Saturday 3 June 2023, 8pm
At only 19 years old, Dar Es Salaam’s DJ Travella represents a new wave of singeli producers who are driving Tanzania’s breakneck dance sound into fresh, innovative spaces. Unaffiliated with any of the well-known studios like Sisso and Pamoja, Hamadi Hassani’s music points singeli’s fusion of taraab and techno towards the stars, locating a cyber-singeli style that’s dense, kinetic and unashamedly sexy.
Hassani started producing at 15, and a few years later his debut release, ‘Mr Mixondo’ – one of our higlights of 2022 – is a jagged set of hi-nrg dance music that pulls influence from across the globe, folding together elements of dembow, rave, R&B, and trap. But nothing’s straightforward: opening track ‘Crazy Beat Music Umeme 2’ juxtaposes grinding 200bpm rhythmic intensity with urgent plucked strings, sounding like Timbaland conjuring a Thunderdome soundtrack for a Tanzanian street party.
Brunnera is the alias of Gordon Bruce. Gordon’s debut EP is a brand of hyper-skewed whimsical speedcore in which too many percussive elements jostle against some warbly flutes and knackered casios. His release is out jointly on Kit + NX Records this summer.
ENGLAND'S COUNCIL OF LEGISLATION AND GOVERNING BODY OF HYPER REAL SIMULATIONS AND CONSTRUCTS [a.k.a ecolagbohrac2021] is a multimedia [installation, live A/V , quantum research, fashion, crypto & ai] powerhouse, conceptually focusing on mythic themes/folklore that populate the archetypal strata of the modern technological psyche, meta hypermedia hell and our understanding of reality.
Musically in the style of of draconic mediaeval EDM, crystal swampcore, deep-fried Digital Middle Age hyperblackmetalpop, magick Lamborghini ride-core, delysidMIDI trance chord-pack dance tunes for shaking stars, sampling of prayers from alternate worlds, sp3xtral matrix-grim3, postnuclear Barbican skatepark Splice pack mash-up dancefloor music, 3D glitter pandemonium .gif flower garden ambient and folk music of the other syde, their 2023 performances are an audio/visual compendium composed of a hallucinated ‘remix-culture’ [spaces of shared co-creation beyond the boundaries of one’s present time or location > memergence of doom / a total annihilation and reconstruction of reality via cut-ups], hypermedia clairvoyance, speculative cyntery, multiplying reproductions of reality that actually doesn't exist and crystalline euphoria of South London funfair rides across it’s bogs and mires.
They are SHAPE alumni, have performed at venues, clubs and festivals such as FOLD, IKLECTIK, TodaysArt and Sonar Festival. Their previous LP, THE ONLY WAY WE KNOW TO HAVE FUN [self-released, 2021], was highly praised by the likes of The Quietus, XLR8R, The Wire, Electronic Sound, Crack Magazine, FACT, Resonance FM, MTV, BBC. Their next album EUPHORIA will be released on the London based mixed-reality biome and art platform Most Dismal Swamp in the spring of 2023.
