Riga, Latvia’s Skaņu Mežs festival for adventurous music will host its 22nd edition on 4-5 October at concert hall Hanzas Perons (16a Hanzas street). Its second wave of artists includes dance punk duo Deli Girls, sound and performance artists Tintin Patrone and Nick Klein, Polish producer 2k88 and Lithuanian dark rhythmic music producer Undveld. Tickets can be purchased at www.bilesuserviss.lv. Festival ticket price is 50 EUR.

Deli Girls (October 5)

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!”

“In recent years, Deli Girls has taken the lead in New York’s exciting noise scene,” writes 

Kiana Mickles in “Resident Advisor”, while “The Fader” finds interesting parallels between the duo and the music of a certain generations past childhood: “Like all the best mall punk and nu metal, this duo’s noise music reminds you what it’s like to feel invincible.”

“They pull from industrial hardcore and nu-metal,” writes “Stereogum” of “Boss”, their latest record so far. “There’s a cover of Korn’s “Faget” and a song that sounds like Evanescence — and they create abrasive sounds that bristle at political grandstanding and misinformation, anger and frustration swallowed up and spit back out in a growl.”

 

2K88 (October 4)

2K88— fka 1988, aka Przemysław Jankowiak — is a music producer, graphic designer, and audio director raised in the Poland of the 1990s and on the pioneering rap records of that time. The rawness, chunkiness, and paranoia he took from this period have always been an integral part of his music. They were there when he made his first homemade beats and stayed with him when, in the following years, he distanced himself from hip-hop, going deeper into the world of sampling experiments and the post-genre avant-garde. Later, he and Robert Piernikowski created the universe of the duo Syny – an irreal spectral/ontological phenomenon built out of memories, dreams, and bass, rap, dub, and smoke.

Since the end of Syny, Jankowiak has let loose his beatmaker impulses on a collaborative record with Warsaw’s legendary MC Włodi, created the album Ruleta [Roulette] with over 30 featured guests, and struck up a dialogue with the electronic soundsystem work that’s fascinated him for years on the Ring the Alarm EP. He’s also created chart-topping avant-pop with Brodka and a mimetic soundtrack to “Splinter”, but it is SHAME that is the album we might call his sonic résumé. 2K88 is an artist of the SHAPE+ platform for innovative music and interdisciplinary art, co-funded by the European Union and Pro Helvetia.

 

New works by Nick Klein and Tintin Patrone (October 4)

Sound artists Nick Klein and Tintin Patrone have been commissioned new works for Skaņu Mežs 2024 via the EU-funded sound art project tekhnē. After their presentation concerts, installation works will remain exhibited at Hanzas Perons for the duration of the festival. 

Tintin Patrone is a German-Filipino sound and performance artist who is captivated by the exploration of interconnections among music, art, sound, and experimental forms of expression. Her creative works revolve around the visual aspects of music and the ways in which personal and societal connections are established with it. By involving herself with robots and artificial intelligence in her artistic practice, Tintin Patrone challenges established notions of human subjectivity and physical presence. Using a trombone as her main instrument and modulation devices, she meticulously crafts soundscapes with sustained tones, inviting listeners into contemplative atmospheres. 

Nick Klein is an artist working in sound and art and sometimes sound art with a lean towards the social potential in those modalities as they interact. Klein has recorded a large amount of music and also has shown work in visual art contexts. Klein is uninterested in the prohibitive ideological tropes and circumstances that both contexts offer, and focuses the intent of his work on trying to see what productive energy comes from the friction between the two. Klein likes loud volume, cooking, offline community building, records, bars, synthesizers, and comedy. Klein is currently located in Berlin.

“The visceral sound of a Nick Klein record isn’t something that can be easily sourced or replicated,” writes “Miami New Times”. “This is due in part to Klein’s approach to texture, volume, and recording: In his hands, the medium becomes shaped by the material in an inescapable way.”

 

Undveld (October 5)

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. Over the years, Undveld has released a diverse range of works under different aliases on several underground labels, including static motion, known for its focus on experimental techno and drone, Amulet of Tears, which specializes in emotive and atmospheric music, Male Activity, a label that was notable for its eclectic and uncompromising releases, offworldcolonies ltd., and others. His discography reflects a commitment to exploring a broad spectrum of electronic music, from the meditative and minimal to the intense and abrasive.

It has previously been announced that iconic experimental music project Autechre, avant-garde guitarist Fred Frith and abstract hip-hop duo Armand Hammer will also perform at the festival. The full line-up can now be found on the festival website.

Skaņu Mežs is a member of the SHAPE+ platform for innovative music and audiovisual art as well as the project tekhnē, supported by the European Union and the Latvian Ministry of Culture. SHAPE+ is now also supported by Pro Helvetia.

Skaņu Mežs festival is supported by the State Cultural Capital Fund, Riga City Council, the Latvian Ministry of Culture, Goethe-Institut Lettland and Trust for Mutual Understanding. Sponsors of the festival are Valmiermuiža.

Skaņu Mežs is a member of the international network ICAS (International Cities of Advanced Sound) and the Northern European music festival network NERDS (North European Resonance and Dissonance Society).

Media partners of Skaņu Mežs include websites TVNET and Satori as well as magazines Rīgas Laiks and Mūzikas Saule.