Lineup
It’s obvious why Caila Thompson-Hannant chose the moniker Mozart's Sister. Like that ersatz sibling, the Montreal musician has a swift ear for bubbly, uplifting melodies. In hyperkinetic and gle...
Sisters with Transistors is the remarkable untold story of electronic music’s female pioneers, composers who embraced machines and their liberating technologies to utterly transform how we produ...
The slinky, cinematic music of Midnight Sister is brought to you by the isolating landscape of the San Fernando Valley — its colors, its diners, its lunatics, its neon lights. The duo of Juliana...
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Conrad Tao first touched a piano as a one-year-old toddler, and by the age of eight, he already performed Mozart’s Concerto No. 12. So, becoming one of the most exciting new faces in classical m...
Declared a ‘cult hero’ by The Guardian, Perfume Genius has invited Canadian songwriter and actress Mary Margaret O’Hara to Utrecht for a very rare live performance. The undisciplinar...
Angel Bat Dawid’s first album ‘The Oracle’ provides a new radical benchmark for contemporary jazz music, capturing a unique mystique within its economical recording methods. Meditati...
Born to missionaries in Atlanta, Angel Bat Dawid followed her family from Georgia to Kentucky to Kenya – and when they settled in Chicago, she took up clarinet and music education. Nowadays...
Grit is something Lisbon-based Maria Reis has in spades, which captured the attention of Animal Collective’s Panda Bear. After the success of Pega Monstro, the punk band created with sister J&ua...
Much has been said about Abdullah Ibrahim (formerly Dollar Brand) - the master pianist and Cape Town anti-apartheid activist gracing Le Guess Who? with a spellbinding solo piano performance. Nelson Ma...
Whether it’s a stage, a computer screen or a page from a book: Jenny Hval’s multi-disciplinary work aims to break beyond these confining zones to form a deeper connection with her audience...
Originally a punk band, Lola’s Dice have evolved into a tropical, funk, and psychedelic rock rhythm machine. With sounds that are rooted in Latin American percussive music, Lola’s Dice is...
In the late 70’s, as member of the notorious Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Lydia Lunch was a leading figure in the rise of New York City’s no-wave scene. Grounded in a dissonant and atonal...
Somewhere close to the sounds of trains leaving and entering Utrecht Central Station, you can find the Ping Pong Club. Ping Pong & DJ’s will take place in this industrial former warehouse. P...
As J-E-T-S, producer compadres Jimmy Edgar and Machinedrum (Travis Stewart) developed a project that’s a wee bit more complex than your average cross-pollination of ideas. By applying their comm...
Much of John Dwyer’s curatorship for this year’s Le Guess Who? reflects his attraction for music that is as exciting as it is mad, loud and potentially deafening. All these attributes can...
Joseph Shabason demonstrated his mastery of woodwind, horn and brass instruments on iconic records such as Destroyer’s ‘Kaputt’ and The War On Drugs’ ‘Lost In The Dream&r...
This event will hit you just as hard in the face as the rest of our program. No, you don’t have to step into the ring yourself, but you will be able to marvel at several intense boxing-matches a...
A woman arrives in Lebanon in search of a missing man, whom she met in Iceland a few years ago. Here, the buildings and landscapes still bear the traces of past conflicts, and the missing friend&rsquo...
In 1995, Serbian-born, Brazil-based producer Mitar Subotić – also known as Suba and Rex Illusivii – created ‘Wayang’, an album that would be considered visionary even by today&...
Quintessential Ethio-groove performer Ayalèw Mesfin has joined forces with the renowned US-based ensemble Debo band for his first European live performance ever, and in truth, few collaboration...
De Schuurman’s 2021 release – ‘Bubbling Inside’, a collaboration between Kampala-based label Nyege Nyege Tapes and Rotterdam’s platform Pantropical – centers around...
The Botanical RevolutionGardens have appealed to our imagination for centuries. We associate them with harmonious bliss, a place to witness the cycle of life and death, a place of contemplation, and a...
Ben Frost’s interests are as vast as his output is, creating music for dance companies and films, and collaborating with visual artists and poets. Frost’s music is influenced by classical...
Overviewing the impulsive career of Asha Puthli, it’s dizzying how one individual can encapsulate such a ridiculous range of juxtapositions. Puthli’s notoriety really depends on who you as...
In the late 80’s, Doug Hream Blunt moonlighted music with a job at a care home in San Francisco. As a relative late bloomer at age 35, he started writing songs after attending a How To Start A B...
Fashion designer Iris van Herpen and sound artist Salvador Breed curate a lineup of artists and performances symbolizing their highly intertwined aesthetics, developed over years of collaborating on n...
‘Carefree’ doesn’t even begin to describe the music of DRINKS. Untroubled by anything resembling internal logic, White Fence’s Tim Presley and Cate Le Bon indulge in deliciousl...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver
The Devil and Daniel Johnston is a stunning portrait of a musical genius who nearly slipped away. Director Jeff Feuerzeig exquisitely depicts a perfect ex...
Pair Ronald Langestraat, the Dutch legend who – to quote Bandcamp’s Marcus J. Moore – “took Jazz to Outer Space” with oddball pop wonder Tim Koh – one of Ariel Pink...
Weyes Blood's West Coast folk reverie can be as sensitive as surreal. Multi-instrumentalist and singer Natalie Mering’s inspirations range from Harry Nilsson’s pop majesty to Wolf Eyes&rsq...
DJINN, an alliance formed by musicians in Swedish outfits Hills and GOAT, has quickly flourished into a marvel in and of itself. Extracting sonics from the fabric of Alice Coltrane’s astral jazz...
Though a prosaic name like Circuit may not jump at you on a festival poster, this bunch’s modus operandi epitomises all kinds of absurd. Circuit isn’t so much a band as it’s a lab of...
Music as Spectral Infrastructure
Writer, researcher and musician Edward George’s radio show The Strangeness of Dub combines critical theory, social history, a cross-genre musical selection, and...
Dutch media artist Mark IJzerman and French sound designer Sébastien Robert team up to present ‘As Above, So Below’, an exploration of the changing landscape of La Araucanía...
‘Promises: Through Congress’ explores visual artist Julie Mehretu’s painting Congress (2003) and the 2021 album by electronic composer and musician Floating Points, jazz titan Pharoa...
One listen to Duma’s track “Lionsblood” is enough to let us know what this outsider Kenyan project is all about. Martin Khanja and Sam Karugo, figureheads of the flourishing Nairobi...
Singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Leonardo Campelo Gonçalves, stage name Negro Leo, stands out from Brazil’s flourishing experimental music scene, without a doubt. By adding ele...
Musician, producer and composer Kevin Richard Martin’s chosen moniker has always been a fitting one. As a defiant experimentalist ceaselessly exploring sonic extremities, contrasts and frictiona...
Over the past decade, Malian, Grammy-nominated artist, musician, and actress Fatoumata Diawara has been universally praised as one of Africa’s most trailblazing and outspoken voices. Diawara&rsq...
The solo project of Luxembourgish-Finnish musician Maria Rossi has been described as one of the most striking ones to emerge from Glasgow’s underground scene in a decade. Conjuring simple yet ot...
While the festival’s numerous performances spread all over the city of Utrecht, there will be one moment we all come together, and that is at the afterparty. The line-up will feature dub-king Ke...
Hidden among the rabble-rousing tourists and historic canals, Red Light Radio (RLR) is an online seminal DIY radio booth squat and international music platform based in the middle of Amsterdam’s...
Dutch multi-instrumentalist and psych pop traveler Jacco Gardner will be heading back to Le Guess Who? this year, where he premieres the ‘Somnium’ experience. This will also be the live de...
Do you know what total destruction sounds like? It’s sounds like MC/singer Miss Red, aka Sharon Stern, and producer The Bug, alias Kevin Martin, hitting the stage. The Bug’s monstrous, all...
Across decades, Neneh Cherry traversed and transcended every known faction of the music world; from bona fide pop stardom to the peripheries of punk rock, club music and jazz. Even more recently, Cher...
Before our very eyes, the mysterious Yves Tumor suspends set expectations of music and performance into a vortex of sheer disbelief. His unforgettable show at last year’s Le Guess Who? was a bre...
Montreal-based singer-songwriter and producer Michael Rault executes his fine-polished rock and roll perfectly, shining with swooning guitars, gorgeous vocal harmonies and a steady groove. Despite Rau...
British collective Seefeel straddled that chasm between experimental rock and ambient techno long before artists like Radiohead and Broadcast – and even later, Dirty Beaches and Caribou –...
Japanese artist Hatis Noit’s accomplished range is astonishingly self-taught. Hoit is inspired by everything she can find from Gagaku — Japanese classical music —, Bulgarian and Greg...
New York-based musician Martin Bisi is hailed as iconic producer who defined the sound of New York noise. This year’s release ‘BC35’ celebrates the 35-year Anniversary his of BC Stud...
Queens based artist Alexandra Drewchin, a.k.a. Eartheater, throws you back and forth with her unconventional, tumultuous sound. Featuring bizarre clashes of acoustic and digital music, Eartheater&rsqu...
Jessica Pratt’s peculiar brand of astral folk has a way of stopping you dead in your tracks. The LA-based songsmith’s captivating, wistful coo evokes a mirage-like warmth, seducing the lis...
Through a blend of tradition and modernity, Egyptian producer YUNIS is distilling and reinventing his country’s folklore – finding inspiration in Sufism, the Egyptian wedding and the conce...
Lucy Railton’s voice has bloomed from the root of more than 25 years of classical instrumentalism. The cellist and electronic composer’s acclaimed 2018 solo debut 'Paradise 94' marks a new...
Besides being one of Chicago’s finest producers, Kavain Space a.k.a. RP Boo is also known as the originator of footwork music. Emerging from Chicago house in the late 90’s, the genre inclu...
Haley Fohr’s Circuit des Yeux creates an unprecedented deep and rich sound. On Fohr’s latest, acclaimed album Reaching for Indigo, she combines 50s & 60s avant-garde with drone, experi...
Gregory Shorter Jr., also known as Ras_G, is an instrumental hip-hop producer, DJ and afrofuturist. Active in L.A.’s avant-garde beats scene since the early 2000’s and associated with the...
Islam Chipsy’s hyperactive keyboard mashing and drum duo EEK’s chaotic bliss rev up crowds into utter frenzy. This mighty Egyptian alliance is without question one of the most rowdy live a...
Le Mini Who? presents the contemporary (Dutch) underground, in collaboration with independent local stores, shops and bars. It transforms Utrecht's city streets into a festival area, with more than fi...
Indeed, as adroit players of the harp and the violin respectively, Marilu Donovan and Adam Markiewicz’s joint project LEYA inspired some emphatically gorgeous music. With the help of fellow expe...
Automatic is a fairly recent Stones Throw export, and the positive attention captured by their debut, 2019’s ‘Signals’, prove they are a successful gamble for the left-field label. T...
When ex- COIL member Drew McDowall decided to revive the group’s 1998 masterpiece ‘Time Machines’ to the present, two decades after its release, the joke was probably not lost on him...
Holly Herndon’s vital album ‘PROTO’ is an inquisitive, affirmative work that interplays elements like Sacred Harp choirs with an A.I.-entity called Spawn, therefore splicing the orga...
Like his forbears Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, Sessa casts a beguiling spell over the listener with his sultry, jazz-flavoured folk rock. But there’s a gravitas to Sessa’s music as wel...
With her wistful, feathery voice as your guide, Shannon Lay channels the turmoil and fears of seeking out an unconventional life. Her 2017 album ‘Living Water’ was produced by The Cairo Ga...
Listening to Mari Kalkun’s beautiful voice and songs, even if just for a brief moment in time, will certainly transport you to the Estonian countryside - even if you’ve never been. It&rsqu...
There is something odd, but at the same time staggeringly honest, about Klein’s music. Her tracks sound delightfully disheveled - ghostly R&B tracks not meant for the world to listen to. It&...
When Kelman Duran was first invited to play at a party, he opened the set with Biggie’s brooding ‘Suicidal Thoughts’. Over the years, his music has become decidedly more festive. Sta...
Deerhoof is one of those fantastic beasts the world has been lucky to find, an anomaly of a band that can twist any crunch of noise into saccharine hook-heavy pop euphoria. Their wide-eyed trial-and-e...
Hidden Musics
Grammy-winning producer and author Ian Brennan has accumulated a resume that would make anyone in his fields blush. Brennan’s most pertinent and important work, however, isn&rsquo...
Hosted by FACT
Ziggy Devriendt doesn’t exactly tiptoe around his many music-related interests. Whether he’s hosting his monthly show at London’s NTS radio station, running streaming...
In cooperation with Gaudeamus
AEAEA is the new duo from composers and performers Patrick Higgins and Nicolas Jaar. Utilizing instrumental performance and live digital resampling, the aim of the group...
Holly Herndon’s vital album ‘PROTO’ is an inquisitive, affirmative work that interplays elements like Sacred Harp choirs with an A.I.-entity called Spawn, therefore splicing the orga...
Holly Herndon’s vital album ‘PROTO’ is an inquisitive, affirmative work that interplays elements like Sacred Harp choirs with an A.I.-entity called Spawn, therefore splicing the orga...
On Zwangere Guy’s debut album ‘Wie is Guy?’, there is a swagger in his flow that displays confidence usually only found in rappers who have been around for a while. It is perhaps thi...
This summer, The Mauskovic Dance Band’s Nic Mauskovic introduced the wonderful world of Nicolini with ‘Penni’s Palace’, released by Amsterdam label South of North. Picture this...
A librarian by day, Richard Youngs spends pretty much every other minute of his waking life making music. This sonic shapeshifter’s fascinations range from Syd Barrett’s oddball folk to Gr...
Over the past decade, Mali rapper Master Soumy has been a key figure within the West-African nation’s youth movement. Along with his peers, Soumy’s sharp-witted lyrical mastery became the...
Great pop songs with magic sprinkles of Eastern soundtracks, Spaghetti Western’s spacious twang and some grooving yé-yé sounds, that’s Khana Bierbood in a nutshell. Not surpr...
Chicago-born clarinetist and saxophonist Matana Roberts describes their work as “panoramic sound quilting”: think loops, field recordings, chanting and snippets of spirituals. As their amb...
Istanbul’s Lalalar remind you of your favorite 80’s cult show theme, and simultaneously sound like a delightful dumpster dive of spaghetti western-psychedelics, Anatolian funk, sampling an...
After 15 years of performing for passersby at Paris’s Line 2 Metro, Algerian musician Mohamed Lamouri’s trademark ragged voice and buoyant Casio keyboard melodies are reaching ears all ove...
Mélissa Laveaux’s most recent album ‘Radyo Siwèl’ reclaims the Ottawa-born, Paris-based songwriter’s Haitian roots with a collection of native folk spirituals. Th...
Music as Spectral Infrastructure
Black Audio Film Collective’s 1989 film ‘Twilight City’ presents the financial deregulation and spatial restructuring of London in the late 1980s as...
Sons of Kemet’s latest record, ‘Black to the Future’, was released in May – mostly recorded after the murder of George Floyd. For The Guardian’s Kitty Empire, the album f...
Hidden Musics
Ustad Saami is the last living khayál master, widely considered a precursor of qawwali music that originated in Pakistan. That’s no small distinction, as Saami’s voic...
Zia Anger’s short films have premiered at the New York Film Festival and Locarno. She has directed music videos for an impressive roster of artists, including Angel Olsen, Mitski, Beach House, Z...
French sound sculptor Félicia Atkinson once curiously speculated that “music always existed, even before humans appeared." She might be onto something: under her spell, a seemingly random...
Ekin Fil's ambient compositions sound like eerie, disintegrated remnants of a Cocteau Twins tune. Istanbul-based musician and composer Ekin Üzeltüzenci happily chooses full-on abstraction ov...
Wolfgang Voigt's groundbreaking project GAS is the sound of organic matter and technology living in perfect harmony. As he himself puts it: 'bring the forest to the disco and vice versa'. Voigt struct...
Jamal Moss, better known as Hieroglyphic Being, is one of the most distinct figures from Chicago's rave scene. Throughout his impressive output, Moss’s glitchy style draws from the roots of spir...
You could describe Detroit’s Protomartyr as a post-punk outfit, but then again, the foursome could probably care less about what genre you stick to it. ‘A flaying intensity’ might be...
Moon Duo’s torrent blotchy psychedelics inventively coalesce with meditative, minimalist pop. Indeed, this is inflammatory music that submerges and manifests within the subconscious like a livin...
The ever-versatile Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe is a soul that keeps creating, with each undertaking achieving new depths, textures and vocabularies. Lowe's been a mainstay with math rockers 90 Day Men and...
In her enigmatic avant-pop excursions, Jenny Hval breaks free from rigid concepts of sex, mortality, biology and pop culture. Her concept album ‘Blood Bitch’ occupies a fractured but heroi...
H. Hawkline’s goofball pop has the special ability to make the mundane sound quirky, whether it’s a perfectly formed bit of toothpaste on your toothbrush or shoelaces tied equally tight to...
The Israel-born, Switzerland-based Omri Ziegele is a self-taught alt sax player, honing his skills in London and at Boston's Berklee College of Music. Ziegele has performed in theatre and with the cir...
Phil Elverum's latest Mount Eerie album ‘A Crow Looked At Me’ opens with the words "Death is real/someone's there and then they're not". The album is a deeply personal document of grief, h...
Composer, guitarist and producer Patrick Higgins (also a member of New York avant-garde outfit Zs) will perform with string ensemble of the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra. The performance will feature...
Coby Sey is a NTS Radio DJ and musician who released a 5-track record on Young Turks' sub-label Whities this year. A long time collaborator of Mica Levi and Tirzah, Coby now forges his own path as pro...
Farida Mohammad Ali's mastery of the ancient maqam discipline - a lifetime’s pursuit - is truly extraordinary. In execution, this traditional singing technique requires full command of complex m...
The steady yet ever versatile Kevin Morby extends his musical range with each project he's a part of. Morby exhibits a fleeting beauty and folk rock romanticism in his songwriting, hypnotically explor...
Monolithic and majestic, elusive Montreal guitar drone wanderer Thisquietarmy presented a whopping forty releases over the past twelve years. One of the more recent, ‘The Democracy of Dust&rsquo...
Born and bred in the isolated, outstretched emptiness that's the Mojave desert, The Soft Moon’s Luis Vasquez projects equally desolate imagery to voice his darkest fears. Each album peels away a...
Felix Manuel’s ears are attuned to the spontaneity of jazz while his production chops create original compositions out of a wellspring of samples, textures and beats. Manuel’s extraordinar...
Luc Bersier’s band Reymour exchanged the quietness of the Swiss Alps for Brussel’s busyness, and out of it came ‘Leviosa’, released under Amsterdam label Knekelhuis. Their debu...
Natasha Kmeto's music sounds like pure pop exposing itself under the x-ray machine: fully-formed, but its anatomy and innards laid bare for all to see. Her albums ‘Crisis’ and ‘Inevi...
Whether it’s the early, more electronic-driven beginnings or excavating field recordings at an abandoned settlement in the Arctic Circle, these Danish pop adventurers express boundless enthusias...
Rotterdam’s new livewire post-punk act Tramhaus have quickly carved out their own space within the iconic Dutch port city. On stage Tramhaus create shell-shocking havoc, with fragments of unfort...
Take a tour around the Ulu Mosque in Lombok. This is one of the biggest mosques in the Netherlands, and possibly also one of the most striking ones. When your train pulls into Utrecht Central Station...
As a spin-off festival of Le Guess Who?, Le Mini Who? transforms many of Utrecht’s local bars, restaurants, venues and warehouses into improvised venues for (mainly) Dutch underground bands to p...
Lombok Festival, one of Le Guess Who?’s satellite events, returns on Friday 8 November. The freely accessible festival is a celebration of the cultural diversity of this city’s district, i...
In the universe of Mykki Blanco, art and real life don’t imitate each other, but are symbiotic and reciprocal. Few artists could infiltrate mainstream audiences with cinematic, experimental trac...
On one of her newer songs, Cut Connection, Jesca Hoop tries to reconcile a love with the words "be the drummer in my heart". The magnetic Hoop laces her distinct anti-folk with likewise playful lyrici...
If you’re on the lookout for a perfect description of Japanese duo Tenniscoats, look no further than Swedish soundscape artist Tape’s assessment: 'they literally play themselves to sleep'....
Still the crudest, strangest and loudest band from Atlanta. On their eighth LP, the cheekily titled 'Satan's Graffiti or God's Art?', the band unrolled an 18-song epic revelling in Wall Of Sound grand...
An intimate portrait of the circumstances surrounding the creation of Jerusalem In My Heart’s live recording of “Wa Ta’atalat Loughat Al Kalam” (The language of speech has brok...
In 1970, soul artist Jerry Williams, Jr. radically reinvented himself as Swamp Dogg: an anti-hero who smashes the conventions of commercial R&B music, and whose subversive lyrics earned him a spot...
Raised in North Carolina as the daughter of two devout Jehovah’s Witnesses, Kelsey Lu moved to New York at the age of 18 to study cello. Her debut EP ‘Church’ - which gained acclaim...
As Yves Jarvis, Jean-Sebastian Audet’s gauzy post-R&B vignettes are driven by color, both as a visual and thematic component. His 2017 album ‘Good Will Come To You’ (released und...
Revolt comes in all shapes and sizes for São Paolo-guitarist, producer and songsmith Kiko Dinucci. He cut his teeth in various punk and hardcore bands, filtered that subversive spirit through t...
The title track of Lifafa’s most recent album ‘Jaago’ tells you all you need to know about the Indian producer, veering from its swooning, rustic flirtations to joyous electronic res...
With his self-taught piano improvisations and stream-of-consciousness lyrical approach, Lonnie Holley is a storyteller of the highest order. Apart from being an acclaimed visual artist, Holley also cr...
In this film, Johannesburg record label Mushroom Hour Half Hour’s rotating SPAZA ensemble takes you on a journey through their creative process as they delve into a new project. SPAZA are a band...
Efterklang singer Casper Clausen presents his (yet to be released) solo music, made up in a small studio by the river in Cacilhas (Lisbon). With songwriting still in progress, Casper has only played s...
There is plenty of intrigue surrounding Buenos Aires-based musician Juana Molina. At the height of her popularity as a TV host, she fully immersed herself into her prime interest: music. Over a two de...
While some records appeal to the brain’s immediate pleasure zones, other music trickles down the subconsciousness like a warm and alleviating light. Swedish duo Thet Liturgiske Owäsendet&rs...
As kaleidoscopic as tUnE-yArDs manages to sound, it's always remarkable how she seems to pull sounds out of the hat by sampling a modest drum set, a small detuned ukelele or her own elastic vocals. On...
Composer Howie Lee’s greatest triumph isn’t even his immediately satisfying jumbling up of the traditional and futuristic. It’s how he channels such giddy enthusiasm into each one of...
US-born, Swedish-based artist Kali Malone builds a truly remarkable synthesis of analog and electronic music, drawing in listeners with discernible warmth and timelessness. Whether she’s utilizi...
Lending his singular talents to artists as diverse as Liturgy, Glenn Branca and Colin Stetson, drummer extraordinaire Greg Fox’s rapid fire, blistering playing style is a true force of nature. F...
Spazio Disponibile presents
Crossing Avenue is one of the central projects of Donato Dozzy's and Neel's Spazio Disponibile label. Debut EP ‘Malandra’ provides a taste of what to expect: a...
If you could paint the world black, rediscover it with a flashlight illuminating every single detail and turn each finding into an obsession while gliding across the murk, then you might stumble into...
Manchester figurehead Jane Weaver’s twenty-year career has mostly been aimed at molding dream pop, avant-folk and psychedelic music into fully realized artistic concepts. Weaver's last two effor...
The Graindelavoix ensemble from Antwerp is notorious for their daring and alienating performances that embrace the imperfections of what it means to be human. Now, they presents the four-hour piece &l...
Cellist and composer Mariel Roberts plays her instrument of choice like an actor performs a scene, completely engrossed and enraptured within the composition’s totality. As both solo performer a...
Muddersten's ambient soundscapes make you feel like you're part of one of an archaic sci-fi flick: gyrating drones, white noise and dissonant tones orbit the brain like satellites and spaceships. The...
Michele Mercure’s shrouded cinematic works overlap ambient, abstract, and industrial sensibilities, always with a keen and playful sense of their surroundings and acoustics. Not surprisingly, th...
Rarely has a band sounded so much like their name. It’s as if Egyptian-Austrian artist Leila Hassan and collaborator Francesco Cavaliere picked it out before the instruments themselves. Just lik...
At only 24 years old, Pa Salieu is already being noticed by cultural gatekeepers like Dazed, i-D, GRM, The Fader, Complex, and many more for his show-stopping, dynamic singles, which blend his Gambian...
German DJ & producer Mark Ernestus is a sucker for African and Jamaican music. Ernestus’s seven-year collaboration with Ndagga Rhythm Force started during a trip through Senegal, where he wa...
In 2020, Lyra Pramuk published a picture of her vocal cords on Instagram – a display-case of the force behind her debut album ‘Fountain’, arranged entirely from the sound of her...
After initially cutting her teeth with critically-acclaimed drone ensemble Vibracathedral Orchestra, Bridget Hayden’s first solo outing ‘An Indifferent Ocean’ turned a lot of heads w...
For a band whose name translates to “Trees, Grass and Stone”, obviously, these lionized Swedish innovators have upheld their utopian ideals both in ethos and sound since the early 70&rsquo...
Hosted by FACT
As sparkplug of dubstep’s golden age the previous decade, Mala is now part of a select group of producers taking it to thrilling forward-thinking pastures. Responsible for some o...
On Zanzibar singer Siti Muharam’s shoulders rests the legacy of her great-grandmother, taarab music legend Binti Saad. Saad is credited as a true trailblazer, being the first woman in East Afric...
The name of this Columbian project means, in Spanish, “suck my finger”. One might wonder if that could be a reference to hallucinogens, since this is decidedly the same state of fever drea...
Flaunting an impressive resume of bands (notably as singer/guitarist of trance-rock cosmonauts Spacemen3) and production credits (Panda Bear, MGMT, Beach House), Pete Kember’s genius has now spa...
Prana Crafter summons cobwebbed guitar meditations, kosmische drones, and mystic acid folk mantras. In their 2018 Best Albums-list, Aquarium Drunkard described William Sol’s project as “an...
Oiseaux Tempête’s cross-cultural, multi-genre improv rock has a tendency to unfold in places of turmoil, recording records in Greece, Turkey and Lebanon in the past. The core duo of Fr&eac...
Libya’s Ahmed Fakroun is a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and pioneer in modern Arabic music. As a rhymist (based on a form of Algerian folk music dating back to the 1920s), he is one of the...
Lost Horizons is a new collaborative dream-pop project formed by Simon Raymonde of Cocteau Twins and Richard Thomas of instrumental quartet Dif Juz. The duo's upcoming album 'Ojalá', released o...
John Surman’s career recently entered its sixth decade, an impressive feat of which this composer, one of the most prolific to emerge from the British Isles in recent memory, can be proud of. Ma...
The story of Somalia’s legendary Dur-Dur Band is one of regrouping and resilience. In the 80s, their vibrant Somali funk music embedded the nightlife of the capital of Mogadishu. Since dictator...
Tropical Fuck Storm’s wailing backing harmonies sound like a coven chanting hellish incantations, and the filthy percussive thrusts, the otherworldly synth flourishes of the band’s debut L...
Psychedelic/krautrock mystics Moon Duo have risen up, understatedly, as one of the most intoxicating live acts of this decade. The Oregon band’s trademark sound is as much acquainted with minima...
Fred Warmsley was once a vital member of Joey Bada$$'s Pro Era crew under the moniker Lee Bannon. Gradually however, the Sacramento native started to veer into more amorphous sonic territories. Under...
Another one of Knekelhuis’ exports, Patricia Kokett’s unique outlook on leftfield electronic music is in line with the Amsterdam label’s daring roster. With his 2020 debut ‘Biz...
Yonatan Gat became known as a member of revolutionary Israeli punk band Monotonix, as well as an acclaimed recording artist. After powwow drum group the Eastern Medicine Singers initially turned down...
Ambient drones, cowboy psychedelia and fuzz folk - that's how singer-songwriter Bart de Kroon AKA Homemade Empire from Utrecht describes the sounds with which he takes us back to the future. With his...
Since its inception a decade ago, King Midas Sound’s gloom-ridden transmutations of dub, lover’s rock and ambient music have made an unyielding impression. Producer Kevin Martin (The Bug)...
Collective Stadwevers explores new grounds together with you to discover how we can experience the city in various and different ways. I Let’s Walk Make Sense / 12:15PM - 1:00PMGet to...
Brewpub De Kromme Haring is the house brewer of Le Guess Who?. Visit the brewpub and see where the festival beer is made, drink a pint of the LGW Yuzu Pale Ale or try YAYA's non-alcoholic Kombucha. Th...
Han Bennink will engage in a sonic tête-à-tête with none other than Thurston Moore. Moore claimed fame as co-founder and singer/guitarist of influential noise rockers Sonic Youth. A...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver
Lutz Gregor’s documentary Mali Blues takes a vivid look at the West-African nation’s rich and diverse musical fabric, following folk star Fato...
Hidden Musics
Lakha Khan is a living legend of Rajasthani folk music. As the undisputed master of the sindhi sarangi, Khan is one of the last remaining Manganiyars to have honed this complex instrume...
A librarian by day, Richard Youngs spends pretty much every other minute of his waking life living and breathing music. His fascinations reach all corners of the world, from Syd Barrett’s quirky...
Vilde Tuv has been dubbed as Norway’s finest one-woman orchestra. With just voice, bass drum and guitar at her disposal, Tuv’s songs can swell from raw minimalism to celestial beauty on th...
Roberto SOLO Fonseca still lives in the heart of his birthplace Havana, which explains why his adaptation of Cuba’s musical heritage remains so refreshingly renegade and immediate. He spawned ex...
That strange intermediate state during lucid dreams, when the body physically reacts to images summoned by your imagination: that’s a pretty apt way to describe the impact of Sarah Davachi&rsquo...
Mo DJ is one of the first artists to successfully integrate Malian music within the electronic mixing spectrum. His journey began as cassette salesman at one of the station roads in Bamako, Mali, moon...
Príncipe Discos presents, hosted by FACT
“Her music is dazzling in all senses, a trance-inducing tangle of boxy drums, vivid swirls of synthetic melody and buzzsaw grime bass,” The...
It's kind of funny how one of Mario Batkovic's most well-known pieces is called Restrictus, as ‘restricting’ is quite the opposite of his enthralling mastery of the accordion. The Switzerl...
In the lexicon of John Maus, pop music has always been a vessel for endless possibility. Much like fellow voyager Ariel Pink, pop serves as the Trojan Horse for Maus's avalanche of ideas, philosophies...
DNMF is a Lovecraftian abomination comprised of death jazz zealots Dead Neanderthals and prolific experimental musician Machinefabriek. Two formidable elements – the latter’s shrewd on-the...
Oft-compared to Karen Dalton and Hope Sandoval, Ora Cogan’s mystic folk is dark, beautiful and poignant. On latest album ‘Crickets’, the Vancouver-based composer and filmmaker abando...
Adrift somewhere in purgatory between Syd Barrett and Robert Wyatt, the immense spacious beauty of Ed Dowie’s debut LP ‘The Uncle Sold’ can’t be overstated enough. Drawing insp...
One oath sworn by Hello Skinny – founded by Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner – is to create improv music that doesn’t sound improvisational. Inspired by New York’s late &lsquo...
Continuing the legacy of her father, the legendary Ravi Shankar, Anoushka Shankar is considered to be one of the world’s most renowned sitar players. Her music reflects her Indian background as...
Roger Eno is a multi-instrumentalist, producer and composer from Suffolk, England. Known for his minimal approach, Eno crafts an ambient sound rooted in classical music. Together with his original pia...
Collaboratorium
At this year’s Le Guess Who?, drummer Greg Fox (Liturgy, Ben Frost, Ex Eye) will be the festival’s whimsical X-factor. One of the artists he will court is composer and for...
In their four-decade career, The Ex have experimented with countless styles and ideas. They are revered by many of their guitar-wielding peers, notably Sonic Youth, Tortoise, and Steve Albini. But the...
Although Menzi’s debut came only last spring, this Durban native has been a steady presence in South African electronic music for a number of years. After producing for several notorious acts, l...
In cooperation with Utrecht Early Music Festival
Olga Pashchenko, one of the world’s most accomplished piano and keyboard virtuosos, will bring a unique take on one of the most famous horror so...
Equal parts acoustic guitar visionary and urban mythologist, South-Africa’s Sibusile Xaba creates a wonderful blend of African folk, flamenco and jazz. Supported by expressive fingerpicking and...
Presented by Centraal Museum
Visual artist Eva Spierenburg from Zeist is the winner of the K.F. Hein Stipendium 2018. Physicality is omnipresent in Spierenburg’s work. Whether it is the visuali...
There is so much underlying this trumpet-and-percussion duo’s mix of free jazz, Afro-Caribbean traditions and electronic production that their music urges multiple, infinite listens, only to pee...
Takuro Kikuchi’s subdued piano compositions move adrift between tranquility and contemplation. The 35-year-old musician hailing from Sendai, Japan, has been playing since the age of nine, drawin...
We welcome 69-year-old Kadri Gopalnath, saxophone maestro and pioneer from India. Gopalnath’s life’s work is to incorporate the woodwind instrument into the classic South Indian Carnatic m...
Priscilla Telmon & Vincent Moon are a collaborating multidisciplinary artist duo working as independent filmmakers and sound-explorers. Together they produce ethnographic experimental films and mu...
Islaja is the moniker of Finland-born, Berlin-based sound artist Merja Kokkonen. The ever inventive musician often furnishes her malformed pop with surprising influences and bold instrumentation. Isla...
Norwegian-German saxophonist Bendik Giske has likened his art to the one of a machine, but, still, through his music - most recently his second solo album, 2021’s ‘Cracks’ - there is...
Russian collective Shortparis is all about tension, friction and disruption, obscuring the boundaries between audiovisual theatre, techno raves and punk rock performance. Whether it’s shattering...
Berlin-based, Argentina-born noiseniks Mueran Humanos enlisted Carmen Burguess to direct a companion film for their last LP ‘Hospital Lullabies’, which will be screened before the group&rs...
As a resident photographer for LGW and a resident of Utrecht, Juri Hiensch has been rediscovering the city of Utrecht. He has captured the unique character of several neighborhoods outside the city ce...
Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda’s devotion to spirituality defined the final decades of her life. In 1983, she established the 48-acre Sai Anantam Ashram outside of LA, where she quietly began...
Before Vicky Chow's performance in TivoliVredenburg's Hertz (curated by Patrick Higgins), the Canadian piano virtuoso will perform at Domplein as part of the Keys of Light project,...
Steven Warwick is a British-born, Berlin-based musician and visual artist who performed under the moniker Heatsick in the past. Warwick moulds hypnotic dancefloor-focussed tracks in a similar way to h...
Dälek’s signature corroded rap experimentalism bubbled up with masterpiece ‘Filthy Tongue Of Gods And Griots’, released on Mike Patton’s Ipecac label. These veteran agitat...
The Violent Magic Orchestra (VMO) is an offshoot of Japan’s brutal orchestra of everything Black, Vampillia. In collaboration with Pete Swanson (ex-Yellow Swans) and French composer Paul R&eacut...
As a live act, Japan’s Vampillia are an anomaly if there ever was one. They embrace and command both eerie silences and punishing volumes of dark oozing noise. It’s no surprise this 11-pie...
By Special Arrangement with Ecstatic Peace Library. No matter how far his musical interests stretch, Thurston Moore’s stylish poise is always prevalent in his work: red-hot, risqué and ra...
Luka Productions is the bedrock of Mali-based producer, multi-instrumentalist and rapper Luka Guinda, responsible for 2017’s more mysterious and downright sensational releases. ‘Fasokan&rs...
Common Frames and Radio Einstein present Greet & Meet: films, podcasts, photographs, talkshows and art, about and by newcomers from Utrecht and the surrounding region. In the wooden trailer you ca...
“It’s not about the stories you know, it’s about the stories you don't know.”
Reports from Other Continents is a platform for people to tell their own story. After the overwhe...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver
Franco Rosso’s Babylon had its world premiere at Cannes in 1980 but was deemed “too controversial, and likely to incite racial tension”...
The Wire is an independent, monthly music magazine celebrating and interrogating the most visionary and inspiring, subversive and radical, marginalised and undervalued musicians on the planet, past an...
Please note: in order to attend this film screening on Wednesday 10 November, you can just show your festival ticket at the entrance of Louis Hartlooper Complex.
In this film, Johannesburg record lab...
Driven by trance-like repetition and adventurous spirit, Colin Stetson’s performances are an unworldly display of sonic inventiveness and emotional release. Exploring the full scope of his instr...
Essaie pas is one of the most exciting bands you’ll find on James Murphy’s influential label DFA Records. The group features burgeoning Canadian electronic maestro Marie Davidson as one of...
In the mid-1960s, Art Ensemble of Chicago sprung from the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). Ever since, they have been celebrated as one of the most remarkable free jazz mo...
Rapper and producer Pink Siifu’s mercurial talent for intersecting styles and culture can be compared to the manifestation of a tropical storm: an unchecked force of nature that hoovers up every...
Many questions arise when listening to K Records’ Old Time Relijun. Is it for real? Is it ironic? When leading man Arrington de Dionyso channels his best David Byrne impression under a cacophoni...
The most riveting, template-shifting music often comes from a state of displacement or transience, and the Luxembourg-based, Cape Verde-born ensemble Grupo Pilon is certainly no exception. Founded by...
Clarinet master Cüneyt Sepetçi and his Orchestra Dolapdere are among the greatest musicians Turkey has ever produced. Not just adept at blasting out Turkish gypsy music with firecracker fe...
France’s Aquaserge shape their own fantastic musical planet, sprouting out lush prog workouts, weirdo pop and meditative dance grooves. Comprised of a rotating cast of characters from acts like...
Music as Spectral Infrastructure
India Tapes (1969-1972), the opening session of ‘Music as Spectral Infrastructure’, explores the life and afterlife of early experiments in electronic mus...
FlySiifu, the new collaborative project by rappers Pink Siifu and Fly Anakin, proves the Shakesperian saying that you can never have too much of a good thing – in this case, talent. Their first...
At the center of this neo-soul joint’s music lies one sentiment above all others; perseverance. With their latest record, ‘Love and Hate in a Different Time’, Gabriels – v...
‘What’s in a name?’, they say. In Richard Fearless’ case, a lot. He’s the mastermind behind Death In Vegas, not to mention an accomplished producer and DJ whose scope ext...
Meant to perform at last year’s LGW OFF event, in 2021 Gebroeders Dieleman van Eeckhout join the main line-up of Le Guess Who?. This project is carried out by unorthodox duo Colin H. van Eeckhou...
‘Vision Of Paradise’ is the thrilling, poetic story of the legendary Lee Scratch Perry, a fairy tale documentary rather than a biography. The film is a mind-blowing encounter with the inve...
The phenomenal Yat-Kha, a legendary Siberian ensemble led by Albert Kuvezin, has expanded Tuvan folk music and throat singing into a global phenomenon. Kuvezin was also the founder of traditional Tuva...
FRKWYS is a series initiated by Brooklyn-based independent record label RVNG Intl.; aimed at an ambitious and unique pairing of modern artists and their musical predecessors for the creation of a coll...
Johanna Constantine presents "Rise"&Kembra Pfahler and the Girls of Karen Black present "Fuck Island"
Founded by New York-based artists Kembra Pfahler, Johanna Constantine and Anohni, Future Femi...
Electronic explorer James Holden is not only a musician, he’s also a producer, remixer, and the founder of the Border Community label, where he releases the music of equally genre bending electr...
Joe Coleman is a performance artist, collector and painter whose hyper-detailed works depict celebrities, historical figures and artists with the same graceful iconography as the Gods and prophets of...
In the early 2000s, Hot Snakes rose to combine Rocket From The Crypt’s walloping garage rock anthems and Drive Like Jehu’s feverish post-hardcore stabs. With aforementioned bands reuniting...
Like Stereolab and Broadcast exemplified so fervently before them, Empath’s offbeat brand of guitar pop turns discord and noise on their upside, turning and twisting them into agents of jo...
As Vive la Void, Sanae Yamada emerges from Moon Duo’s copious fuzz-drenched blast-offs like a floating space capsule. Inspired by the constant going and froing of tour life, Yamada’s glass...
With his nimble improv playing, composer Eli Keszler can make an average drum kit sound like electronic textures. It’s not much of a surprise that sonic contortionists such as Oneohtrix Point Ne...
Art Feynman is a musician and recording artist based in California. Rooted in the world’s oldest religion ‘Animism’, which asserts that all things living and inert are endowed with s...
Singer-songwriter and producer Emel Mathlouthi combines the vibrant sounds of psychedelic folk with heavy electronics and atmospheric melodies. She gained global recognition when her recording 'Kelmti...
At last year's Le Guess Who?, British jazz stalwart Shabaka Hutchings performed with free jazz futurists The Comet Is Coming. This time around, Hutchings seeks out ghosts of the past with his South Af...
Fhloston Paradigm is one of the many groundbreaking excursions of renowned Philly producer, musician and DJ King Britt. Hyperdub debut ‘The Phoenix’ and this year’s follow-up ‘...
Xylouris White is firmly rooted in the past and future: a tight alliance between Greek musician and songwriter Georgios Xylouris and drummer Jim White. Xylouris White reconciles not only the tandem&rs...
Renowned for her extraordinary vocal range, The Chicago Reader described Maja S. K. Ratkje as “one of the most astonishing singers on the planet.” Even more of an accomplishment when you t...
London grime MC Flohio made her presence known during her ace collaboration with beatmaking duo God Colony. On killer tracks like SE16, Flohio displays rapid-fire delivery and jaw-dropping wordplay, l...
In cooperation with Gaudeamus
Ivan Vukosavljević’s brand new work arms Ensemble Klang with an array of deconstructed electric guitars, the ensemble reborn as prepared/tabletop/eBow guitarists....
Pop music canon has always compelled the listener to unravel the mystery behind the song. But the music of Aldous Harding inspires something arguably more powerful: an individual whose voice can seaml...
With their latest record ‘Oh Yeah?’, New York free-jazz quartet Sunwatchers released their most accessible & melodic work to date. Their aesthetic is best described through the acknowl...
Senegalese house producer Stephen “Ibaaku” Bassene’s dazzling debut ‘Alien Cartoon’ was originally meant to be the soundtrack of a sci-fi fashion show created by fellow c...
Here’s a first impression of London four piece ensemble Ill Considered to spark your curiosity: their self-titled LP sounds like free-wheeling jams left on the cutting room floor for Curtis Mayf...
The past and the future wage a perpetual dialogue with one another and Damon Locks’ Black Monument Ensemble could be considered a testament to that very notion. What started as Damon Locks proce...
Saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and drummer/percussionist Han Bennink will forever be linked by Brötzmann’s 1968 fearsome album ‘Machine Gun’. Since then, both musicians have f...
Listed by NPR as one of the Top 100 Young Composers of today, Pakistani singer Arooj Aftab carries in her music a seasoned tranquility that inspires calm to whoever listens. Inspired by the work of Su...
Brooklyn born and bred experimentalist L’Rain’s music can’t be put on just as background noise; it urges the most attention. This is because this ambitious multi-instrumentalist is l...
Hailing from the town of Agadez, which is known as “the gateway to the desert”, Etran de L’Aïr capture the pulse of everyday life at weddings, baptisms, political events, outdoo...
Keys of Light is a piano installation for everyone; it allows the audience to co-create the work by playing the piano. Every note that is played creates a pulse of light or visual element th...
For a number of years, LA-based musician Shannon Lay played both for the post-punk number Feels and on her own. She released an array of critically acclaimed solo records which were praised for their...
Does OSEES leader John Dwyer ever sleep? The prolific musician has added a new entry to his never-ending catalog this May - Bent Arcana’s sophomore effort, ‘Moon Drenched’, courtesy...
Canadian artist Sarah Davachi's creates immersive soundscapes with a playful exchange between ancient acoustic instrumentation and analogue synths. Davachi is a real sonic thrill-seeker who enjoys pus...
Musician Arish Ahmad Khan – better known as King Khan – will read ‘Black Power Tarot’ cards for festival visitors. It’s a series of tarot cards he created with filmmaker...
In PAINT, LA guitarist and songwriter Pedrum Siadatian is no longer one fourth of the band Allah-Las, but rather his own person. By himself, he has an opportunity to stretch out his musical and lyrica...
Joshua Inyang and Joshua Reid are not just from Manchester themselves; so is their music. Space Afrika's latest record on Dais Records, ‘Honest Labour’, is their defining statement to date...
‘The Invaders’ talks about a generation of civil rights activists who originated from Memphis in 1967, consisting of students, Vietnam veterans, musicians and intellectuals who were inspir...
Alex Figueira’s Conjunto Papa Upa brings the street scenes of his salad days in Caracas to the stage in infectious, celebratory fashion. Groove is the big overriding factor for Conjunto Papa Upa...
This fascinating collaboration marks the novel encounter between experimental Tuvan singer Sainkho Namtchylak and Belgian installation artist and filmmaker Jochem Baelus’ Slumberland. When...
Spirit Fest is the avant-pop supergroup we all fantasize about having by our bed-stand to sing us to sleep every night. Featuring members of The Notwist and Tenniscoats, this dream collective delivers...
The involvement of Meredith Graves (Perfect Pussy) in both mainstream and underground culture is as wide-ranging as it's confronting. Through her roots in hardcore-punk, and her activities as a writer...
True child prodigy, German musician, curator and radio host Felix Kubin first began experimenting with synthesizers at the tender age of twelve. Of course, such a keen interest in sound and music coul...
Jazz musician and poet Alabaster dePlume is Le Guess Who? 2021’s Artist in Residence. DePlume can be described as many things: a cleric of the written word, a maverick of sound, a conductor of c...
Having been raised in a religious household, you might not expect Klein's career path started by making droned-out versions of Carly Rae Jepsen songs at open mic nights. It typifies her music though,...
It is no wonder that this Spencer Clark project is inspired by eighties cult horror movies, such as ‘Hellraiser II’ and ‘Pin’. Every album released under Typhonian Highlife sou...
Near Stoic is Skander Ben Yahia’s alias, in which he becomes a storyteller. Experimenting with tapes, modular synths, field recordings and archives, the Tunisian musician makes use of every mate...
Set in Swiss Lausanne and Belgian Brussels, Meril Wubslin is the musical project of Christian Garcia-Gaucher, guitarist-composer of Velma and Valérie Niederoest, with Jérémie Conn...
If you were to compare the world of noise music to our physical world, Prurient occupies the very bottom; the deepest and darkest dwellings in our oceans. Sound artist Dominick Fernow's output of obli...
Ashtoreth is the solo moniker of Belgian musician Peter Verwimp. As Ashtoreth, Verwimp draws heavily from the power of shamanism, to adapt and incorporate influences from other religious and spiritual...
Born to Moroccan parents in Barcelona, Ikram Bouloum began to sprout out of the local music scene much thanks to her ‘sound literacy’ sessions. In them, the artist seeks to create a club u...
This avant-rock group's relationship with Le Guess Who? goes way back; the three-piece Montreal band has played the festival time and time again. This year, it only made sense to mark our return to fo...
Claron McFadden and Matthew Wright’s Thrift Hybrids exist halfway through sonic and visual domains; the project, presented by The Hague group Ensemble Klang, intends to bridge the gap between pa...
The famous Bulgarian women's choir Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares ('Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices') is comprised of 22 members. Performing in traditional clothing, the varying voices of the cho...
Brigid Dawson may have become known as a centerpiece for Thee Oh Sees, in which her whimsical harmonies gave the band’s psychedelic rock new meaning. Now, she takes her keyboard and vocals elsew...
Authentically Plastic’s world is made out of contradictions - beginning, of course, with the music. Picking up inspiration from northern Ugandan rhythms, afro-futurism, techno and vogue, there i...
'Le Poème du Feu' is perhaps Russian composer Alexander Scriabin’s most recognizable work. The ghostly symphonic piece, loosely based on the myth of Prometheus, even gave way to new music...
‘Rakka II’ is the follow-up to Sasu Ripatti’s 2020 escapade as alter-ego Vladislav Delay, ‘Rakka’. However, its latest incarnation is not to be seen as a mere sequel, but...
With over twenty releases under a closely-related variety of names – Orinoka Crash Suite, OCS, Orange County Sound, The Ohsees, The Oh Sees, and Thee Oh Sees, and now just Oh Sees – f...
Brooklyn five-piece Gustaf have generated a surprising loud buzz for a band which hasn’t been in circulation for more than a few years. Formed in 2018, they quickly garnered a reputation in punk...
Liu Fang is known for her virtuosic and expressive interpretation of traditional pipa and guzheng music from China’s classical and folkloric traditions. Celebrated as being one of the greatest v...
Pharoah Sanders isn't just one of the biggest jazz icons to ever set foot on a stage. In many ways, he transcends jazz music's conventions like few others. His employment of the tenor sax is unequaled...
During the summer of 1997, Mark Nelson, guitar player and singer of US post-rock outfit Labradford, wanted to explore the possibilities of sampling and computer technology as well as his interests in...
King Hannah are Hannah Merrick and Craig Whittle, a dynamic, creative duo hailing from Liverpool. “If we hadn’t found each other, we don’t know where we would be”, says Craig o...
“I want to make more music,” was the reaction of Japanese composer and musician Ryuichi Sakamoto when he was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014. Not long after his treatment he started m...
Milford Graves Full Mantis is a portrait of renowned percussionist Milford Graves, exploring his kaleidoscopic creativity and relentless curiosity. Graves has performed internationally since 1964, bot...
Don’t think about the elephant. Don’t think at all.We can only be in this moment. Not thinking.How do we not-do?We do other. Let’s get ourselves to do.The elephant in the room is our...
It has been speculated how the current environmental crisis we face will inspire musicians, the same way warfare and social justice have. Perhaps no current artist embodies this prediction as heartily...
Pianist and producer Jamael Dean and singer Sharada Shashidhar were already jazz prodigies in their own right, even before getting together to make more wondrous music. Dean, the grandson of legendary...
Over the span of two albums, the dynamic of pedal steel player Heather Leigh and brass/woodwind maestro Peter Brötzmann has become truly transcending: a continually evolving high-energy exchange...
Esperanza Denswil’s alter-ego Pink Oculus began as an exercise to self-love. Since her vibrant 2013 breakthrough, the Dutch-Surinamese artist has risen to quick acclaim, thanks to her standout l...
Location: Korte Minrebroederstraat
AKMAR is a multidisciplinary artist working with a range of disciplines, from video and computer generated work to physical sculptures. Vanitas is about digital tra...
A Pear of Pairs follows vocalist Ian William Craig and composer Daniel Lentz in Santa Barbara, California for the making of their 2020 album, In a Word, for FRKWYS, RVNG Intl’s intergenerational...
Colombian artist Julián Mayorga reminds us how freeing it can be to not take ourselves too seriously. Upon graduating from a Masters degree in electroacoustics and algorithmic composition in Ma...
Best known for his famous four-part masterwork ‘The Disintegration Loops’, William Basinski has been a vital figurehead in the New York art scene for over three decades. Starting his music...
Peach Tree, Ambiguous is a research project mapping production processes of value and meaning in the spiritual void around luxury goods. Simulating a tribalized department-store, the exhibition shows...
Girls In Synthesis is a London-based post-punk and noise rock band, that has been releasing records for 4 years and counting. With their DIY mentality they’re not afraid to experiment. Be prepar...
The duo endeavors of Marcia Bassett (guitars) and Samara Lubelski (violin) originated in 2009, creating alternate musical scores to existing films. It became a neat starting point to create original m...
On her new album ‘Acquainted with Night’, Lael Neale is looking to untangle the paradox that is the difficulty of thinking, speaking and singing simply. The Virginia-raised, LA-based artis...
Julie Byrne's lucid and enchanting folk songs speak immensely to the imagination, providing visions of the stars of the high desert, the fatigue of change, the wild flowers of the California coast, as...
Based in San Antonio, Texas, claire rousay makes extraordinary out of the everyday. Voicemails, haptics, environmental recordings, stopwatches, whispers are all made suddenly big, their significa...
On their self-titled debut EP, released in 2019, Bristol’s Tara Clerkin Trio capture a unique mood through their breed of smoky jazz, chamber-pop, trip-pop, and sometimes pure experimentalism. T...
Veteran Japanese producer Shigeru Ishihara (aka DJ Scotch Egg) is no stranger to collaboration. Nearly two decades after he began experimenting with genre-busting ear bleeders, he arrives in Hakuna Ku...
Oren Ambarchi’s love for obscure and unexplored soundscapes has led him to join forces with fellow Le Guess Who? alumni, such as master experimenter Keiji Haino. This year, the man once named &l...
Although Mairee Sioux grew up with no musical ambition, music came to be the best vessel to fill a cultural void filled by severed connections to her Polish, Hungarian and Native American ancestry. Sh...
Lubomyr Melnyk doesn’t like being called a composer; ‘I don’t know what I am’, he says. But the seasoned Ukrainian pianist certainly brought something novel to the instrument,...
‘Concrete Desert’ is a colossal masterpiece created by The Bug (Kevin Martin) and Earth's Dylan Carlson. On this tandem project, Carlson and Martin plunge into deep sonic abysses, with dro...
No one does softness - so gentle it brushes moving – like Ichiko Aoba. The Japanese singer has been a staple of the country’s acoustic folk scene since her debut ‘Kamisori Otome...
Tunisian-Belgian artist Ghalia Benali has been on the receiving end of many descriptors - perhaps none as fitting as ‘a maker of her own myths’, as said by the New York Times. Benali&rsquo...
Kleine Crack is the only Belgian artist signed to Burning Fik. The cult-rapper and his producer-teammate Slagter create ominous hip-hop, set to heavy beats. In their hometown ANNA (Antwerp) they are s...
Kamiel Thomas is an indie songwriter and former member of the avant-garde dark rock ensemble GOLD. Kamiel's songs are worthy of arthouse films while also creating a sense of home. Kamiel Thomas i...
Through sampling and re-sampling of pre-recorded material and live performed pieces, Jos Smolders (modular synthesizer) and Guido Nijs (saxophone and other wind instruments) are trying to find new way...
Utrecht’s own synther-songwriter BoterBoter uses his hilarious, absurdist and poetic Dutch-language super-disco as a coping mechanism for his existence in this bizarre world. His unpolished but...
Since 2012 Big Hare has been creating electronic mantras about things like internet phenomena, awkwardness and masquerades. In late 2019 they launched their second LP 'Lucky Dip' with Blowpipe Records...
[ THUS TIME GOES BY ] is a new durational sound work by Midori Takada, consisting of four parts, created especially for the Jacobikerk and Le Guess Who?.
1 – THUS TIME GOES BY is based on...
2019 was quite a different year for ethnographic label Ored Recordings. Instead of setting out on expeditions throughout the frozen Caucasus mountains on a quest to collect traditional music from the...
Mevrouw Tamara opens up your mind by telling people’s honest, personal stories, embodied in a calm voice with dreamy electric guitar. Inspired by artists like St. Vincent, Radiohead and My Brigh...
In our opinion, by the time November rolls around, Catalan duo Tarta Relena should head a-many top-of-year lists thanks to ‘Pack Pro Nobis’. The release, an expanded edition of prior works...
The image post-hardcore group Pissed Jeans paint on their violent and earth-scorching new LP ‘Why Love Now’ isn't a pretty one. It's nevertheless a vivid reflection of post-Trump America t...
Mónika Lakatos was the first ever Romani singer to win the popular Hungarian television talent show Ki Mit Tud? in 1996 - to which she was enrolled in without her knowledge! To this day, she co...
Jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements came together in the wake of the killing of Akai Gurley by a police officer in 2015. Their sonic poetry, which echoes not only black struggle but also black...
Having participated in pretty much every edition of the festival thus far, internationally recognized DJ Fitz, is by now basically Le Guess Who? royalty. One of the world’s primary authorities o...
At the Lombok Food Market you will encounter a world of flavours. Local entrepreneurs and residents are serving delicious food all day; from masoesa to tulumba and from hummus to mash. Fill your plate...
De Nijverheid is a cultural freeport full of artists from all kinds of disciplines. Over fifty artists call this their second home, making De Nijverheid an artistic hub that sparks new creativity, une...
Colombian experimental producer Lucrecia Dalt creates multilayered and surreal dimensions through sound. Whip smart electronic compositions are shaped into atmospheric sounds, complemented with tradit...
Through live interviews and performances, listening sessions, art exhibitions and all things print and sound, Kapitaal, Utrecht’s beloved independent print workshop, will transform into a three-...
Music platform Front hosts live sessions of Anna van Rij and Private Banking in the Marnixzaal, a hidden gem on Utrecht’s famed Dom Square. Pop noir singer, songwriter and producer Anna van Rij...
Maybe it’s because of their location changes throughout the years (New York – Berlin – Los Angeles), but like the best method actors, Liars take up an entirely new set of tricks and...
‘Every Thought Flies (Time is the Teacher)’ is a short documentary coinciding with the archival release of Italian pianist, composer and performer Tiziano Popoli’s ‘Burn The Ni...
‘Pep Navigates’ is a short film accompanying the reissue of Valencian ambient composer Pep Llopis’ 1987 record ‘Poiemusia La Nau Dels Argonautes’. The album of minimalism...
Rotterdam-based, eclectic Kraut collective Smudged blends elements of hypnotic synth patterns, garage drums, fuzz guitars and kraut basslines resulting in a scuzzy mix of energetic garage and electron...
Movement alters sounds, sounds alter movement, this is what Pablo Molina and Vincent Schoutsen envision behind their collaboration, Sound in Motion. They are shaping each other's realities via a micro...
Born Otis Calvin III, OCnotes has been an artist, musician, DJ, author, motivational speaker and vibrant figurehead within Seattle’s music scene since the turn of the decade. An ever-curious art...
Through live interviews and performances, listening sessions, art exhibitions and all things print and sound, Kapitaal, Utrecht’s beloved independent print workshop, will transform into a three-...
The ongoing project Nonsense Note began with several pages of notes with instinctive drawings. The album is a collaborative work composed of sounds and videos created by various musicians from around...
Zeldzame likes to make high-energy music and uses both his sense of humour and the frustrations of everyday life. A melting pot of different aspects of his personality, pressed together into a style l...
Wanderwelle & Floor van het Nederend present their debut graphic novel ‘De Duizendpoot’ (The Millipede). The Wanderwelle duo is known for their electro-acoustic compositions and more....
Velvet-Rebel’s dynamic and energetic sounds carry an important message of living fully with a mysterious dark edge. His use of a tight rhythmic spine of drums combined with bass with acceleratin...
Have a look inside one of Utrecht’s biggest creative hubs. At Vechtclub Market a large number of entrepreneurs from Vechtclub XL will be showcasing their work. From ceramics and illustrations to...
Right nextdoor to the chaos of Utrecht Central station is Perron West, an old train car revamped to serve as a get-together. Party by day in the Stiltecoupé; a channel serving silent disco by l...
Stella Chiweshe, The Queen of Mbira, broke new ground by becoming the first artist to successfully combine the mbira with the marimba. She took up the homegrown instrument back in 1964, originally use...
Príncipe Discos presents, hosted by FACT
DJ Marfox’s raves are like spinning a Ferris wheel of Afro-Caribbean beats, Kuduro, footwork, grime and urban electronics until it goes supersoni...
Julianna Barwick’s neoclassical/ambient compositions revel in the art of reverb, a crystalline pollination of tiny sonic particles into soothing bundles that fill up entire rooms. Having such a...
Painting, dancing, baking, and a degree in neuroscience for good measure; Madeline Kenney is good at a lot of things. One of those things also happens to be music; more specifically, writing and produ...
As Olan Mill, UK sound artist Alex Smalley’s work holds a sublime measure between the realms of modern neo-classical composition and ambience, with tender and elegant clusters of sound. His late...
Seattle-based singer-songwriter Austin Crane (aka Valley Maker) has one of the most remarkable voices in contemporary pop music. Accompanied by heartfelt, wistful acoustic guitar arrangements, Valley...
Having formed only a year ago, London four piece Black Midi is storming UK’s underground scene with tremendous and terrifying force. Following a notorious live session at NTS radio - during whic...
Despite its apparent frigid exterior, Hilary Woods’ debut LP ‘Colt’ is ultimately an inviting listening experience. Woods’ minimalist ambient pop compositions come to life with...
Angus Fairbairn (aka Alabaster DePlume) has a knack for turning the everyday into the absurd. On the opening track of his recent LP ‘The Corner of a Sphere’, he wails: “I’m mak...
Singing in their native language of Portuguese, Boogarins’ music will let you reevaluate the turbulent life of today. On their latest EP ‘Lá Vem a Morte’, the Brazilian psych...
Fela Gucci and Desire Marea are on a mission. As performance art duo, FAKA could just as easily be labeled as a cultural movement. With a combination of sound, live performance, literature, video and...
Co-founder of celebrated poly pop duo Cibo Matto and collaborative partner of influential acts as Gorillaz and The Beastie Boys, Miho Hatori is a rare and inimitable talent from New York City. As prol...
Experimental electronic music doesn’t always have to be dark and twisted, such proves Moscow-based producer Kate NV. Normally, she’s a guitar-wielding post-punker and performer within Mosc...
The ‘Orchestre de Nouvelles Créations, Expérimentations et Improvisations Musicales’ (ONCEIM) is an orchestra of 34 musicians dedicated to the art of creation and experimenta...
Experimental rapper and producer JPEGMAFIA vouches for a stunning and destructive performance, delivering a thorough reminder that in a dangerous world, sometimes nowhere is safe. Earlier this year, t...
In one corner, the shamanistic Saul Williams, actor, screenwriter and renowned harbinger of noise poetry and hip hop futurism. In the other corner, cleric of eclecticism King Britt, accomplished Phill...
Hailing from Brixton, vocalist and producer GAIKA developed his own take on the numerous currents of London’s contemporary music scene. With Jamaican and Grenadian roots, GAIKA creates a sonic b...
Belgian dancer and choreographer Judith Clijsters isn’t just someone who constructs and performs a dance movement. She observes. More specifically, she observes our bodies, and how we use them....
As former choir-boy suppressing his queer feelings, New York producer and songwriter Josiah White unleashes his true nature in the boundary-breaking project Serpentwithfeet. Creating an elaborating, e...
Hailing from Jogjakarta, Senyawa pushes traditional Indonesian music and experimental music far, far beyond their accustomed boundaries, resulting in a thrilling blend of their cultural heritage, avan...
Writing to us, Mark Wynn mentioned that he “leaves the UK to dance for money when the money is acceptable.” With remarkable British accent and lyrics dipped in parody, Wynn creates noise-r...
Chicago stalwart Tim Kinsella initially made his mark with emocore trailblazers Cap ’n Jazz. Over the past twenty years, Joan Of Arc has been the primary instrument of his limitless imagination....
The music of visionary Dutch/Iranian-born Sevdaliza is an open and safe arena for human expression. For this Rotterdam-based artist and musician, rigid concepts of sex, gender, image and ethnicity are...
In collaboration with Casco Art Institute
Throughout Beverly-Glenn Copeland’s extraordinary 74 years on this planet, he has consciously and constantly dealt with his process of becoming and bei...
RVNG Intl. presents; dir. Tony Lowe
‘ICON EYE’ is RVNG Intl.’s first film production, about the making of the FRKWYS recording ‘Icon Give Thanks’. The film evokes a feel...
Cycle or walk through Utrecht suburb Lombok's main street, and you're immediately welcomed by Turkish and Moroccan grocery stores, bakeries, the smell of kebab, and huge piles of colorful fruits sold...
Emerging from Bristol’s thriving artistic community, the four lads of LICE create a rather peculiar and inventive crossing of rockabilly and post-punk, featuring in-your-face lyricism covering s...
Formed in 1997, Endless Boogie is an American rock band who are living up to their own band name. They’re well known for their seemingly infinite, minimalist jams, onstage as well as on record....
As one of the many groundbreaking brainchilds of renowned Philly producer and musician King Britt, Fhloston Paradigm will return to Utrecht to host a DJ set featuring impulsive experimentation, cosmic...
As a full-time member of Utrecht-based folk/slowcore formation I Am Oak, Dutch musician Robby de Selby is a versatile talent with an ear for both delightful melodies and foggy atmospherics. De Selby h...
With a career that dates back to the 80s, Soichi Terada has long been a bastion of soothing house music in Japan. Thanks in part to Hunee, who provided a showcase of Terada’s work via the Rush H...
Armed with a twenty-two stringed Kora (a West African cross between lute, bridge and harp), troubadour Sourakata Koite uses this traditional instrument to interpret his Senegalese roots. Moving to Par...
In the past, Tim Koh made his mark as steady collaborator with oddball pop outfits such as Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, Prince Rama and Gang Gang Dance. In his solo work, the Amsterdam-based K...
With ‘Devotion’, UK-based producer and songwriter Tirzah has created one of the most critically-acclaimed and downright magnetic debut records of 2018. A childhood friend of Mica ‘Mi...
Montreal's Big|Brave occupy a unique sonic space. Merging guitar torrents, withered noise bursts and shamanic yelps into a fully fleshed-out artistic vision, Big|Brave make believers everywhere their...
K Á R Y Y N is a producer, composer and vocalist who makes textured and emotional music inspired by the human condition, science and spirituality. Born in Alabama, baptized in Aleppo and raised...
The Avonden is the brainchild of prolific Dutch musician and visual artist Marc van der Holst (ex-Hospital Bombers and Spilt Milk). Debut LP ‘Nachtschade’, issued on Subroutine Records, ta...
Brian Case’s debut solo album ‘Tense Nature’ consists of abstract ambient tracks depicting a dark environment, built around tape loops and repetitive grooves. The Disappears-frontman...
Dutch musician/composer Martijn Comes specializes in new media, sound design and electronic-acoustic compositions. Some of his harmonies sound as if they’re being exhumed from the dregs of harsh...
In early 2017, modern art rock outfit FACS rose from the ashes of Chicago band Disappears. Joined by Cat Power’s Alianna Kalaba, FACS use minimalism and space to constitute a darker and more bru...
Public Poetry takes the written word into our shared communal life in public space; it brings people together for the sake of the most intimate of verbal arts. In this session, LGW artists are invited...
Nicole Mitchell, the former first female president of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), is an award-winning flutist, composer, poet and educator. Invoked by...
The multitalented British-Ghanaian Kojey Radical is an ever-evolving artist. Performing a sensational balancing act between UK grime, hip hop and alternative rap, this 25 year old poet-turned-rapper i...
Oft-sampled though never imitated, Italian composer Gigi Masin’s deft ambient collages first entered our consciousness in the 1970s. Masin finally earned recognition with his 1986 LP ‘Wind...
Invoking the cosmic spirits of Sun Ra, futuristic three-piece The Comet Is Coming creates an impetuous blend of jazz, afrobeat and electronica. The group turn their intergalactic jazz into a mythologi...
In early 2015, free jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements first came together to perform at the Musicians Against Police Brutality event in New York. Drawn from the instrumentalists’ indivi...
The Philadelphia-based, noise-infested 700 Bliss is a collaboration between spoken word artist & sonic time-traveler Moor Mother and Discwoman-affiliated producer DJ Haram. Originated during Phill...
Haram is an Arabic term for ‘forbidden’, which might give you an idea of what Zubeyda Muzeyyen’s work is all about. This Philadelphia-based artist, DJ and producer throws down club a...
With Sons of Kemet, sax wizard Shabaka Hutchings takes cues from Afro-Caribbean carnival to contemporary UK grime and hip hop. This is music played with punk drive, the immediacy of club music and rid...
The sensational Afro-psychedelic collective BCUC (Bantu Continua Uhuru Consciousness) started out as a social gathering in their native township of Soweto, South Africa. BCUC is an alliance of guitari...
Once dubbed the ‘High Priest of L.A. Freak Folk’, Devendra Banhart leaves a swirling trail of mystic folk, raga spirituals and Latin-American rock in his wake. With his weird and wonderful...
Listening to Proto Idiot is listening to Bass, Drums and Vocals, like they’ve come straight from the 80’s, as a missing link between the likes of Gang of Four, Wire, and Swell Maps. But ac...
His impressive body of work includes stints as "dub poet", political orator, recording artist and author/journalist. His 1978 reggae album ‘Dread Beat an' Blood’ is a statement akin to Gil...
In Utrecht’s suburb Lombok, you're immediately welcomed by Turkish and Moroccan grocery stores, bakeries, the smell of kebab, and huge piles of colorful fruits sold in the streets. The impressiv...
The legendary Sun Ra Arkestra isn’t so much an ensemble as it is an ideology passed on from generation to generation. Founder Sun Ra (visionary pianist, poet, electronica pioneer and composer He...
Stockholm musician and composer Ellen Arkbro is motivated by generating and absorbing sound. Whether she has her hands on a 400-year old pipe organ or a grid of digital equipment, the results are equa...
Hellvete is the solo moniker of Glen Steenkiste. Previously active in Silvester Anfang and one of the founders of the Funeral Folk label, Steenkiste draws influences from early minimalism to old folk...
As a former member of legendary Tokyo-based psychedelic band Yura Yura Teikoku, Shintaro Sakamoto became a cult star in his motherland of Japan. In his solo work, Sakamoto creates post-apocalyptic exo...
As a transgender, Katey Red was one of the first openly gay artists within the masculine bounce hip hop-scene. Red became known for her rapid, machine gun-like beats and her explicit, gender fluid lyr...
Gaining reputation as an ‘all-round musical badass’ and self-proclaimed Synth Queen, SASAMI (Ashworth) is a prolific contributor to the L.A. music scene. On top of that, she’s a musi...
In recent years, Ghanaian star King Ayisoba ascended the West African pop charts with his futuristic approach of traditional styles. A master of the ancient kologo instrument - a two-stringed lute -,...
The King of Keyboard himself, Rizan Said, remains one of the most famous and influential musicians from Syria. He’s made a name for himself as composer for all kinds of Syrian artists, as well a...
Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s 1970 album, reissued by Super-Sonic Jazz this year, is a lush folk-jazz album in the vein of peers such as Tim Buckley and Joni Mitchell. After a twenty year absence, th...
Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s 1970 album, reissued by Super-Sonic Jazz this year, is a lush folk-jazz album in the vein of peers such as Tim Buckley and Joni Mitchell. After a twenty year absence, th...
L.A. based experimental musician, producer, auteur and artist Joe Cardamone, formerly of The Icarus Line, stated ‘he doesn’t care about bands anymore’, so he began his own solo proje...
Even though the four members of Bo Ningen originate from various regions in Japan, the band was originally formed in London. With their fiery stir of psychedelic experimentation, vigorous noise and se...
Enter the dark, mythical world of minimalist composer and praised lute-player Jozef van Wissem. Accompanied by his twin-necked, 24-stringed baroque instrument, Van Wissem creates strange, sonic sounds...
Founder of the Moving Furniture label Sietse van Erve has been composing under his Orphax-moniker for the better part of the past two decades. Van Erve wields his minimalist music as a stream-of-consc...
New York musician/composer Lea Bertucci threads the needle between the physical and abstract. The soothing movements she creates with alto saxophone, electronics and bass clarinet interact with device...
Vera Sola is a New York-based vocalist, poet and multi-instrumentalist. In recent years, she has worked on numerous projects, including performing with folk-rock artist Elvis Perkins and writing sever...
Hailing from Amsterdam, The Mauskovic Dance Band is a brainchild of producer and multi-instrumentalist Nic Niggebrugge, a.k.a Nicola Mauskovic. After years of playing drums for bands like Jacco Gardne...
In her home country of Zimbabwe, music icon Stella Chiweshe is endearingly called The Queen of Mbira, becoming the first female artist to gain widespread recognition for a strictly male-dominated disc...
Before Hailu Mergia fled to America in 1981, his group Walias Band was a guiding light in Ethiopia’s thriving nightclub scene. In America, Mergia ended up driving cabs for almost 30 years, but h...
Indeed, the voice of Suuns has plenty more junk in his trunk. Ben Shemie’s fascination with classical music, radio art, new technologies and the free-form experimentalism of labels like Warp Rec...
Belgium’s STUFF. is much more than your typical jazz quintet. Adding dazzling layers of hip-hop, funk and electronic sounds to their jazz foundation, the group forges an energetic storm of instr...
Dominican producer and multimedia artist Kelman Duran creates a club-situated, tense merger of Afro-Caribbean rhythms. Despite being rooted in the thriving L.A. club circuit, his music doesn’t l...
In collaboration with Future Feminism
This screening event dives into the performance archives of Future Feminism, giving an insight in the project’s history of creating explicit and extreme pe...
Centraal Museum presents
Black Chords is an installation by the French ‘post-conceptual’ artist Saâdane Afif, which consists of thirteen electric guitars and the same number of ampl...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver
Part film, part baptism, in Black Mother director Khalik Allah brings us on a spiritual journey through Jamaica. Soaking up its bustling metropolises and...
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...
Collaboratorium
Harpist Mary Lattimore and guitarist William Tyler may have honed radically different string-instruments, their respective cunning for vivid storytelling with instrumental music is re...
Sarah Louise Henson operates from the roots of Appalachian folk music, but is likewise influenced by spiritual jazz, contemporary classical music and even new age. Her music has never sounded as penet...
Hosted by FACT
Belgrade-based DJ Vladimir Ivkovic sees his chosen profession as a deeper philosophy than just filling up dancefloors. For him, DJing is a way to enter or create new places, to trigger...
The Sweet Release Of Death triumph over doom-and-gloom with a pinch of dark humor and a penchant for stretching guitar-based music’s outer peripheries. The group forms a maelstrom of ear-splitti...
Hidden Musics
Female vocal ensemble Isokratisses both uphold and reinterpret one of the world’s oldest remaining folk music traditions: the polyphonic songs of Epirus. Thanks to the vast mounta...
Together, the most revered merchant of noise and two of the most resounding voices in grime form an alliance of gritty UK fringe music that simply knows no equal. These three artists will stretch the...
Mega Bog instills a wonderful and somewhat disorienting kind of confusion on her stunning latest LP ‘Dolphine’, conjuring a nautical journey of seventies folk, soft rock, new age and psych...
Lightning Bolt’s floor shows are the stuff of myth and legend, unleashing a hailstorm of noise that would leave every venue smoldering in dust and vapors for weeks. Two decades after their accla...
With her enrapturing deviations of electronic music, R&B, jazz and all-out pop, Sudan Archives - born Brittney Parks - doesn’t just bend the rules, she breaks them. Her innovative take on th...
Noise brutes Sex Swing violently grasp the listener with a probing sense of acute danger. You can expect no less from an alliance of musicians from bands like Part Chimp, Bonnacons Of Doom, Dethscalat...
Veni Om is the guise of towering sax fiend Otto Kokke, one half of death jazz deconstructionists Dead Neanderthals. Kokke takes less of a Lovecraftian approach as Veni Om however, proving he can pull...
Composer Maarten Vos is what you’d call a voyager: he transforms traditional instrumentation into newfangled sounds and wields technology like something intricately human. Known as much for his...
Amnesia Scanner isn’t so much music as it is a movement, one that intrudes living rooms and sweltering, neon-lit dancefloors alike. The Berlin-based duo’s profoundly impressive debut &lsqu...
The words ‘holy minimalist’ immediately jump out when skimming the artist biography of Mexican producer Murcof. Fernando Corona appears to shift techno music from its hedonist, more secula...
Throughout her chronicle of life, it’s easy to understand how Vivien Goldman earned the title ‘Punk Professor’. In the 70s, Goldman wasn’t simply satisfied standing on the side...
Acid Rooster are pretty much a wet dream for heads who cram their cabinets with Amon Düül, Spacemen 3, Wooden Shjips and Magma. The dynamics of this band diverge from weightless, spaced out...
Along with Shy Girl and Sega Bodega, French artist and producer Coucou Chloe is the co-founder of burgeoning label/collective NUXXE. Her malformed take on pop music is as mind-melting as it is urgent,...
Collaboratorium
With Brian Chippendale and Greg Fox – two figures of drum royalty – are in the neighborhood, we felt a deep urge to bring them together in the same room. Both artists have...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver
A selection of short films of Glitterbeat's acclaimed Hidden Musics series curated by GRAMMY-winning record producer Ian Brennan (Tinariwen, Zomba Prison...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & De Utrechtse Boekenbar
Within the setting of one of Utrechts’ finest curated bookstores, our artistic director Bob van Heur will discuss with Grammy-winning pro...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver
The directorial debut from Boots Riley presents an alternate reality of present-day Oakland, California, when telemarketer Cassius Green finds himself in...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver, hosted by John Doran (The Quietus)
Hream follows the 25+ year career male nurse and adult music student Doug Hream Blunt as he embarks on a world tour, p...
Through live interviews, listening sessions, art exhibitions with select LGW? performers and all things print and sound, Kapitaal will transform into a three-day meeting place for craftsmanship and de...
Presented by Centraal Museum
Alles is Rond (All Is Round) was made in the city where Louis Andriessen and Madelon Hooykaas both grew up: Utrecht. Both artists have worked together before, but this is...
Collaboratorium
The cartoon physics of Brooklyn experimental outfit Zs, the Lovecraftian doom tandem Ex Eye with Colin Stetson, the blast beat barrages of Liturgy; Greg Fox has an uncanny knack for t...
Les Amazones d’Afrique are a gathering of some of the strongest artistic voices of West-Africa campaigning for gender equality. These musicians and vocalists have joined together to create a for...
DJ Quesadilla and DJ Fitz, two swashbuckling archeologists of music who habitually turn dancefloors all over the world into journeys of sweet sonic oblivion. The former is one of the most prominent fi...
Brain-melting psychedelic pop that trespasses your neurons like a dream machine on some spaceship. Argentina’s Los Siquicos Litoraleños is truly a baffling operation, embracing wacky expe...
The incomparable Instant Composers Pool Orchestra are like the Jedi Knights of improvisation: a collective of musical marvels hacking the conventions of their individual instruments, setting an arena...
Former Screaming Tea Party-member Koichi Yamanoha was once better known for his scream than his whisper. ‘Hazy Eyes Maybe’, the Japanese-born, London-based musician’s debut LP under...
Yves Tumor is one of the most mysterious and gripping experimental musicians to emerge in recent memory. On his critically well-received LP ‘Serpent Music’ he combines abrasive, slithering...
Hidden Musics
Christopher C. King’s relationship with the folk traditions of Epirus, a mountain region connecting Greece with the southern parts of Albania, occupies a special place in his hear...
Having become somewhat of a mainstay in Utrecht, Stranded FM celebrate and share music from all over the globe, becoming the city’s bastion for discovering fresh sounds. During their four-year r...
‘FIS’ stands for ‘forever in search’, and in all respects, this is exactly the intent of producer Olly Peryman. The monumental soundscapes of FIS highlight that sense continuit...
As a teenager, Klavikon’s Leon Michener saved years worth of allowance to get himself a small analogue Moog synth. Needless to say, Michener has yet to surface from the rabbit hole experimentali...
In collaboration with Centraal Museum
The Colombian ambient producer Lucrecia Dalt composed a commissioned piece for the exhibition De Line Up, which displays a rich overview of the power of drawing...
With their curious mix of infernal free-jazz and post-rock, LOTTO are one of the most inventive groups of the Polish underground. Embracing the minimalist spirit of The Necks, Godspeed You! Black Empe...
Alexander von Schlippenbach is the founder of the famous free jazz super-ensemble Globe Unity Orchestra, which at different points featured Peter Brötzmann, the late Jaki Liebezeit, Paul Rutherfo...
As Lone Taxidermist, musician, performance artist, costume maker and provocateur Natalie Sharp relishes in the grotesque. Her unruly and flamboyant electro-punk performances make audiences an active p...
After notable stints as Inga Copeland and Hype Williams (the latter with Dean Blunt), Alina Astrova once again brandishes her signature Baudelairean hybrid of pop and stripped-down tech...
Japanese musician and sound artist Haco received international recognition as the founder, singer, and composer of legendary avant-pop group After Dinner. Hailed as one of the first female proponents...
Few musicians are as versatile, risk-taking and compulsively explorative as Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe. This nomadic musician redefined math and noise rock with 90 Day Men and helped spearhead druidic dr...
Charles-André Coderre is a Montréal-based filmmaker dedicated to working with analog techniques. Coderre is a member of the Montreal collective of experimental cinema Double Negative and...
Hosted by FACT
Slikback is Freddy Njau, an emerging Kenyan producer currently situated in Poland. Associated with the infectious Kampala collective Nyege Nyege, his 2019 EP Tomo renders footwork, gri...
Regarded as one of Chicago’s most versatile and in-demand drummers, Makaya McCraven moves between genres like jazz, hip-hop and funk at lightning speed. Unquestionably respected as a jazz artist...
Hosted by FACT
A pact made between Justin ‘JK Flesh’ Broadrick and Takeaki ‘Goth-Trad’ Maruyama when they released split-EP ‘Knights Of The Black Table’ resulted i...
Composer and cellist Leila Bordreuil grew up in rural Aix-en-Provence, France, before moving to Brooklyn in 2012. Having composed in silence for most of her life, the bustle of Broadway didn’t d...
Norwegian-born, Berlin-based artist Stíne Janvin has the special ability to morph and manipulate her vocals into beautiful sound abstractions, to the point even where you forget it’s a vo...
The Star Pillow is a drone/ambient moniker of Italian guitar impressionist Paolo Monti. Monti's craft is mainly informed by his research on the relation between sound, space and human emotion. On stag...
For eclectic London-based group The Heliocentrics, musical boundaries are invisible. This collective has the ability to fluently string together a broad spectrum of genres, including jazz, hip-hop, ps...
Since the release of his self-titled debut in 2011, Benjamin John Power, aka Blanck Mass, has demonstrated his versatility as an experimental drone/ambient musician and producer. Apart from being one...
Le Bazarre is a renowned and travelling market inspired by quality vintage, second hand and indie craft. It hosts curated vendors and takes place on Utrecht’s famous Domplein (Dom Square), locat...
The power of the imagination is arguably the greatest during youth, and Oslo-based collective DNA? AND? bring this notion into play in the most remarkable fashion. Comprised of special needs children...
Whether they intend to or not, Negativland have bursted many bubbles over the decades with their quizzical remapping of pop culture, media and advertising. Though Negativland consider themselves artis...
Equally adept at noisy, feedback-laden jams as spaced-out, repetitive voyages, Mythic Sunship's self-styled "anaconda rock" has been described as one of the most riveting movements of the European psy...
Seattle-based musician Jesy Fortino (who also formed Mirrorring together with Grouper’s Liz Harris) returns as Tiny Vipers after an eight-year album hiatus. With the electronic soundscape-based...
With a super contagious cocktail of Afrobeat, disco and funk, Arp Frique is the past, present and future scrambled together in one groovy, bright-lit musical skirmish. The Dutch producer’s new l...
Many nomadic Tuareg artists channel and preserve the vibrancy of life that was once the everyday in Mali. Ahmed Ag Kaedy initially set out to do the same, but instead his haunting eight-track LP...
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...
Matthew Benn and Christopher Duffin have cut their teeth with psych trailblazers Hookworms and dream pop authors Deadwall respectively. As XAM Duo, they've blossomed into an ethereal electronic jazz o...
Eiko Ishibashi’s acumen as multi-instrumentalist, producer and songwriter speaks for itself: she spans genres like classical, jazz and improvisation with aplomb, crossing creative swords with li...
Roy Montgomery has been a staple artist of Kiwi imprint Flying Nun. The native of Christchurch lives in an environment often struck by natural disasters, which could be why his work generally has a su...
In the early 70’s, free-jazz evangelists Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids sprung from the tutelage of the great Cecil Taylor. Drawing furthermore from the vast cosmos of Fela Kuti, Pharaoh Sand...
The sprawling universe that is the great Acid Mothers Temple was formed in 1995 by Kawabata Makoto. This fabled Japanese collective always held a deep dedication and devotion to improvised music. From...
Gyedu-Blay Ambolley is the true originator of simigwa-do, a Ghanaian fusion of afro funk, soul and jazz. His work with the Uhuru Dance Band and the The Apagya Show Band (the latter with one-time mento...
Paul Clipson is a San Francisco-based experimental filmmaker who often collaborates with sound artists and musicians. His Super 8 and 16mm films aim to bring subconscious visual abstractions to light....
Spring Heel Jack is an electronic duo with roots in drum&bass and jungle. Highlighted by their 2001 album ‘Masses’, Ashley Wales and John Coxon morphed their musical blueprint into the...
British composer Tom Rogerson’s wizardry skills as a pianist has been on full display with experimental rockers Three Trapped Tigers. His debut solo LP 'Failing Shore' - which finds him collabor...
YĪN YĪN is a jam-packed romp of South East Asian psych pop, funk, disco grooves and electronic music. The project was conceived by Kees Berkers and Yves Lennertz, two familiar faces in the Maastricht...
In 1979, The Raincoats helped shape the timeless notion that punk is what you make it to be—an act of raw expression, not any one sound. Their anarchy was poetic. The group’s debut album &...
Sun Kil Moon challenges the notion that life imitates art. In the curious case of Mark Kozelek, life is art. His stream-of-consciousness folk narratives and nylon-stringed guitar meanderings make Sun...
The Bandcamp-bio for Petbrick deadpans that it’s just ‘Iggor Cavalera (Sepultura) and Wayne Adams making horrible noises that melt your face’. But press play and you’ll find th...