Easterndaze × Berlin
Published August, 2016
by Easterndaze
September 28 – October 9, 2016 (Silent Green Kulturquartier, Lichtblick Kino Berlin)
Beyond folklore clichés and Cold War discourse, below the radar of the tastemaking music press, DIY, alternative, independent music scenes are thriving in Central and Eastern Europe: from electronics and noise to ironic-deconstructive takes on traditional and marginalized local musical styles like Manele and Chalga.
The blog Easterndaze (easterndaze.net) explores and maps local DIY scenes operating in a digital realm, introduces the creative personalities and collectives behind them and provides context. The concert & film screening series Easterndaze x Berlin: DIY Music Topographies, curated by Lucia Udvardyová, presents music collectives from Budapest, Bucharest, Prague and Warsaw and pairs each of them with groups from Berlin’s diverse DIY scenes. The concert series takes place at silent green Kulturquartier, a new cultural space situated in the former crematorium Wedding. The collectives will also exhibit artefacts of their unique visual identities such as flyers, covers and video works. Documentary films linked to the musical acts and exploring DIY music culture in various Eastern European cities and Berlin are screening at Lichtblick Cinema. Easterndaze x Berlin brings together the most interesting and idiosyncratic collectives and cultural activists from Central /Eastern Europe and Berlin, such as Future Nuggets (Bucharest), Christoph de Babalon (Berlin), WIDT (Warsaw), Farbwechsel (Budapest), KETEV (Berlin), Praxis (Berlin) and many others. The festival is a continuation of Easterndaze: DIY Music Topographies, an exhibition and event series with alternative and underground musicmakers organized for the OFF Biennale Budapest in 2015.
The musical line up includes artists from the following collectives.
Berlin-based Portals Editions opens the festival on September 29. Portals Editions is an artist-driven collective originally founded to promote each member’s own musical projects which expanded into a network for musicians applying first wave Industrial ideas of Magick and metaphysics to create music that explores a path of drone and deconstructed dance music, using an array of electronic and electro-acoustic tools. Portals Editions’ international line up features KETEV, Noumeno, Silver Waves, Circular Ruins and Arikon (½ of Gainstage). Portals also presents the Berlin premiere of Jan St. Werner’s video installation ‘Black Manual’. Jan St. Werner has produced stark Op Art animations enhancing the potent transformational powers of each of the 4 remixes done for his collaborative project, Black Manual, with Brazilian Candomble percussionists by Cut Hands, KETEV, Bleed Turquoise (James Ginzburg of Emptyset), and Format01 (Dirk Leyers of Africaine 808) which will be released on vinyl this Autumn via Portals Editions. Also feeding off the trans- and post-humanist associations of former crematorium silent green is Portals Editions’ opposite number Farbwechsel from Budapest, a driving force behind that city’s DIY electronic music scene. Label head Martin Mikolai will perform under his nom de musique S Olbricht.
The second night (September 30) features Prague-based label Baba Vanga. Baba Vanga releases – experimental electronic music on the fringes of techno, noise and glitch, always looking for the idiosyncratic, undefinable and uncategorisable. Releases are limited editions of high-quality MC cassettes professionally duplicated, hand assembled mostly containing original artwork from the musicians themselves. Baba Vanga’s line up at Easterndaze x Berlin comprises Střed Svĕta from the Czech Republic and New Zealand-Berlin act Tlaotlon. Echoing the evening’s post-net aesthetic, Trade from Berlin presentsZiúr and other acts from its network.
On the third night (October 1), Future Nuggets from Bucharest takes the stage. The collective was founded by Romanian producers, diggers and musicians in search of a local psychedelic scene informed by the past but made for the times to come, whether rediscovering past jewels or creating own present-day hybrids of prog, electronica and Manele. At Easterndaze x Berlin Future Nuggets will present the enigmatic Australopitecus Oltensis, creating primitive techno, unsophisticated dub melancholia and cave reverb with strictly analogue tools – and a Soviet manufactured radio transistor to capture ether frequencies on stage. Pranksters not unlike Future Nuggets, Berlin’s Sameheads, from its project space in the Neukölln district, has become a hub for parties, mixtape releases, community radio, blogging, art and fashion events, all loosely unified by a post-identity, post-anything aesthetic and sense of fun. British digital performance group Kimatica embodies the Sameheads spirit with a set that operates at the intersection between the human body, perception and interactive technology.
The closing night of Easterndaze x Berlin (October 3) is devoted to a collaboration with Christoph de Babalon (Berlin) and WIDT (Warsaw). De Babalon is a legend of Berlin’s electronic underground, working with Alec Empire’s Digital Hardcore Recordings, creating a signature sound of extreme complexity in construction and complete experimentation in form that spans many electronic genres including noise, soundscapes, dark ambient, drum and bass and breakcore. WIDT are two sisters who create hypnotic tracks with pulsating rhythms glossolalic, operatic vocals and colorful, psychedelic visuals with a VHS-like retro feel, created from scratch in realtime. The evening will be complemented by the presentation of visual artefacts of the anarchist music and media collective Praxis with which de Babalon frequently collaborates.
The film series at Lichtblick features documentaries linked to and expanding on the music performances. The film series opens with “31 Endings/31 Beginnings” by Prague art and music collective Rafani who will attend the screening. Further highlights include the Berlin premiere of “Dream of Iages” by Sorin Luca (attending) about legendary Romanian prog-electronica musician Rodion G.A.; “Balta Aba”, Silviu Monteanu’s kaleidoscopic look at alternative music scenes like hip hop, punk and electronic music in Bucharest; “Nothing Essential Happens in the Absence of Noise” about Berlin collective Praxis, “East Punk Memories” by Lucile Chafour which follows key figures in the Hungarian punk scene from the 80s until today; a special work in progress screening of “A Room of One’s Own”, a documentary portrait the Bratislava electronic underground by Paulína Mačáková (attending), accompanied by films about leading Slovakian composers Martin Burlas and Ladislav Kupkovič and the “Sounds Queer” workshop and screening with director Dan Dansen (attending). “Sounds Queer” is a portrait of Tama Sumo and other LGBTQI* DJs/DJanes active in Berlin club culture; “15 Corners of the World”, an innovative tribute to Polish electronic music pioneer Eugeniusz Rudnik by Zuzanna Solakiewicz; and Spanish filmmaker Muriel Buzarra’s filmic quest for the “Beograd Underground”.
Full music and film program at berlin.easterndaze.net
Easterndaze x Berlin is funded by Musicboard Berlin and the German-Czech Future Fund and supported by the EUNIC Network of European Cultural Institutes in Berlin, the Romanian Cultural Institute, the Czech Center Berlin, Collegium Hungaricum Berlin and the Slovakian Institute.