Skaņu Mežs festival for adventurous music will host its 22nd edition on 4-5 October at concert hall Hanzas Perons (16a Hanzas street). 

 

Skaņu Mežs has been hailed as “the biggest experimental music festival in the Baltics”, and its stage will draw together adventurous musicians from many different fields, including noise, contemporary music, electro-acoustics and free improvisation as well as hip-hop, metal and punk.

 

The first evening of the festival will feature the following performances:

 

Armand Hammer (USA)

 

The Washington Post have called Armand Hammer “underground rap legends”, and music criticism website The Quietus said the following of their latest full-length album: “It’s a record of flabbergasting sonic diversity and lyrical depth and complexity – an LP that is at once ardently a work of ‘traditional’ hip-hop, and an outlier that extends and deepens the blurred margins that sit beyond the music’s usually accepted borders. [..] Meticulously structured yet fuzzily abstract, cloudily claustrophobic yet aurally vast, it sounds nothing like a traditional rap LP yet definably and definitively adheres to the most crucial characteristics of the genre. It’s certainly a marvel and may well be a masterpiece.”

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfJKNUWJvFk

 

The Body & Dis Fig (USA, Germany)

 

The Body, hailed as “extreme-metal titans” (“Pitchfork”) & Dis Fig are a natural pair. Each has pioneered instantly recognizable worlds of sound all their own that defy any traditional categorizations or boundaries. 

 

The Body, Lee Buford and Chip King, continually challenge any conventional conception of metal, collaborating with myriad artists and from the folk-leanings of their work with BIG|BRAVE to their groundbreaking work with the Assembly of Light Choir.

 

Dis Fig, aka Felicia Chen, pushes electronic music into dark extremes, from warped DJ sets to avant production, from being a member of Tianzhuo Chen’s performance-art series TRANCE to being the vocalist with The Bug. 

 

The Body and Dis Fig find kinship in reimagining what it means to make “heavy music”. Their debut Orchards of a Futile Heaven, published by Thrill Jockey, is the perfect synthesis of two forces, twisting melodicism and intoxicating rhythms, layering a dense miasma of distortion with intense beats and a soaring voice clawing its way towards absolution.

 

https://disfig.bandcamp.com/album/orchards-of-a-futile-heaven 

 

Raven Chacon (USA)

 

Pulitzer prize winning composer and experimental musician Raven Chacon has set to perform at Skaņu Mežs last year, yet he could not attend due to personal reasons. In the meantime, he has been awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, the “Genius Grant”, and will perform at Skaņu Mežs 2024 as one of the most highly regarded – and awarded – American experimental musicians of our time. 

 

Raven Chacon is a composer, performer and artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. His work ranges from chamber music to experimental noise to large scale installations, produced solo and with the Indigenous art collective Postcommodity. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wneitQYFqmY&t=50s 

 

Gundega Šmite and Gunta Gelgote (Latvia)

 

Commissioned by Skaņu Mežs, “Four Electroacoustic Love Poems” will be premiered at the festival by singer Gunta Gelgote. It shines a light not only on Šmite as one of today’s key Latvian composers, but also as a literary talent. The composer admits to have started writing poetry and short stories in childhood – way before she started training in composition, which, as time went on, became her primary vocation. However, since moving to Greece, Šmite has intentionally devoted more time to writing, and, two years ago, her story collection “Greek Suite” (“Grieķu svīta”) was nominated for the Annual Latvian Literature Award (LALIGABA) in the category of “best literary debut”.

 

Deli Girls (USA)

 

Deli Girls is an emotionally charged, bombastic dance punk project based in Brooklyn, NY comprised of vocalist Danny Orlowski and various DJ/producers. In fall 2022, Orlowski started working with DJ/producer Hatechild (head necromancer at Melting Point). The two are connected via over a decade in the NYC underground, and known for hardcore dance mosh pits, and ongoing fund-raving efforts. Orlowski and Hatechild have always shared unforgivingly anti-establishment, queer freak values. “Abolish police, abolish prisons, abolish ICE!”

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx0DTX61QYw&t=50s 

 

Dharma Doom (Estonia)

 

Dharma Doom is an experimental electronic producer and live performer. Residing at Shelter (Estonian event series and collective), he often adopts a ritualistic and archaic approach to sound, infusing his mixes with layers of noise, drones, and distorted percussion rhythms. As a member of the trio KEETAI, he has a background in genres such as noise, power electronics, and drone metal, all of which significantly influence his works.

 

https://halalclub.bandcamp.com/album/breeds 

 

Undveld (Lithuania)

 

Skaņu Mežs 2024 will be concluded with a performance by Undveld, an electronic music producer from Vilnius, Lithuania. 

Undveld is a prolific Lithuanian artist known for traversing the realms of ambient, techno, industrial, and noise. His creative output displays refined stylistic consistency as well as bold experimentalism, signifying him as one of the scene’s exceptional talents. His discography reflects a commitment to exploring a broad spectrum of electronic music, from the meditative and minimal to the intense and abrasive.

https://undveld.bandcamp.com/album/solsticija 

 

Skaņu Mežs is supported by State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, Riga municipality, Danish Cultural Institute, Culture Ireland and Trust for Mutual Understanding. 

 

Skaņu Mežs is part of the SHAPE+ platform for innovative music and interdisciplinary art and sound art project “tekhnē”, both supported by the European Union and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia. SHAPE+ is also supported by Pro Helvetia.

Skaņu Mežs is also part of  festival networks NERDS (North European Resonance and Dissonance Society) and ICAS.

 

The festival collaborates with such local businesses as Mans Robots, Valmiermuiža, Laima, Staburadze, Augļu Serviss, Very Berry and Balta.

 

Media partners: The Quietus, TVNET, Satori, Rīgas Laiks, Ir, Radio NABA and Mūzikas Saule.

More info: www.skanumezs.lv