Supersonic Festival 2017 line up announced

We are very proud to reveal the first line up announcement for Supersonic Festival 2017, taking place in the cultural hub of Digbeth in Birmingham, with a very special opening concert performance on 16 June in the Grade II listed Town Hall, featuring Anna Von Hausswolff performing on the venue’s famous pipe organ. The pipe organ played a huge part on the Swedish singer/musician’s latest album The Miraculous (2015), and in forming the colossal sound that Anna Von Hausswolff has become known for. Expect drama, brooding drones, dreamy soundscapes and sublime storytelling.

On the 16th June, Supersonic Festival continues in the heart of Digbeth, with performances taking place across the weekend, from Arbouretum, Colin Stetson, Jenny Hval, Laura Cannell, Melt Banana, Oxbow, Princess Nokia, Raime, ZU and more to be announced in the coming months. Here’s some more information about the performers in today’s line up announcement…

Supersonic Festival are delighted to invite Arbouretum back following their 2009 performance, this time in support of their new Thrill Jockey album, Song Of The Rose. Arresting, thoughtful and masterful, Arbouretum’s music takes philosophical ideas and transforms them into a sonic experience that is at once contemplative and emotionally affecting.

Colin Stetson‘s astounding physical engagement with his instruments (chiefly bass and alto saxophones) produces emotionally rich and polyphonic compositions that transcend expectations of what solo horn playing can sound like, an experience to behold.

No Jenny Hval performance is ever the same, which is why we can be sure that her follow up performance at Supersonic (having previously perfromed in 2014) will be special. Across six full length albums, Jenny Hval crucially brings to light issues of both male and female gaze, which for years had been swept under the rug and/or denied all together. We look forward immensely to seeing Jenny Hval perform again.

Laura Cannell is an extraordinary musician, performing with a deconstructed bow and the curious sound of double recorder. Exploring the spaces between ancient, improvised, traditional and experimental music, Laura Cannell creates a solitary minimalist chamber music where one player makes all the harmonies.

Melt Banana will bring the fun with their high energy hybrid of experimental noise music, pop, and electronica. For over twenty years, across a vast array of albums, well executed cover songs and an unrelenting tour schedule, the Japanese duo are infectious to experience. This is one heady trip well worth taking.

It has been at least five years since Oxbow performed live in the UK, and with hints of the release of a new album this year, anticipation is intensified further. We look forward to welcoming the ever-evolving group back, and to see what they do next…

We’re so excited to announce Princess Nokia as part of Supersonic Festival 2017 – taking inspiration from 90’s Rave, Drum & Bass, with a nod to the raw New York & U.K. underground, the duo perfectly encapsulate the hedonistic spirit that have made past additions of Supersonic so memorable.

London based duo Raime, offer an urgent and focussed futurism, in the shape of fiercely uptempo, minimal, meticulously crafted electro-acoustic rhythm tracks. The DNA of dub-techno, garage/grime and post-hardcore rock music spliced into sleek and predatory new forms.

Ambition, aspiration and deep soulful explorations are crucial for Zu, who have been broadly questioning and evolving their musical identity for almost two decades, developing their musical vocabulary with every release and collaboration, never allowing their personal and creative freedom to be suffocated by imposed structures and labels. On the cusp of releasing their brand new album on House Of Mythology (31st March, 2017), their Supersonic performance promises to be something entirely new from the trio.

Nowhere else will you find a festival experience quite like Supersonic’s – since 2003, we have been hosting superior weekends for the adventurous listener, taking care to present only the most artistically relevant and irreverent acts from the UK and across the globe, while simultaneously making sure to fill every moment with the opportunities to let loose and party, or sit down at engaging talks, discussions and workshops, or take in exclusive screenings and exhibitions.

Stay tuned for the preceeding line up announcements in the coming months.
Weekend Tickets can be purchased from HERE

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Godspeed You! Black Emperor

“Godspeed You! Black Emperor are a band that can use the trappings of feedback, noise, and drones in equal balance with melody and rhythm to lead you to genuinely higher place.”
read the full review HERE

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Thanks to Katja Ogrin for capturing this epic performance, and a huge thanks to so many of you that turned out to see Godspeed’s first performance in the Midlands in over 13 years. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait quite so long for their return.
If you get the chance check out Dead Rat Orchestra who are a truly unique ensemble and played an amazing opening set.

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Supersonic Commission: British Library Sounds

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Open call for British Library Sounds Commission

To be premiered at the Supersonic Festival

 

Deadline for applications: 5pm Friday 27 March 2015

Commission dates: April – June 2015

Performance/installation:

Supersonic Festival, Birmingham, June 11 – 14 2015

 

Supersonic Festival are delighted to be partnering with the British Library to offer an opportunity for an artist to develop a new work as part of the festival programme in June 2015. The successful artist will have the opportunity to work with selected material and their associated documentation in the Library’s archive to create a new work culminating in a performance or an installation at the festival, as well as being archived within the British Library’s sound collection.

 

This commission will be presented at the Supersonic Festival, 11 – 14 June, the UK’s premier experimental music and arts festival. Its international reputation and multidisciplinary programme draws audience, artists and industry professionals from across the globe ensuring a great showcase for this new work. For more information on the festival visit www.supersonicfestival.com

 

The British Library is home to the nation’s sound archive, an extraordinary collection of over 6.5 million recordings of speech, music, wildlife and the environment, from the 1880s to the present day. It has recently launched the Save our Sounds programme which is a major digitisation project to preserve the nation’s sound heritage www.bl.uk/projects/save-our-sounds.

 

For this commission, selection of wildlife and environmental recordings from the collection will be made available and will include, among other things, the songs & calls of British birds, the soundscapes of natural habitats such as woodland, marshland and the British coastline, and a range of environmental recordings covering weather, waves, streams, rivers and more. Additonal content from other curatorial areas may also be available, subject to availability and rights clearance
More information on the collections can be found at http://sounds.bl.uk

 

The selected applicant will receive a £750 fee for the development and performance of the commission. They will receive mentoring from the Supersonic team and an introduction to the collections from the British Library’s Curator, Wildlife and Environmental Sounds.

 

How to Apply:

To apply please send a proposal that includes all of the following:

Your name, contact details and website address.

A short statement explaining why you want to undertake the commission and what you hope to gain by working in this context (300 words max). Also tell us about two pieces of recent work that you are most proud of (200 words max) please save these documents together as a PDF or .doc file.

Evidence of your current work in the following form:

2 x links to your work uploaded to Soundcloud or You Tube/Vimeo.

Please send to [email protected] with ‘BL_SS commission’ in the title
Email attachments must not be larger than 5MB. Application is by email only.

Deadline for applications: 27 March 2015

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Supersonic Tix on sale

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SUPERSONIC FESTIVAL RETURNS THIS JUNE
FOR THE TWELFTH EDITION OF ADVENTUROUS MUSIC AND ARTS

INITIAL LINE UP ANNOUNCED AS EARLY BIRD TICKETS GO ON SALE VIA A KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN

“Birmingham’s Supersonic Festival occupies an exalted position at the vanguard of the festival circuit. And rightly so. Since its inception over ten years ago, it has maintained a staggeringly focused and intelligent curatorial policy, transcending the music and art worlds to present a programme teeming with invention, audience participation and a certain amount of unpredictability. It’s also a bloody good knees up.”
– THE SKINNY

Since 2003, we have brought you Supersonic Festival, an internationally-renowned experimental music and arts festival with genre-bending sound and performance at its heart.

Over the years, Supersonic Festival is privileged to have garnered an incredibly loyal audience and is widely regarded as one of the best experimental arts festivals in the UK, last year selling out in record time.

Whether you’ve been to every Supersonic that ever was or this year you’ll be dipping your toes into our welcoming waters for the first time, we are sure you’ll love our unmissable line-up. Get your tickets at one of the Eventbrite alternatives, or our website today!

Will Gregory Moog Ensemble Supersonic Website Dimensions

Kicking off proceedings on Thursday 11th June will be an opening concert at the legendary Birmingham Town Hall, an impressive Grade 1 listed building which has seen past performances by the likes of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. Supersonic are delighted to host the Will Gregory Moog Ensemble.  As one half of the electronic music sensation Goldfrapp, Will Gregory is passionate about creating new sounds and reinventing old ones. Here a stellar line-up stretches the possibilities of the Moog synthesiser through newly composed music, transcriptions of classical works, and their own versions of music from popular culture and film.  Marvel at 10 musicians on stage, including Portishead’s Adrian Utley and composer Graham Fitkin, performing works by Bach, John Carpenter, Burt Bacharach and Oliver Messiaen on a fascinating array of vintage instruments.  Moreover, a new piece by Will Gregory features a clocking device specially built for the ensemble that enables all 10 synths to be synced, producing music previously impossible to perform live.

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Following on, Post punk provocateurs The Pop Group will be bringing their pioneering throb to Supersonic. Drawing on an eclectic range of influences from free jazz, conscious funk, heavyweight dub to avant-garde experimentalism, alongside contemporaries like Public Image Limited, This Heat and Throbbing Gristle, they were at the forefront of a musical period marked out by its ground-breaking innovation. With a legion of admirers, they have inspired many from Nick Cave to Fugazi. As dissonant as they are danceable,  they recently announced the release of their first album in 35 years, Citizen Zombie, as well as single ‘Mad Truth’, proving as relevant now as they ever were.

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Six Organs Of Admittance (Ben Chasny) will be performing, dissecting and demonstrating The Hexadic System – the name of his soon-to-be released album for Drag City, and a malleable, open-ended system of musical composition that Chasny developed for song-crafting, taking in aspects of language, graphics and chance. Decipher the workings for yourself at a limited workshop Chasny will be hosting.

Liima Supersonic Website Dimensions

Also announced to play across the weekend are Liima, a new collaborative quartet formed of Danish indie-pop trio Efterklang and Finland’s finest improvisational percussionist Tatu Rönkkö. Liima is the Finnish word for ‘glue’, and this is an apt metaphor for the band’s combination of processed vocals, guitar, looped percussion and complex interweaving synthesised sounds, which create a free and emotionally raw live experience.

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The esteemed Thrill Jockey record label has two artists present for the festival – Portland’s psych rock explorers Eternal Tapestry will be making the journey across the Atlantic to fry some synapses in support of their new album Wild Strawberries, whilst post-everything black metal lone wolves Liturgy will showcase their detailed dissections of cross-fertilising hardstyle beats and occult-orientated rap present on their soon-to-be-released LP, The Ark Work.

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Glasgow’s Happy Meals, life-partners since high school finding expression in cosmic pop form, will be bringing their sophisticated Franco-Scottish hedonism to the festival.

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While super-kinetic London future jazz outfit Tomaga, the anonymous sundrenched sounds of Slow Magic, and Swedish maxi-experimentalist duo Wildbirds & Peacedrums shall all also be in attendance.

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Flamingods, Bahrain-born, Brixton-based troupe take African rhythms, repetitive grooves and a pleasure-seeking sensibility to form a riot of sound and fury that’s both sonically adventurous and feverishly compelling. Bringing a welcome and vibrant splash of day-glo to the main festival programme, they will also lead the Supersonic Kids Gig – Big Sounds For Little People, a special show for the under 7’s.

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On Sunday 14th June, Richard Dawson curates an afternoon of performance, named after his infamous podcast Delight Is Right. The programme will play host to a number of very rare live UK performances by artists handpicked by Dawson, those whom he holds dear and sites as an influence on his own songwriting.   The skewed troubadour shall also be performing on this day. His shambolically virtuosic guitar playing is at once charming and abrasive,  stumbling from music-hall tune-smithery to spidery swatches of noise-colour, swathed in amp static and teetering on the edge of feedback. His songs are both chucklesome and tragic, rooted in a febrile imagination.

Ever looking forward, Supersonic is re-imagining its format this year.  The 2015 edition will be relocating to ‘The Crossing’ in Digbeth which is a brand new venue and one of Birmingham’s hidden venue gems with state of the art sound, lighting and a/v gear specifically designed for live amplified music. The second stage is located a minutes walk away in Boxxed, a post industrial warehouse space where the festival has taken place in previous years. These spaces will play host to live performances, a market place, talks, workshops and the famous Supersonic Tea Room full of epicurean delights.

You can expect PLENTY more from the festival in the way of dance and debate, participation and observation, as well as more acts to be announced in the coming months, so do keep tuned lest you miss out on what marvels are in store.

Early-bird tickets are available now from www.supersonicfestival.com
A Kickstarter campaign has been launched to offer unqiue treats to those who wish to purchase these advance tickets.

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Supersonic 2015 dates announced

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We’re delighted to be able to announce the dates for Supersonic Festival 2015 11-14 June.
Early-bird tickets will go on sale at 9am on Friday 13th Feb via a Kickstarter campaign – when we reveal the first tranche of confirmed artists.
For now here is a little reminder of last years festival which sold out in record time.

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Supersonic + Milque & Muhle Xmas Cocktail

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By far the best description of our forth coming event by the very talented writer/artist/musician Poppy Twist  (of Tablescraps fame) for the latest Brum Notes magazine.

Paddy Steer and Glatze are for you if you’re feeling that “all bands with drums, guitar and bass are so over, man… give me theremin, xylophone and an assortment of mutilated dolls any day.” Paddy Steer’s set up looks a bit like one of those automaton bands that you see at the edge of a pier or whatever…with, like, a monkey on drums. Which is obviously good. Glatze self-describes his ‘thing’ as Romany Surf Step. I don’t know what that means but I’ll take his word for it. Glatze means ‘bald’ in German, which, to be fair, is 100 per cent accurate labelling. I like the cut of this man’s jib.
The Lowest Form and Palehorse are ear-melting, spittle-soaked hardcore bands from the capital. Both have impressively evaded the usual music industry hype-train, so this is your best chance to see two incredible bands that you may not have heard of before. Listen to Lowest Form’s ‘Negative Ecstasy’ EP online (it’s out on Iron Lung records), to prepare yourself.

Ravioli Me Away are kitsch as f*ck and they give me a Slits Tradition-era Slits vibe. Imagination is their best song on Soundcloud at the moment. It samples a David Cameron speech and has the funkiest bass I have enjoyed this side of the 80s. Rainbow Grave is the new project of Nathan from Milque & Muhle and Nick from Napalm Death, which is precisely as good as it sounds.

Hordes are the blackest black metal and (along with Table Scraps) are representing Birmingham on the lineup. Sly & the Family Drone were a big hit at Supersonic last year with their unique brand of uncut industrial noise. I expect lots of headbanging. And then there’s us. We’re a noise-punk band and we’re ace. In other words, expect ringing ears long after the last Xmas dinner sandwich is polished off on Boxing Day.

Read the full interview HERE
Tickets are available from theticketsellers or directly from Milque & Muhle

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Palehorse at Xmas Cocktail

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photo from thequietus

One and a half decades in, and South London outfit Palehorse’s sporadic discography and rotating line-up tells of a band particularly unconcerned with the arse-kissing world of industry enabled career progression. Seizing the might of two basses, Palehorse’s notoriety is instead one built on a stack of alienating volume, jolting reprieve and passive aggression.

Their most recent LP, 2014’s ‘Harm Starts Here’ was particularly well-received, earning comparisons with Birmingham’s own influential industrial metal act Godflesh. Sonically, it has been hailed their most accomplished record to date, ricocheting between doom-laden, drawling sludge and full-throttle screamcore.

The band will appear at the Supersonic / Milque and Muhle Xmas Cocktail at the Hare & Hounds on 13 December along with Ravioli Me Away, The Lowest Form, Rainbow Grave, Sly & the Family Drone, Table Scraps, Paddy Steer, Glatze and Hordes.

Tickets available from theticketsellers

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Ravioli Me Away at Xmas Cocktail

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The formidable pairing of Supersonic and Milque & Muhle is delighted to announce that Ravioli Me Away will appear at the jam packed, two stage Xmas Cocktail at Hare & Hounds (13 December).

The all-girl triple threat of Sian (drums) Rosie (bass) and Alice (keys) is an unholy racket of fun post-punk noise with a satisfyingly kitsch presentation. Dangerously ambitious and delusional, Ravioli Me Away have been scaling the UK and Europe after firing off a limited run of ‘The Inevitable Album’ on Good Job Records.

Featured track ‘Imagination’ opens promisingly with a David Cameron speech set to the relentless drawl of funky bass and synth womp, before sinking into a hip, stream-of-consciousness rap and percussive chant that is unpretentiously political brilliance.

Tickets available from theticketsellers

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