Skaņu Mežs 2025 will happen on October 3-4 at Hanzas Perons (16A Hanzas Street), and tickets can be purchased for 55 EUR at https://ej.uz/SM2025. Single-day tickets are now also available.
This festival edition is headlined by hyperpop singer and producer Sega Bodega, experimental rock band These New Puritans, iconic avant-garde soprano Joan La Barbara, and the duo of modern jazz stars Shabaka Hutchings and Hamid Drake.
Recap of 2024
Skaņu Mežs 2024 was the festival’s most well-attended edition so far. More importantly, it was fairly evenly attended across both central concert evenings, demonstrating the audience’s interest in taking in the event’s eclectic program as a whole.
Writing for The Wire, Peter Margasak described the festival as “arguably the most important experimental music festival in the Baltics,” echoing Geeta Dayal’s similar compliment from her review of Skaņu Mežs 2022 in the same magazine.
Daryl Worthington reviewed Skaņu Mežs for The Quietus and wrote thus: "Boldly curated [..] An extended journey through radical sound [..] Key to the event’s success is that the curators are not afraid to abruptly jump genre boundaries."
Victor Moreno reviewed Skaņu Mežs for the Spanish fashion and culture magazine Metal, and described it as “not only a destination for curious listeners but also a key fixture in the international experimental music scene.”
Finally, Linas Ramanauskas of Lithuania’s Ore.lt wrote that "Skaņu Mežs may still be one of the best festivals in the region, consistently fulfilling its mission to present relevant modern music."
Skaņu Mežs 2025
Each festival evening will have anchors that link its diverse program to traditional song structures and pop music in general – on October 3, the Chilean-Irish hyperpop singer and producer Sega Bodega will showcase his viscose and surreal songwriting with the new show “Adulter8”, while on October 4, the stylistically unpredictable English experimental rock band These New Puritans will present a show based on their new recording “Crooked Wing”. Both shows will be audiovisual.
Leading British free improvisation saxophonist John Butcher will give one of his legendary solo performances, working both with amplification, and also acoustically - emphasizing interaction with the specifics of Hanzas Perons as a space.
Skaņu Mežs will continue its exploration of forward-thinking hip-hop via the performance of eccentric rapper Fatboi Sharif. Of his music, Rolling Stone wrote the following: “There are plenty of rappers who fans claim 'no one else is rapping like,' but this dignification is actually true of Sharif.”
Esteemed free jazz and free improvised music drummer Hamid Drake will return to Skaņu Mežs with multi-instrumentalist Shabaka Hutchings, hailed by Pitchfork as “one of the most celebrated jazz musicians of the past decade”.
Vocalist, composer, and innovator in the field of contemporary music, Joan La Barbara may be the most venerable guest of this festival edition: having inspired a large body of work, including outright masterpieces by Morton Feldman and Robert Ashley, she has been hailed by the San Francisco Examiner as “one of the great vocal virtuosas of our time.”
Purveyor of heavy industrial dance music, Kilbourne will close the first evening of the festival with an extended set, hot on the heels of her critically acclaimed new album “If Not To Give A Fantasy”. The Wire Magazine’s Misha Farrant writes thus: “Relentlessly punishing dance music often feels so satisfying because it emulates a form of cathartic sonic self-harm or kink, pounding against the body and overwhelming it. [..] Kilbourne’s new album nods to the ability of hard dance, gabber and industrial techno to sonify such fantasies.”
Producer KAVARI, hailed by Aphex Twin as the creator of “some of the most brilliant, most interesting kicking electronic music,” will play the closing show of SM2025.
Full and visceral, high-voltage sound will be delivered by violinist and vocalist Laura Ortman and, later, the noise music duo HARPY.
Premieres and commissioned works
At Skaņu Mežs, upright bass player Laine Luīze Freidenberga will give the world premiere of Ernests Vilsons’ work “all else erased”.
Two commissioned works will be presented in collaboration with sound art project “tekhnē”: “Phytomorphic Topographies”, a suite of audiovisual works exploring the delicate ecosystems of Latvia’s wilderness by artists Matthew Biederman and Pierce Warnecke, and “Balss lūzums” – a piece created by a supergroup of Latvian experimental musicians Kārlis Tone, Sarma Gabrēna, and Uģis Jansons-Krastiņš with mixed choir Dziesmuvara.
After the duo’s performance, “Phytomorphic Topographies” will be exhibited as installations at Hanzas Perons for the duration of the festival.
Latvian experimental music
In addition to previously mentioned acts, the Latvian experimental music scene will be represented by heavy music project Pamirt and Evija Ābrama’s noise music project R3YWYA, which has been selected for the current artist list of the SHAPE+ platform for innovative music.
You can read more about the artists of Skaņu Mežs 2025 by visiting the festival website.
Program changes
John Butcher will be playing a solo show, as Bill Nace will not be attending the festival due to unforeseen circumstances.
The performance and lecture of Muqata’a, a veteran of the Palestinian underground music scene, will not happen, as the artist is unable to travel to Riga due to the Israeli border closures in Palestine this week.
Discourse program
Alongside the main program, the festival will host a series of 8 free lectures and masterclasses, open to all interested participants.
These educational events will be led by festival artists, including Joan La Barbara, Muqata’a, Hamid Drake, and publicist Freddie Hudson, who will guide emerging musicians in writing about their creative work, and many others. The sessions are scheduled for September 30, October 2, and October 3. More info about all 8 activities can be found on the festival website.
Additional exhibitions
Info on Margrieta Griestiņa’s “Album Cover” picture exhibition and Richie Culver’s video work “I TRUST PAIN” is available here.
The festival is supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, Riga City Council, Goethe-Institut Riga, Culture Ireland, the Trust for Mutual Understanding as well as "Balta", “Very Berry”, "Pure Chocolate", "Mans Robots", "Skrīveru Saldumi" and “Valmiermuiža”. Skaņu Mežs is part of the SHAPE+ platform for innovative music and interdisciplinary art, and also 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. The festival is also part of the NERDS network, co-funded by the Nordic-Baltic Mobility Programme for Culture.
Media partners include TVNET, Satori.lv, Radio NABA, Arterritory, magazine Mūzikas Saule and la.lv.
Tickets: https://ej.uz/SM2025
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1804325026989403
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