The theme of this year’s Sonica Festival is New Realations. It is a portmanteau of two terms, New Reality and New Relations, which, fused through a gap, embody the need, desire and cruelty of the current moment, in which the sediments of the (post)pandemic, of a new war on the Old Continent, of the search for new contacts, mutual relations, trapped in the absolute and shifting dispersion that we live in, are permeating.
Sonica responds to them by persisting, by persisting and by weaving bonds between the audience and the performers, by searching for spaces, by creating collaborations, creative coexistences and environments. The weaving of (new) relations is the potential for the weaving of new realities. Hence the fusion and exclusive commissioning of a new work and the residency of French hurdy-gurdy master Yann Gourdon with Širom in a rummaging through imaginary folk and a search for common motifs in a field of intoxication, minimalism and a search within the past and the future. Mexican-American artist Debit takes us into the new spaces of machine learning, folk music motifs and the contemporary (post)club experience, embedded in one of the most exciting ambiental experiences of recent times, while Italian rave voyeur Lorenzo Senni single-handedly traverses the different realities of electronic club music into exciting new configurations.
YANN GOURDON & ŠIROM (FR-SI)
Both Širom and Yann Gourdon are explorers within the field of imaginary folk, within which they embody tradition and deconstruct it in their own totally unique soundscapes. They are both immersive, contemplative, psychedelic, ecstatic but at the same time on the edges of experimentalism and careful explorations of sound. No one would blame you for hearing neofolk, drone, ambient, minimalism, free jazz, post rock, proto techno, noise, gamelan, medieval music and a dozen twisted music traditions from around the world at the same time. Širom and Gourdon’s first collaboration is truly a match made in heaven, and Sonica is proud and excited to commission their exclusive collaboration, which is ready to hit international stages.
YANN GOURDON (FR)
Yann Gourdon is one third of the drone trio France and part of the famous La Nòvia collective. His practice focuses on acoustic phenomena and dynamic relationships with the environment. Having learned to play traditional music from Auvergne by listening to field recordings, Gourdon re-orientates tradition via minimalism, honing in on a place or location’s unique vibratory fields, volumes and surfaces.
ŠIROM (SI)
The intertwining of diverse musical approaches and tools, histories of sounds and unbridled musical imagination and craftmanship is the expansive guiding principle of the Širom trio. More than a dozen instruments can be found in the repertoire of Iztok Koren, Samo Kutin and Ana Kravanja, and at least as many given musical forms that can be perceived as the inspiration behind the character of this new ensemble. Their latest record was named 2022 Album of the Year So Far by The Quietus.
DEBIT (MX-US)
Mexican-American producer, DJ and audio engineer Delia Beatriz aka Debit makes feverish club music, fusing the triplet rhythms of tribal guarachero with industrial techno grit. She has simultaneously explored the outer reaches of ambient music, with a taste for intoxicating dissonance. On her critically acclaimed new album for Modern Love, Debit combines ancient Mayan wind instruments with machine learning and creating a totally new soundscape that is experimental but can also seduce you in the darkest club spaces.
LORENZO SENNI (IT)
Lorenzo Senni has never been a raver. Growing up in Rimini, the young artist was fascinated by dance culture as he witnessed close friends interact with a neon-hued chemical world that remained at odds with his own. In 2012, he released the album Quantum Jelly. Using the aesthetic language of dance music, he allowed his curiosity as an outside observer to influence his experimentation, which he described as “pointillist trance”. On 2016’s Persona, Senni fleshed out the gooey trance of his earlier records in widescreen, adding unforgettable pop motifs that could have been snatched from an anime show or video game. Scacco Matto continues this theme; it’s an album of songs, not ideas. And while the sound is still based around the Roland JP-8000, the influence of trance is now in the DNA, rather than simply on the surface. It’s tongue-in-cheek, an album that thrives on humour in an increasingly bleak dance landscape that prioritizes greyscale techno and self-consciously dark iconography. Melodies and motifs from trance, rave, pop and even classical appear digitised, reduced to binary snapshots and arranged like a Ben Day dot process. Senni has released his albums on the legendary UK label Warp, Editions Mego, Kesh, Boomkat Editions and his own label Presto?!, and is one of the most exciting artists on the current electronic music scene.
Tickets on sale online and at Eventim outlets.
Co-produced by CUK Kino Šiška and Sonica Festival. The Širom & Yann Gourdon residency is a co-production between Sonica Festival and Layer House.
