lines with a knowing grin and proceeds to crack himself up. He’s a wild and outsized personality when performing, but can be introverted in his own time. His moniker, Jimmy Whispers, is a nod to his reputation as a soft-spoken kid. A few years back he was still performing as James Cicero, front man of Chicago-based indie-rock band, Light Pollution. There’s a touch of irony there, because ‘if anything, I was holding myself back from being myself, blending in as a cool indie-rock guy.’ Nowadays, as professed on his album, he’s ‘the greatest bedroom popper in the Tri-state area’, boldly claiming his childhood nickname. In spite of his flair for drama and mid-show outfit changes, he tells me, ‘I don’t create a character. There’s a lot of people who try to put on the weirdo persona or whatever, but this is just me… It’s Jimmy Whispers.’

Heartfelt words from a straight shooter. We’re outside for his tenth cigarette of the afternoon.

‘People are always trying to wrap their heads around my shows. Like, how expressing all this sadness gets a reaction of joy. They ask me “Why?” and “How?” I do the things I do, and the thing is, I’m not exactly sure all of the time.’ We walk along the wide hallways, hoping to unearth potential pictorial gems hidden in this construction’s unfinished offices. He announces, ‘I make music because I make music at a fundamental level. I write songs because I just can’t help but writing songs.’

‘The music, and the actual songs, I just can’t help it. It just happens. I’m not putting thought into, y’know, like, “Oh, those are some deep and thoughtful lyrics,” and people come to me, like, “Oh, that’s really deep, you said this,” and I’m just, like, “I don’t know!” y’know? It just happens. It took me two seconds. It just fell out of my mouth, I couldn’t help it.’

It is exactly this raw emotion and effortlessness that makes us fall for Whisper’s everyday existentialism. If you’ve taken the time to tune into his record, Summer in Pain, you’ll know what I’m talking about. His debut has been dubbed no-fi – all one-shot takes recorded on his iPhone without a single edit. And if the candid sound doesn’t get ya, his tender lyricism will – the sound of a 27

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Jimmy Whispers

‘Expressing all this sadness gets a reaction of joy’

somewhat world-weary romantic murmuring optimisms under his breath: ‘Love is dying on the ground, you know it ain’t true./ I know it’s around all the time.’

We’ve found the changing rooms, and Jimmy is stripped down, wearing nothing but his oversized coat and a novel goatee. A gloved hand tugs at the fabric to hide his goods and he coyly raises his eyebrows at me. The vintage clip-on earrings, his racy poses, the feminine skip in his step – he’s uninhibited in playing with expectations. Locker rooms are great for honest talk. I pry.

‘I think that when I was younger I hid that side of myself.’ Bullying is a real part of most kids’ lives, especially eccentric ones with a penchant for gender bending. ‘As you get older, you don’t give a shit about what anybody thinks. I do what I want, with my music, with my art, with my everything.’ As in the rest of his life, this transgression isn’t a thought-through declaration; he just feels good that way. ‘I have some dresses I like to wear when I get home after a really long day at work. I come home and put on this nice dress and sit down at the organ and play some nice music. Relax… feel good… feel nice. I don’t know. I just have a little girly side.’

‘It’s not like, “Oh, I’m gonna shock people! Shocking!” It’s more just like, it’s comfortable to be me. It feels good.’ He’s out to provoke, but not in the sense you might expect. The weird, the outrageous, the hilarious; these elements add up to his wholehearted rollercoaster of energy and emotion that he channels into his take on entertainment. It’s part musical, part theatre, part comedy – but really just all-round Jimmy Whispers. ‘There’s a grander scale to all of that, too – the performance, the songs… It’s about pushing people a little bit. Expressing sadness or whatever, but only to bring people full circle and bring them together. Get them to sing and dance together. That’s the end goal. Maybe everyone feels happy and bonded at the end of the concert.’

He loves getting his picture taken, and the camera can’t get enough of him. As I drift into thought, I realise it’s really quite simple: Jimmy Whispers is provoking us just by being his strange self. Even the honesty of his tortured exclamations puts a smile on our face. His mastery is this: he makes diving into the depths of our emotional havoc fun. Is that the key to what makes his shows work? Just doing what he wants, for himself? ‘Well, not doing it for myself, but doing what I want. I do it for other people as much as I do it for myself, because it’s still entertainment. But what I want is the same as what the crowds want.’ We couldn’t agree more.

— Jimmy Whispers’ Summer in Pain is out now on Field Mates Records/ Moniker Records.

Special thanks to our friends at De School and Het Gymlokaal.

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Interview

Bolivian electronic artist on camaraderie and resisting totalising narratives

Elysia Crampton Email interview by Stefan Wharton Photos shot by boychild in Los Angeles, USA

In the midst of huayños and R&B, cumbia and crunk, the landscape of Elysia Crampton’s music is a mountainous one. Its sheer rolling mass tells numerous tales, from collages of already storied samples to her own South and Central American and indigenous history. At the same time, oscillating between rocky, unstable points of reference her music is equally mountainous in its formation, as of shifting plates highlighting the temporal nature of our selves. I remember my first encounter with Elysia’s music: the track ‘Raining Cut’ – an edit of SWV’s 1997 single ‘Rain’ – under her former moniker E+E. While different from 2015’s more compositionbased Moth/Lake or American Drift, the edit alluded to a vaporous air – one that carries through on her recent releases. Still, just as American Drift’s ‘Petrichrist’ – based on the etymology of ‘petrichor’ – signifies the scent of rain on soil, her music can be eas30

ily painted as a mountainous ethereality, where rock carries just as much weight, and where elegance and bleak ugliness combine.

There’s slight friction in the disjointed nature of our conversation over time, which doesn’t quite concede to the continuity of underlying forces. ‘Nothing is still, nothing is solid state, fixed – there was never a stable point of reference,’ she says. ‘Trace the geological history of America long enough and you’ll find that it was part of the European continent. There are pieces of Africa still stuck to the southern east coast of the United States.’

How are you?

Tired – I’m an insomniac.

Where are you at the moment?

On a plane in El Alto, Bolivia.

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Interview I recently read that you tend not to listen to new music. Why is that?

In terms of sheer sonics, your recognition of clarity as sometimes overvalued is refreshing.

My knowledge of/connection to newer music is sustained mainly through my personal relationships with other musicians. For me, inspiration usually manifests from something at first glance unrelated to the category of music – for example, image documents, film or books – so I tend to focus my attention more on those areas.

My issue isn’t so much with clarity in and of itself but how we come to determine what is clear, legible or definable. What about everything that can’t be defined because there’s never actually been a stable point of reference? What about everything at the periphery of such ‘clarity’? Sometimes when we assume we have all the information (visual, chemical, text data, etc.) on a system/entity/concept in our grasp, it keeps us from truly discovering or learning. There is always something that resists, that eludes; this is queerness’s domain.

‘My issue isn’t so much with clarity in and of itself but how we come to determine what is clear, legible or definable’

What aspects of music do you value most?

I love the playfulness of music, the way you can explore and enact fantasy through it, this is something very precious that I’ve utilised time and time again for survival. I recall days of poorer health when music was the only thing that would work to relieve my physical pain and depression. I carried the sensations, the melodies, the movements with me, and I could feel them changing my body, my health, my future.

What music is particularly meaningful to you right now?

I recently DJed at a party with my friend Juliana (Huxtable) and I loved how we were bouncing off each other’s energy. We share sensibilities when it comes to our personal taste in music, so that was an exceptionally revitalising experience for me. I’ve been leaning on my friends’ work more and more, with a growing appreciation for the solidarity and shared universe I have with so many talented people that aren’t just musicians but artists and writers as well.

You recently shifted from E+E – a project largely based on edits – toward the composition-based American Drift and Moth/Lake as Elysia Crampton. How conscious was this?

It was a fairly simple decision – I mean, it just made sense to put my own name on stuff that was mostly written and performed by me, as opposed to arranged/mixed/edited etc. All the post-production is still done pretty much the same way. Working on computers can feel tedious most of the time, but one thing I like is having all the resources there with me, while I’m writing, whatever that is – texts, images, sound clips. It’s good to have everything lying around because things can easily influence/ come into dialogue with one another that way.

Is there a desire to claim agency over your story – your transition and this process of coming into your own – with your original compositions?

It’s never been my goal to have the music reflect my own story at the expense of all else, but obviously the music stems from/comes out of my experience, which is its own multihelixed collision of narratives. With technology, we can embed texts and other image info into a sound file, yet still the document resists our totalising narratives – finding new relationships, new modes of being and being with.

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Elysia Crampton For me, The Light That You Gave Me To See You certainly has an enduring (if not timeless) quality. It includes a track that you worked on with WHY BE. How did that collaboration go down?

You’ve recently toured Europe, both solo and with Chino Amobi. What are your feelings on live performance? How does it compare to your writing?

That’s very kind of you to say – thank you. I guess I’ll have to wait and see for myself.

Have you heard Chino’s new EP? It’s my favourite release of his since 2011’s e. I appreciate music as a larger space of mobility to sort of counter all of that policing and side-taking. I think the trick is to treat writing words like writing music – just getting to that aesthetic place of communication with the sublime. It’s hitand-miss at times, but one advances so much by what is learned in the process or attempt.

Tobias (WHY BE) and I met in Los Angeles years ago, through our mutual friend Ashland Mines (Total Freedom). Ashland was always helping me out with booking experiments and supporting my general spiral. Tobias and I played a night that he coordinated at this speakeasy we used to go to called MIA, which has since been shut down. We hit it off and have shared music and friendship ever since. Toby’s collaborating with me on a new release I’ll be doing this year with my friends Chino Amobi, Eric (Rabit) and Felix Lee (lexxi).

Something that strikes me about you is the communal endeavour that you share with your friends and contemporaries. At the same time, your music is very personal in nature. How do you relate the shared and the personal?

We are stronger when we are together. The personal is its own community of collaborations, relationships, allies. I tend to rant with this example, but really [Laughs], look at your skin, consider your organs, your vascular system, gut flora, your skeleton – what a beautiful camaraderie of entities brought together by evolution’s struggle. Also – consider my Americanness, which opens into my Bolivianess, which opens into my Aymaraness which opens into all kinds of Asian, African and mixed indigenous legacies that materially make up the Aymara body. The more we learn, not only do we find how connected we’ve always been, but we come to understand our own discreteness as well, through this process of symbiosis. It’s not that these collaborations obscure what we are, they help us better utilise our potentiality and power by uncovering what is actually involved in the maintenance of identity over time.

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Because of my low income and the small budgets I’ve had to work with, I’ve had to learn how to perform as a one-woman act. However, that’s a challenge I’ve enjoyed working out.

Yes, Chino’s new EP is great! How do you think Virginia shaped you as a person, and what brought about the move to La Paz? As beautiful as Virginia was, like a lot of places in the US it could be violent and hostile at times, especially to someone like me. Even in the middle of nowhere, the carceral system makes itself known – the powers that be are there to remind you who’s in charge and what bodies go where.

What are your plans for the future?

This year I’ll be debuting a new show that runs like a short play/DJ production/live performance. The show comes from the perspective/ consciousness of Bartolina Sisa’s entrails, after she was severed into pieces, and spirals into a time slide that ends in the distant future, where we see the end of the prison industrial complex in a universe where blind trans cyborgs of colour have inherited a barren, barely inhabitable earth. The show is my contribution to the Aymara/Andina Futurist legacy.

— Elysia Crampton’s American Drift is out now on Blueberry Recordings.

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Subbacultcha quarterly magazine

Photo essay by Maurice van Es Story by BEA1991

Rooms of Now It’s no secret that our generation has developed an unhealthy relationship to real estate. We change addresses more often than profile pictures. We go from pricey closets to smelly lofts with faulty pipes, from improvised house extensions with naked concrete floors to rent-controlled havens with no heating. And yet we can’t help but get attached to every abode, we make them our own unwittingly. For posterity’s sake, we asked two of our favourite artists to create a piece that speaks to our fickle idea of home. Photographer Maurice van Es and electronic pop artist BEA1991 share a love for candid, unguarded moments, elevating the everyday to a higher form by thoughtful documentation. Maurice delved into Rooms of Now, his series of photo books each dedicated to a different house, and made a custom selection for BEA1991’s vignette from the life of a painter.

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Aldert Mantje

Mantje stays up late and gets up very early. He passionately lives on red wine, cigarettes and crusty spaghetti bolognese. Nothing embarrasses him, he talks about his past a lot, and he never lets anyone get between him and his paintings.

When I first walked into his cube of existence, what struck me was his negligence of domestic comfort and privacy. A spacious room, no walls dividing it, with just a few small windows lining the edge of the ceiling and tall glass doors opening directly onto the pavement: this home served an infinite necessity to work. Brushes mixed with leftovers in the sink, paint and tools spread out on the floor, canvases propped up along the walls - all together they formed the decor of what a home would look like when in transit.

I met Mantje as the neighbor of my then boyfriend-to-be and asked him to help me paint a large papiermâché oyster I had made for one of my videoclips called ‘my name is written on it’.

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With a stern but touching sort of affection he taught me how to paint the oyster - me avoiding the remainders of something that looked like a bed in the corner, the dirty dishes slowly fermenting all over the kitchen, and the toilet lurking in a dark, damp crack in the wall.

Though he was indifferent to the crappy state of his personal hygiene, it made me feel nonplussed at times.

But I also felt sanctioned to get drunk in the afternoon and splatter paint all over the place, knock over plates and cups, curse loudly, stamp around in dirty clothes and ultimately feel intensely content.

When the oyster was finished I bought eight large red roses, stuck them in empty wine bottles and placed them in a circle along the floor. When I visited him a few weeks later the bottles had not been moved; my gift had integrated into his version of a home.

— roomsofnow.nl bea1991.info

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Subbacultcha quarterly magazine

Photo essay by Isolde Woudstra

Viet Cong Canadian post-punk outfit Viet Cong has never had it easy. Back in 2014, the release of their EP Casette on Jagjaguwar was met with an immediate wave of interest in the group, said to be reborn from the ashes of the turbulent yet immensely prolific band Women. Demise was their backstory, and they were painfully aware of it. The following year, they delivered a furious and brilliant postpunk collection as their self-titled full-length debut. If contemporary man has ever known catharsis, this was it. However, their reputation - read poor choice of name - continues to precede them. With a cancelled show last March, frequent protests at their shows, and a loaded debate in the media on cultural appropriation and racism, it seems as though they’ve been dealt a bad hand again. They’ve agreed to change their moniker once the new album comes out in 2016. Late November last year, as they winded down to the last shows of the tour, playing the Netherlands and a heartbroken France (with a final stop in the UK), our photographer Isolde Woudstra joined them on the road. What better way to get to know someone than by travelling together? And though there are many stories to share, many things to tell, it all feels kind of trite. Good luck, guys.

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M.E.S.H. XXX

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Interview

Hyperdub rising star on sentimentality and being a homebody

Jessy Lanza Skype interview by Zofia Ciechowska Photos shot by Aaron Wynia in Hamilton, Canada

Jessy Lanza is on the cusp of releasing an album we’ve been excitedly waiting to hear since we memorised every note of Pull My Hair Back three years ago. Listening to Oh No before it’s officially released is a treasurable experience. The album is formidably poppy, body-moving, bearing the premonitions of the good times we seek and live for, music that makes us elated. Each hook is a friendly tug back on to the dance floor and each new song feels familiar and different in all the right ways. So much so that you want to high five Jessy’s album and loop it for hours.

Months away from spring when Oh No is to be released, Jessy peers at me from her webcam, winter sunshine beaming from behind her, leaving a hazy orb of light around her head and shoulders. A purplish leafy houseplant dangles in the background, slowly coming in and out of focus as she speaks. It hailed the night before and the confines of her home couldn’t be more comforting. Her every word is considered and patient. We’re a 54

few months away from a wave of changes in Jessy Lanza that we cannot predict, but we can sense they will be great. We’re in between.

And so we ponder what is known now and from the past, and we tease and tempt what the future holds. We discuss creating newness in a place that has always been her home, not feeling guilty about feeling good, finding the right spaces to create, and her personal and musical partnership with Jeremy Greenspan.

We part after a while of to-and-fro with a bubbling feeling of excitement that Jessy is back to share more of herself with us. We’ll be giving back on the dance floor.

We’ve not heard from you for a while. I’m curious to know what’s filled your days in that ‘inbetween’ period, for want of a better word?

I’m also experiencing these big gaps between the album being finished last summer, press planning, an upcoming tour and my album release is coming up in May. 2014 was really

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Jessy Lanza

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Interview busy because I was touring a lot. And then I did a project with Morgan Geist and released ‘You Never Show Your Love’. This time last year I had just come home from the tour I did with Caribou. It was a period of adjusting to being back home in Hamilton. I was thinking I needed to get going on new material. I was focused on collecting resources to get started on this new record, working a lot out of my studio here. I have no idea where the time went – suddenly it’s three years since Pull My Hair Back came out.

What’s it like, sitting on a pile of amazing stuff that’s about to reach a huge amount of people, but you can’t pull the trigger just yet?

It’s nerve-wracking and exciting at the same time. When there’s too much time it’s hard not to second guess. Oh, we should’ve reedited this, or gone silver instead of gold in the video we shot – what messages are we sending? I think there’s an advantage to putting things out fast, but when you have a bit of a wait, it gives you time to think about what you’re doing. I am so excited for the next couple of months.

Do you remember what release day felt like first time round?

I couldn’t believe it was happening. I was nervous. I always am. I don’t get my period for, like, six months. It’s fine to let go a bit though now, it has to go out into the world.

That time I had no idea what to expect. There was a big build-up but after it felt fine. Now I think I’ll approach it with more calm than I did that time, but I’ll probably still get a little nervous!

You’ve always lived in Hamilton, Ontario.

What’s it like to be in a place for so long and build your career from your base there?

I grew up five minutes away from where I live now. I’m a sentimental person and a homebody – I don’t like admitting it, but I am. I’m

very attached to my family. My mom and three sisters still live in this town. I need to be close to them, I can’t really stay away from here for too long. When I was in my late teens and early 20s I had this urge to leave, like so many people do at that age. And yet, there hasn’t been a place that feels quite like this place makes me feel. I always end up coming back and shouldn’t fight it. It’s taken me a long time to accept that realisation. I kept on thinking I needed to move, I needed a change of scenery and everything would be better, instead of realising that introspection was causing all of these problems in the first place.

You move within your town though to make music. Can you say a little bit more about that?

Jeremy (Greenspan, of Junior Boys), my partner, is the person I live and create with.

It’s important for our relationship to establish separate spaces for creation. If I lived alone, I’d probably have a studio in my bedroom, but together that’s not how we operate. It would otherwise get too overwhelming, sharing our home life and our musical relationship all in one space. That’s also one of the reasons why we live in Hamilton, Ontario. It’s a town where I can afford to have a small space nearby to go to daily and create. For me it’s about repetition, going to my studio every day, even when I don’t feel like it. I’ll go there and start cleaning my sample library, trawl through YouTube, I might start manipulating a sample I hadn’t worked on for a while, and then a song might come out of that. I never know when it’s going to happen, so I make sure I go to the studio every day, in case it does happen and I’m fortunately in the right place to create.

Your relationship with Jeremy Greenspan comes up a lot in the features about you. How do you wish your relationship was perceived by onlookers?

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Interview

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Jessy Lanza Jeremy and I both work equally together. It’s really difficult for people to get it and then they write about it in a way that isn’t what you’re talking about. Either it’s Jessy is a solo artist who does it all by herself and Jeremy is a tiny footnote, or Jeremy does everything and Jessy sings. We work together on everything – production, songwriting! It’s a weird block for many people in the industry to understand this and then explain that the music is jointly ours, but the project has my name on it.

Yeah, we often see artists as these isolated units if they play solo instead of being nodes in a network. I’m curious to know who you’ve crossed paths with in between Pull My Hair Back and Oh No?

‘I embrace the term “pop”, in all its authenticity and artifice’

On that note, I’ll actually be playing with an awesome drummer called Tory on this tour!

My close friend Morgan Geist lives in New York and we worked on this project called Galleria, which was so wonderful. And I love the guys from Caribou, especially visiting Dan Snaith and his four-year-old daughter in London.

Now that I’m saying it out loud, I think I keep my network small. I like it that way. When it comes to things that have been influencing me lately, I love the stuff that’s coming out from Atlanta right now; Awful Records’ Abra, Alexandria, Father are very cool.

way. I think this one is more straightforward than the first one. The songs are more ‘up’.

They’re more forward, they have a lot of hooks, they might be easier to get into. I was really inspired when I toured with Caribou and saw these huge crowds being affected by their music in a very euphoric way. And Jeremy is inspired by pop music from all different time periods too, which is why we brought that to the forefront of this album. I embrace the term ‘pop’, in all its authenticity and artifice. I have no issue with people putting up a complete facade as their brand, but that’s just not me.

Do you think that music that makes people feel good has a tendency to be undervalued by the artist community?

I don’t think there’s any lack of negativity, you don’t have to look far for it. Just because someone isn’t talking about it, doesn’t mean that they don’t care. And not everything has to be about the terrible things that are happening. That’s just not me to focus on that in my music, it wouldn’t be genuine. And if people don’t want to listen, they don’t have to!

You’re off on a big trip soon, what are you taking and what are you leaving behind?

I’m leaving behind my two cats with my mom! I have this amazing diffuser that glows different colours, I’m definitely taking that. I put water, peppermint and lavender in it to chill out. No other comforts of home are coming with me apart from that.

You say that Oh No is about feeling good.

What are you looking to awaken in your listeners when they hear it for the first time?

I really wanted to do an album of pop songs, not that the first one wasn’t poppy in some

— Jessy Lanza’s Oh No is out on 13 May 2016 via Hyperdub.

She plays at De School, Amsterdam on 26 May 2016.

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Featured artist

This spring, wear your art on your sleeve

Unfair Amsterdam Interview by Floor Kortman

If most art collectives are built with blood, sweat and tears, Unfair adds a lot of guts and heart to that winning combination. They’re our best buds and we’re in awe of them. In anticipation of their third art fair, happening at Zuiveringshal West, Amsterdam from 30 March till 03 April 2016, they invited four artists – Kim David Bots, Ingmar König, Jan Hoek and Boris de Beijer – to design patches, that is iron-on, 100% embroidered, art patches. It’s a project emblematic of their cool, casual and effective way of working with artists. They also got up-and-coming fashion designer Sophie Hardeman, with her conceptual take on denim, and fashion photographer Valentina Vos on board. It’s an Unfair classic; cue artist and co-founder Peter van der Es. Why make patches out of artworks? Was the intention to make art wearable?

We are always looking for ways to make artworks accessible for a broader audience.

Patches have a strong cultural identity; they 60

are a way to advertise a personal interest, often provocative, political or idealistic. We took a lot of inspiration from subcultures: from Mexican wrestling masks, black metal patches to ’90s Thunderdome memories. It was an adventure.

How did you arrive at this selection of artists?

Boris, Kim, Ingmar and Jan are all artists we have worked with at past Unfair editions, so we know their work well. The patches relate to their art in different ways but we feel also that the patch itself would be able to fit well into their respective bodies of work. Boris, for example, uses a lot of occult markings in his work, weird spiritual references, and he plays around with materiality – patches are really an ideal platform for his work. He took inspiration from old NASA mission patches, you can tell there’s a bigger hidden message.

That being said, all of these artists are people who would actually wear patches, they relate to the medium in a personal way.

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What’s your relationship to graphic design and branding? And why is it important to look cool?

I think we are all very visual beings, spending way too much time on FB and IG, so I guess it comes naturally. Also Bas Koopmans, our graphic guru, is involved in all kinds of facets of our initiative, and of course he brings his A game when it comes to our visual identity. Bas just has the unique talent of very clearly communicating messages while preserving that ‘we don’t really give a fuck’ attitude. There is a fine line, but he finds a way to do it without losing the humour and playfulness, so I can still post pictures of Kim and Kanye carrying Unfair shopping bags whenever I want, because it really doesn’t matter.

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Unfair Amsterdam

What can we expect from Unfair 2016?

We have a killer line-up again, showing new works by 40 talented young artists, and making it possible to meet them personally as well. We have a festival day with Subbacultcha with music and fashion, a performance programme throughout the weekend, a lecture programme and much more. Also we have an all new, very exciting exhibition design by Donna van Milligen Bielke, who won the Prix The Rome for Architecture in 2014. We really love her never-ending enthusiasm and she understands the identity of the fair like no one else – her design is really the final, overarching artwork of the fair.

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Unfair Amsterdam

— Patch Artists: Kim David Bots, Ingmar König, Jan Hoek and Boris de Beijer.

Photography: Valentina Vos – Witman Kleipool Styling: Ogènda Clothing: Sophie Hardeman Check out the Subbacultcha <3 Unfair programme on 31 March during Unfair Amsterdam.

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MORE TO BE ANNOUNCED!

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XXX

ZA 19 MRT / Nationale Opera & Ballet

COLIN SELF

MA 4 APR / Muziekgebouw

ANNA MEREDITH

DI 12 APR / De School

A GET-TOGETHER OF POP AND ELECTRONICS

K-X-P

ZO 24 APR / Muziekgebouw

VERSATILE RECORDS

SWEET 20 DO 28 APR / De School

ISLAM CHIPSY & EEK VR 20 MEI / Muziekgebouw

ONLINE RADIO FESTIVAL WARM-UP ZO 22 MEI / Muziekgebouw

PLAID + SOUTHBANK GAMELAN PLAYERS

tickets MUZIEKGEBOUW.NL / THERESTISNOISE

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Point of view

Helena and Lena

by Sophia Seawell The last time I saw Helena Hauff was at OT301 late last year. Katayoun and I stood to the right of the DJ booth, alternating between dancing and discussing how to approach her.

‘Let’s give her a cigarette. Let’s light a cigarette and give it to her. Let’s light a cigarette and put it in her mouth’. (Plan foiled: Helena Hauff rolls her own cigarettes.)

Having seen her back-to-back at Nachtdigital with I-F, listened to her podcasts and mixes online and listened to her record, I can certainly say as a DJ I like and respect her. I love ‘Spur’. But this isn’t always or only what I talk about when I talk about Helena. The words ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ make frequent appearances. I believe my exact words when I found out that she and Lena Willikens would be DJing together at BAR in Rotterdam were, ‘This is my wet dream come true.’

For a time talking like this about the female DJs I liked felt justified – or at least permissible – on the grounds that I did like them as DJs and producers. Their gender, their look, their dance moves weren’t why I followed them – just the cherry on top. I allowed myself to indulge in this language because hey, I’m a woman too, and what’s more, a feminist. I was too aware of what I was doing to be guilty of simple objectification.

And my idolisation of Helena Hauff in particular stems, at least in part, from a certain feeling I have towards women who participate and succeed in male-dominated industries.

It’s also rooted in the power of visualisation: the effect of simply seeing someone you can identify with in a space where you’ve never or rarely seen that before.

At the end of January I hopped the train to Rotterdam, looking forward to a night with some of ‘underground’s leading ladies’ (as the Facebook event put it) with Slick Chick, Lena Willikens and Helena Hauff. But with the

exception of maybe half an hour, I spent the whole night downstairs with Poseidon Posse.

There was no denying the fact that despite my desire to see and support Helena and Lena, I was drawn to the beats, the blue light of the basement.

On the train home the next morning, I had to ask myself: Am I comfortable with my relationship to female DJs being perhaps as based on their gender as on how much I actually like their music?

This dilemma is not uncommon in the feminist/‘post-feminist’ moment we’re in, often framed as a binary opposition of choosing to emphasise difference or downplay it in favour of achieving equality. But I don’t buy it – why can’t the concept of equality tolerate any difference? Why is recognising a DJ’s gender, and the way it informs my perception of and relation to her, cast as more problematic than ignoring it, as if there is no difference in the way that men and women move through the world?

A friend that night was wearing a shirt that read ‘THE FUTURE IS FEMALE’, purchased especially for the event. Remembering this as the train pulled into Amsterdam, I realised that indeed, my utopian future is not one without gender, but one in which difference reigns.

— Helena Hauff’s Discreet Desires is out now on Werkdiscs/ Ninja Tune. Lena Willikens’ Phantom Delia is out now on Cómeme. She plays Rewire at Paard van Troje, The Hague on 02 April 2016.

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your spotlight on Holland Festival 4 – 26 juni

THE ENCOUNTER COMPLICITE / SIMON MCBURNEY Meeslepende solo-theatervoorstelling waarbij het publiek via innovatieve geluidstechnologie de Amazone-jungle ervaart.

9 juni, Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam

AFRICA EXPRESS PRESENTS...

THE SYRIAN NATIONAL ORCHESTRA FOR ARABIC MUSIC

UNTIL THE LIONS AKRAM KHAN COMPANY Nieuw werk waarin wereldster Khan zelf danst.

23 juni, Westergasfabriek, Gashouder

MET DAMON ALBARN & GASTEN 22 juni, Koninklijk Theater Carré

MELANCHOLIA THEATER BASEL I.S.M. JUNGES THEATER BASEL Het innerlijke lijden op zijn mooist in muziektheater gecombineerd met dans.

15 juni, Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ

DIE SCHÖPFUNG

NELKEN

JOSEPH HAYDN, COLLEGIUM VOCALE GENT, B’ROCK ORCHESTRA Haydns klassieke meesterwerk met speciaal voor deze muziek gemaakte film van Julian Rosefeldt.

13 juni, Nationale Opera & Ballet

THE DARK AGES MILO RAU, RESIDENZTHEATER De duistere ontstaansgeschiedenis van het verenigde Europa aan de hand van persoonlijke verhalen van, en verteld door, acteurs uit Bosnië, Duitsland, Rusland en Servië.

18 juni, Frascati

TANZTHEATER WUPPERTAL PINA BAUSCH Tijdloze dansklassieker van Pina Bausch.

16 juni, Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam

< 39 jaar?

Bezoek het festival met fikse korting.

Meer info en volledig festivalprogramma: hollandfestival.nl

Point of view

In Defence of Violence

by Deva Rao Let’s get one thing straight, right the EFF off the bat: I am nothing if not a heaving mass of unfeasibly vascular, impeccably toned beefcakedness. Need proof? Catch my towering frame presiding over all manner of Dutch dance floors come Friday night, as if you needed any confirmation of the muscularity of my physique beyond my textually asserting it in this column. These hands bear the callused surface, this mind the resilience, of an unwavering commitment to physical dominance, a single-minded focus on sculpting my sickass bod to the point of fleshly perfection.

Lately though, I’ve had to grapple with something more demanding than my go-to wrestling partner (shouts to Antoine), or even the bowel-pulverising repercussions of a Herculean diet: ‘feelings’. There are days when it seems no amount of kettle ballage or benchpressery can steel me against the only weight still beyond my capacity – the crushing burden of existential futility and mind-numbing banalities of everyday life consistent to us all. It sounds trite, but it’s days like that when I need music most – to invoke the transcendent or at the very least to escape, if only for a moment, the strain of the mortal coil.

It’s for that reason that I find myself intrigued by a recent wave of extraordinarily violent-sounding songs and releases by artists like Kamixlo, Angel-Ho, Chino Amobi and Rabit, as well of that of their globe-spanning and frequently overlapping Bala Club, NON and NAAFI crews. With broadly ‘chill’-sounding electronic music (think washy synth pads and glossy artwork fixated almost exclusively on vaguely ethereal babes) having reached saturation point long ago, the music of the aforementioned artists seems as much a reaction to the scourge of the (in)offensively bland as it is an attempt at jarring listeners into some, any kind of action.

I’d link that galvanising intent to, I don’t know, ‘millennials’ increasingly fractured attention span’ or ‘slacktivism’ or something, if not for the fact that, for one, I’m too strong physically to pay developments in broader societal mentality any heed. Beyond that, I find the music in question has an almost empowering effect on me – Kamixlo loosie ‘MONTANADELAMUERTE’ gets me emotionally bolstered to a point nearing aggression, albeit without the hostility that might imply. It’s music that feels genuinely exciting, rising above the need for club-centric hype-inducement and expanding club music’s boundaries in a way that feels truly avant-garde.

I don’t want to oversell these tunes – I have the feeling all the artists mentioned have yet to reach their creative peak – but my innate surplus of testosterone and the sheer emotional enhancement coursing through my being at the time of writing (courtesy of Chino Amobi’s ‘Mimesis As Threat’) has me getting real hyperbolic. Disjointed industrial mechanics, disembodied clangs, whirrs and scrapes as rhythmic ingredients and a willingness to switch up brutalising for bliss, unlike the pummelling, mechanical excess of industrial and conventionally violent styles like gabber and hardcore – consider me sold. Still not convinced? Come fight me J. Recommended Listening: Rabit & Dedekind Cut – R&D EP Chino Amobi – Anya’s Garden GROVESTREET & Organ Tapes - To Find Where Ur Tru Image Pictured Lies Angel-Ho – Death Drop From Heaven Kamixlo – Demonico

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ming o c p U s show

Colin Self Jessy Lanza Antwon Empress Of Destruction Unit Sign up online at subbacultcha.nl

Point of view

Broadcasting Yourself

by Jo-anna Kalinowska Gently surfacing under the bubbles of Michel Redolphi’s ‘Immersion’ is the voice of Beatrice Dillon. It’s a soft welcome to her radio show that often blends into the introductory ambience of her music, but today it’s a starting point from which we quickly start racing along with Karen Gwyer’s Bouloman release.

This sets the scene nicely for speaking about Dillon’s show, as it’s probably easier to think of it as a hub full of her peers and inspirations rather than a show you can define musically.

Dillon is in many ways a traditional radio DJ, intermittently sidling up to the mic to identify songs for us or to introduce her guests – guests who tend to be linked to some degree with her own work, such as the label Where To Now? or Rupert Clervaux, who collaborated on the incredible Studies I-XVII For Samplers And Percussion.

On an early NTS show Dillon utters that ‘one of the pleasures of doing your own show is that you get to play music with people you like, by people you like. Which is something quite special.’ And it is quite special. Especially for us as listeners, because although there’s a splutter of new releases, the vast majority of her tracks come from a much wider range of time and place. Dillon has a flair for combining traditional elements with driven drums, carefully avoiding coarsening any original material. Much like two of her sources, Honest Jons and the British Library’s Sound Archives, there’s a sense of opening our minds to what’s out there and exploring a more idyllic reverie to the music she plays off air.

Dillon’s own productions are equally hard to categorise, moving flawlessly between archive material, dub-techno and electro. Her sets are only similar in their ability to reel you on to the dance floor, a beating pulse running through them which the radio show doesn’t

necessarily rely on. One show starts with the soft splashing of water, painting a lakeside image as Beatrice tells us it’s a field recording from a recent trip. Her honesty of sharing music without the weight of expectations opens the window to the person behind the noise, creating an identity that’s no longer just a typeface on an event poster.

More and more electronic artists are taking this leap towards radio. The reasoning probably lies somewhere between increased accessibility and demand, but it’s also hitched a ride on the wider trend of moving away from club aesthetics and expectations of a danceable rhythm, and instead giving a nod to the ‘stand still, sit down, close your eyes’ members of the audience.

The charm of radio is that unshackled from the confines of the dance floor and moved into the concealment and safety of a studio, musicians are faced with the paradox of being more open and honest than ever. In fact, the medium of radio seems to open up a whole new dialogue between host and their audience. It gives us a chance to appreciate the music in a non-physical space and in our own time.

— Beatrice Dillon’s Face A/B is out now on Where to Now?. She plays Rewire at Paard van Troje, The Hague on 02 April 2016.

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Point of view

Shut the Fuck Up

by Carly Blair Most any concert-going foreigner from an at least moderately civilized nation, or adventurous soul who’s traded their humble Dutch hometown for the bustling metropolis of Amsterdam, has been confronted with what is perhaps the most grating variety of Dutch rudeness: nonstop talking during gigs. You know what I’m talking about: that pair of people, standing in the midst of the crowd, having a full blown conversation about some usually irrelevant and almost certainly boring topic, if not for the entire gig, then at least for the duration of your favourite song.

Mobile phones and photos of babies, pets, drunken shenanigans, or (for the love of God) selfies may get involved if they’re truly committed to driving you to the brink of insanity.

In any case, the performers are essentially serving as a backdrop and may as well not be real, as far as these egotistical pricks are concerned.

So why on earth do these people insist on talking throughout shows? Maybe they’d rather flirt or socialise than pay attention to the band. Maybe they’re not enjoying the concert. Maybe they didn’t care about it in the first place and someone dragged them there. Maybe they got in for free and therefore have nothing to lose by not paying attention (ahem). Maybe they’re only there to be seen or so they can post about it on social media. Or maybe they’re just selfish assholes. The kind of people who spill your beer at a festival and don’t apologise, or refuse to give up their seat to needier people on the train, and then stare at their phone as though that makes them invisible.

‘What’s the big deal?’, I hear some of you mutter to yourselves resentfully. First of all, most people are there to watch the band, not listen to you talk about your fucking mundane personal shit. Second of all, it’s not

only disrespectful to the band and to everyone in the audience who you aren’t talking to, regardless of whether or not they acknowledge your rudeness, it also often goes so far as to ruin the gig. And if you say it’s the band’s fault for being boring, I will seriously consider punching you in the face. Don’t get me wrong, I do think bands should strive to put on an entertaining show. But let’s face it, not every band consists of people who are not only generally super charismatic but also well rested, healthy, in a good mood and the perfect amount of intoxicated at that particular moment, in addition to being impervious to any negative vibes being given off by the crowd. In fact, most indie bands are comprised of awkward, sensitive people who are extremely perceptive of and affected by bad vibes. That’s why they write good music!

For someone who’s not on stage nor typically even a performer to act like they’re entitled to start jabbering the moment they’ve decided the show isn’t worthy of their scant attention is just plain uncool.

I’m not saying people shouldn’t say a single word at a show, or socialise even. But the whole basis of living in a free and tolerant society is that it hinges upon your right to do your thing not infringing upon my right to do my thing. Until they invent the technology for selective reality muting, your loud conversation is going to interfere with my ability to hear the band. So please, people, if you want to chat during a show, go to the bar. And if you ever catch me committing any of the aforementioned conversational crimes, feel free to call me out on my hypocrisy – I’ll buy you a beer as my penance.

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