06.06.2024
CENTRAL GARDEN
SONIC AGENCY – LISTENING SESSION XIV
Read the statement on Sonic Agency here
Thursday, 6. June 2024
18:00-23:00 SONIC AGENCY – LISTENING SESSION XIV
at Central Garden (Untere Donaustraße 41, 1020 Vienna) – Free Entry
🌿 Listening to the contributions of LORD SPIKEHEART (KEN), SAINTE MARINA (FR/LBN), LILIANE CHLELA (LBN/CDN), DJ SHINSEKAI (AT)
Open discussion moderated by Dacid G8lin, Samo Zeichen & Shilla Strelka
🌿🌿 DJ-sets by MAYSS (JOR), BADLCUKWIND (JOR)
* All contributions released via our Website & Soundcloud
LORD SPIKEHEART
Over the past decade, Kenyan vocalist, songwriter and producer Martin Kanja, AKA Lord Spikeheart, has become a figurehead of the African metal scene cultivating a distinctive blend of guttural growls, screeching screams and gravelly rap verses that seep menacingly through head-banging instrumentals.
His debut solo album ‘The Adept’, recently released on his own label HAEKALU Records, Africa’s premiere label dedicated to darkest and heaviest music from the Continent, has acclaimed widespread recognition from prestigious media outlets such as The Guardian, BBC Radio, Pitchfork, Arte, Dazed, The Fader, NTS, Crack, Resident Advisor and The Quietus, — captivating audiences globally from East Africa to the rest of the world as a new frontier in extreme music.
The list of collaborators is an inspired one — Cardopusher/Safety Trance, Fatboi Sharif, Brodinski, and Backxwash are some of Kanja’s guests — but The Adept never feels like anything less than something only Lord Spikeheart could have made. It’s the sound of an atom of the soul being split, unleashing an eldritch new energy. – The Fader
Political themes run through the album, which comes as a tribute to his great grandmother the legendary MAU MAU freedom Fighter, Muthoni wa Kirima, the only woman to ever hold the rank of Field Marshal for her contribution to the uprising against the British colonialists. Using heavily distorted lyrics and sounds, Kanja expresses anger over the everyday oppression he sees across the continent, such as inequalities and all forms of exploitations originating from the colonial era.
SAINTE MARINA
Sainte Marina is French-born and Paris-based Lebanese artist, distorting reality through her approach of djing. She layers sounds ranging from dark ambient to polyrythmic noise, including industrial and ritualistic music, sprinkled with rap references. Her sets are build as liquid narratives haunted by voices taken from samples of political archives, poetry and mystical chants. Inspired by the use of sounds for healing, she navigates a wide range of emotions and rythms, sparking intensity through combining melodious sounds with industrial ones. She played across Europe in a variety of settings such as nightclubs, art spaces, festivals and livestream radios, always creating a mystical experience that breaks the boundary between a live set and dj set. She is a resident at Hong Kong Community Radio (HKCR) with her ‘Phantasmagoria’ show and has released tracks on independant labels Etang Brulant (FR/LB) and Caninal (FR).
LILIANE CHLELA
Producer, DJ and performer Liliane Chlela is widely known in electronic and experimental scenes for her unique and audacious approach to sound, stirring audiences into pushing the limits of their auditory experiences ever further. Through her signature techniques, she explores the relationships between improvisation and the manipulation of sounds from wide-ranging musical genres.
Chlela constructs a characteristic sound both as a composer/producer and as a hybrid DJ. She further explores the connections between improvisation and sonic manipulation by approaching numerous musical genres with her signature techniques. Her electrifying DJ sets stir audiences to move and propel the limits of their hearing experience into new frontiers and prompting audacious approaches to sound. Chlela’s multi-sensory flair for adventure saw her developing her aural and visual skills to apply them in other disciplines such as fashion films, interactive installations and performance art. As a result, her work boasts a diverse and audacious sound palette, making Chlela one of the most multifaceted female producers/musicians in the Middle East/West Asia and North Africa.
DJ SHINSEKAI
DJ Shinsekai doesn’t think in genres or bpm. Her signature sound serves as a clear testament to provoke a visceral and transformative response of achieving sensory overstimulation. Her DJ Sets constitute an exploration of hard drum, jungle, breakcore, hardcore, gabba, and other sonic vortexes generating a thrilling intensity of sound, catapulting participants into a matrix of hard-hitting club-adjacent rhythms and fast-changing musical juxtapositions.
MAYSS dj-set
Mayss is a Jordanian curator, DJ and producer. She is the founder of Dreaming Live, a podcast that hosted artists like David Lynch, Mike Banks, Martin Rev, and Lydia Lunch , to discuss the power of uncompromised pursuit of our dreams. Dreaming Live has also recently released their first album, “ENOUGH!”—a 63-track compilation featuring artists who stand in solidarity with Palestinian liberation.
BADLCUKWIND dj-set
Badlcukwind is the project of Nidal Taha, a dj, host and organizer from Amman, Jordan.