Search: Visible Cloaks

As we struggle to keep up with a world enwrapped in digital technology, its influence on art and communication is often dismissed as harmful. Spencer Doran and Ryan Carlile's ambient project Visible C...

You know that mechanism where you whisper a message in a circle of people – and as its passed on back to you, that message becomes distorted? That’s a little bit what Portland duo Visible...

The legendary Chelsea Hotel in New York is being turned into a boutique hotel, and its permanent residents have been living in the mess for the last nine years. Dreaming Walls captures the last visibl...

The Amsterdam Andalusian Orchestra and visual artist Arion de Munck present the premiere of Hadra Immersive: an ancient northern Moroccan ceremony that leads participants to collective transcendence t...

Charity Charly is a self-taught filmmaker and artist who focuses on making the invisible layers in society visible. She is currently working on her debut as a director for her first film ‘Tra Fa...

While shooting photographs, Jip Jansen tries to capture a feeling. To portray an emotion. The images are timeless. Almost all the photos are shot in the Slachthuis, the most beautiful café in H...

Kunsthal Kloof organized a residency for two recently graduated artists to work on site for a month to create an exhibition. During U? 2025, they present the work of Hazel van Berkel, who creates impr...

Short film AFRICA IS THE FUTURE is a four-part ritual: a true immersion into the mysteries of the universe, guided by the recurring appearance of the Kongo cosmogram. Director Nicolas Premier retraces...

Portland duo Visible Cloaks recently released 'serenitatem', their collaborative album with Japanese musicians Yoshio Ojima and Satsuki Sibano as part of the long-running FRKWYS series from the New York label RVNG Intl. Originating from the exchange of MIDI-based musical ideas, this is music that blurs concepts be...

"Visible Cloaks’ hard-to-classify ambient music is a fascinating mix of organic and synthetic, past and future." - Pitchfork Today, Spencer Doran and Ryan Carlile release their new album a...

Stockholm-based artist and organ tuner Kali Malone builds a truly remarkable synthesis of analog and electronic music, drawing in listeners with discernible warmth and timelessness. This year she debuted on iDEAL Recordings with a new album,'The Sacrificial Code'. The album goes into deeper, darker, and rawer territory with...

In anticipation of Le Guess Who? 2019, Red Bull Radio launches a special preview channel for the festival, "celebrating Holland’s explorations of avant-garde, jazz, noise and more". The channel shares Red Bull Radio live recordings and interviews with artists performing at the upcoming festival edition, featuring Jenny Hval, Sarah D...

Gonzo (circus), one of the best in-depth music/culture magazines in The Netherlands & Belgium, has compiled a mixtape for Le Guess Who? 2017, featuring Ben Frost, OCnotes, Surajit D...

Last week, we revealed the initial line-up for Le Guess Who? 2019, including Arp Frique presents Improvised Suites For Analog Machines. Arp Frique is the past, present and future scrambled together in one groovy, super contagious cocktail of Afrobeat, disco and funk. After releasing the 'Nos Magia'-EP on Rush Hour Music and hi...

With a super contagious cocktail of Afrobeat, disco and funk, Dutch producer Arp Frique is the past, present and future scrambled together in one groovy, bright-lit musical skirmish. Today, Arp Frique returns to Rush Hour with no less two new releases: 'Radio Verde', a compilation of rare Cape Verdean dancefloor diamonds compiled to...

Perhaps the most widely interacted with, yet least visible of personalities at Le Guess Who? is digital designer Ramdath Mos. For ten years he has been digitally translating the LGW experience to visitors through our website, alongside Nick de Kruijk, on coding and programming; introducing both U? and COSMOS to the community, and sharing...

After an unforgettable closing set at Le Guess Who? last year, Paris-based artist and producer/DJ Crystallmess returned to the festival both as a performer and as a curator, presenting her very own program. Crystallmess combines elements of film, music, performance and visual art in her radically interdisciplinary work. In doing so, she...

A New Year's gift and a souvenir from Le Guess Who? 2024. The full live performance by Abul Mogard and Rafael Anton Irisarri at Utrecht’s Jacobikerk is now available as free, or pay-what-you-want on Bandcamp.   When Abul Mogard (AKA Guido Zen) and composer, record producer, and mastering engineer Rafael Anton Irisarri first pl...

Meshell Ndegeocello is a true multitalented and multifaceted artist: singer-songwriter, rapper, bassist, collaborator, GRAMMY-winner, neo-soul movement igniter. Yet, even when sinking seamlessly into each one of her many roles, she has always worn her artistry and identity as a proud Black queer woman on her sleeve.  You can now rel...

U? is opening up a monthly reading group, not as a fixed program, but as a shared space to gather, reflect and think alongside one another. Each month, we’ll come together to explore questions that matter to the people in the room: How can we build collaborations that are non-extractive and non-hierarchical between grassroots init...

“Performing is a part of my identity”, says the Dutch Surinamese vocalist and producer Pink Oculus. Two years of not being able to do what she loves the most led to a brand new sound, and new music too: her forthcoming album, ‘Before Wisdom’, is expected in 2022. At Le Guess Who?, she will premiere these songs thro...

Besides the artwork and typography done yearly by Loudmouth Utrecht, Le Guess Who? each year invites a different illustrator to design the main festival images, which evolves during multiple line-up a...

Yves Tumor just surprise-released his third album 'Experiencing the Deposit of Faith': stream it below, but you can download it for free as well. "Experiencing The Deposit Of Faith continues to...

This November, Le Guess Who? will feature a spellbinding solo piano performance by Abdullah Ibrahim, South Africa’s most eminent pianist, anti-apartheid activist and a world-respected master musician. Abdullah Ibrahim's effervescent music is instantly recognizable, taking the audience on a journey through gospel and jive, American j...

This year, LGW is collaborating with IDFA, one of the world's leading documentary events. IDFA believes in the power of documentary film as a high-quality, artistic form of information and reflection. We’re presenting a film program on Friday, Saturday & Sunday during LGW22. This program is screened at Slachtstraat Filmtheater...

Sounds of Places, a residency-based sound gathering that focuses on the sonic aesthetics of place, celebrated its world premiere at Le Guess Who? 2024 with the presentation of Christmas in Mourning and Faster than light, always. The first edition of the residency, initiated by Radio Alhara and commissioned by Wonder Cabinet, took place i...

Three years after her last Le Guess Who? showcase, Brooklyn-based, Pakistani singer and composer, Arooj Aftab returned to the festival in 2024 both as a curator and performer. "Aftab’s voice and her band’s musicianship are breathtaking on their own, but there’s an intimacy, a warmth, an un-self-seriousness that makes th...

At Le Guess Who? 2024, residential photographers Melanie Marsman and Juri Hiensch captured a stunning series of artist portraits surrounding their performances at the festival. Part of the series features, among others, Ghanaian-French producer and vocalist PÖ and musician, producer and composer Jowee Omicil, who both performed...

TIMES (The Independent Movement for Electronic Scenes) is a cooperative project that brings together different European festivals to create original performances that combine music and visual arts. As well as shared programming of artists and the project's original creations, TIMES aims to support, promote, and improve diversity and susta...

Have you ever heard of Roy and Silo, the famous male chinstrap penguins, who formed a pair at New York's Central Park Zoo? What about the red flour beetles who engage in same-sex relationships simply to practice mating? Did you know that clownfish can change their sex if needed? Or that among bonobos (who share almost 99% of their DNA wit...

On Saturday 8 November, U? hosts the multidisciplinary performance lost and found curated by tonya belugina, a researcher and community-oriented curator whose projects exist on the border of poetry, participatory practices, pedagogy and field-research. lost and found explores the world where everything is already existing: nature, histor...

(scroll naar beneden voor de Nederlandse tekst) For a long time, the Utrecht collective (...) Centraal was hardly visible online, but that has now changed: on June 30, their debut single 'Spokenjong' was released. It is the first single from their upcoming EP.  “The collective of (…) Centraal makes everythi...

Since 2022, Le Guess Who? collaborates with the Nature and Environment Federation Utrecht to offset CO2 emissions from international air travel by artists and visitors. In 2025, festival visitors again had the option to compensate the CO2 emission of their trip to Utrecht when buying a ticket. Additionally, LGW compensates CO2 emission f...

Interview: Kathryn Mohr Recently, we’ve visited the Eastern region of Iceland for an extensive chat with our 2025 COSMOS Embassy Seyðisfjörður Community Radio. This time, we’re moving a mere 100km further to Stöðvarfjörður, another fisher village in East Iceland that doubles as a hideout for cre...

Interview: Seyðisfjörður Community Radio Seyðisfjörður Community Radio (SCR) is a shared digital and analogue broadcasting platform located in the fisher town of Seyðisfjörður. The platform is hosted, nurtured and initiated by an open-ended international community inhabiting various conditions and p...

Le Guess Who? returns 5-8 November to Utrecht, The Netherlands, for its 20th anniversary edition. We now reveal the guest curators and the initial line-up for the 2026 festival edition. For the past 20 years, the festival has built one of the most vital platforms for artists from around the world, championing sounds that transcend border...

The vibrant force behind Le Guess Who?'s visual identity of 2025 & 2026 is none other than Sophie Douala, an artist, designer and creative director whose signature trademark is an almost palpable command of color, and a refined use of pattern that is at once playful and sophisticated. Born in Cameroon, raised in France and now based i...

Marc Broer began his collaboration with Le Guess Who? in 2014. As an audio engineer for Dutch public broadcast corporation VPRO, a media partner of LGW at the time, Marc began recording live concerts at the festival, and continues to do so today with his own recording company, LIVE Concert Recording. He is also involved in the Vrije Gelui...

The Community Radio Index is, in their words, "a map of community radios and a landscape of the cultures that have developed around them." With the launch of this globe-spanning directory, Michail Stangl (AKA Opium Hum) and Robert Jurewicz (AKA Robbie Makes Radio) have channeled their love for community broadcasting into a dynamic resourc...

bié Records is a Beijing-based label exploring what it means to be a listener in today’s international context. Led by Chinese underground music veteran Meng Jinhui, the label aims to give musicians equal space to speak up and fully express themselves to, in their words, "allow music’s natural sense of fun and spiritual...

U?, the freely accessible city program of Le Guess Who?, celebrates local and creative communities. Rooted in Utrecht's cultural and creative diversity, the festival presents live performances, exhibitions, communal dinners, talks, participatory formats, and educational activities that foster social connection. On 7 and 8 November, U? re...

As a queer person, multidisciplinary artist, curator and researcher Jô Páscoa has observed how the term “monster” is used to dehumanize people for crossing imposed thresholds of gender and sexuality. But they believe this harmful framing could be redrawn, even by the monsters themselves. In 2026, U? once again op...

Meshell Ndegeocello is a true multitalented and multifaceted artist: singer-songwriter, rapper, bassist, collaborator, GRAMMY-winner, neo-soul movement igniter. Yet, even when sinking seamlessly into each one of her many roles, she has always worn her artistry and identity as a proud Black queer woman on her sleeve.  You can now rel...

The Netherlands 3FM: "3voor12 is op Le Guess Who?, waar basketballen tegen aan het plafond geschroefde gitaren worden gegooid"3voor12: "Eerste 67 namen voor Le Guess Who? 2017"           3voor12: "Kelly Lee Owens, dagdromer met kennishonger"           3voor12: "Le Guess Who? str...

The Netherlands 3FM: Eva Koreman nieuwe presentator 3voor12 radio 3FM: Le Guess Who? 2018: Ralph-Herman snapt niet wat Colin Stetson doet3FM: Timo op Le Guess Who: van gevoelige liedjes in een kerk tot stoned rappers3voor12: Kijk terug: James Holden & The Animal Spirits op Le Guess Who? 3voor12: Festivals willen dat je een kaart...

With the motto of Listening is the Way Forward, Le Guess Who? is widely considered to be one of the most forward-thinking festivals around, celebrated for presenting groundbreaking music in inspiring ways. Here, artists from all over the world offer new perspectives on what is possible in music and, collectively, provide insight into the...

Each year, Le Guess Who? invites guest curators to create their own dedicated programs, highlighting their inspirations, emerging acts and fellow like-minded artists, with an emphasis on discovery and exploration. The guest curators of Le Guess Who? 2026 are surrelist blues poet aja monet, sound artist KMRU, Los Thuthanaka, founded by si...