Listen Festival x Stroom x Crevette x Flagey

On Thursday March 29th 2018, on the eve of a long Eastern weekend, Flagey hosts the opening concert of the third edition of Listen Festival. For the occasion the Belgian label Stroom and the Brussels based record shop Crevette Records were asked to curate the line-up. The result is an evening moving between the avant-garde electronica scene of the eighties and the nineties and a few contemporary, exciting new projects.

Flagey, Listen Festival, Stroom, Crevette Records

Opening the evening is the Britt Rapoon, the solo project of Robin Storey. The today’s still active producer has so far released over 70 albums. His debut album Dream Circle saw the light of the day in 1992 and is an entrancing fusion of Indian ragas, African rhythms and experimental textures anticipating the evocative soundscapes of the many releases to follow.

A unique collaboration between Roman Hiele en Milan Warmoeskerken is about to take place at Listen Festival 2018. Roman and Milan shared classrooms together at the school of arts and the Antwerp Conservatorium. Next to their jazz curriculum at the Conservatorium (contrabas & guitar) they were teached electronic compositions by Joris De Laet (SEM). Following a lifelong friendship and a shared fascination for electronic music, this will be their first shared production on stage. For their brand new piece ‘Anniversary’ they have written an electro acoustic piece for trio that - of course - will be played with a third musician.

Formed in Nottingham in 1982 on the wave of post-industrial music that emerged out of Post Punk, O Yuki Conjugate are now in their 35th year and 4th incarnation, based around core members Andrew Hulme and Roger Horberry. OYC forged their own path away from their early industrial and electronic influences to incorporate the then-unfashionable ‘ambient’ music into their own sound. Largely ignored in the UK, they found audiences in the US and Europe more receptive. Their concert at Listen Festival is part of a live tour in Europe for the first time in 23 years. A new album is planned as well.

Suzanne Kraft and Jonny Nash have been working together consistently for the last three years, the results of which have often formulated into releases on Nash’s label Melody As Truth (MAT). As well as both releasing solo albums on MAT, the duo released a joint album entitled “Passive Aggressive” in June 2017. Their collaborative work in the studio naturally leads towards the formulation of a live set, which was first showcased in Japan during 2016. Based around the improvised working practices of their Amsterdam studio, their live sets offer a freeform expression of the sonic world of both artists.

For the after show we move to the bar and present you: The Mystic Jungle Tribe. The aesthetic first of all: it is the mission of Mystic Jungle Tribe. A single deal must be studied, gutted during the long hours of session at the West Hill Studio, up to a model of a group that is writing (or rather, rewriting) the history of Neapolitan electronics. The trio composed by Dario Di Pace (Mystic Jungle), Raffaele Arcella (Whodamanny) and Enrico Fierro (Milord) is not part of a precise musical catalog. But of an aesthetic. The aesthetics of reinterpreting, rewriting and often upsetting boogie and italo disco, proto house and new wave, even jazz in its most "Zawinulliane" nuances. Quisisana (2016, Early Sounds Recordings) is the sublime representation of the uniqueness of the trio, which gives Tony Esposito the inspiration to draw exotic horizons and which then enriches with overwhelming jokes (see Solaria, debut album), low profile and hypnotic lines (this is the case of Plenilunio, the latest work published on Periodica Records) and always refined melodies. Aesthetics above all. So special to become, for everyone now, the new frontier of the sound of Naples.