Nusasonic Magazine #12 | Neng’s World

At the crossroads of ritual, industrial and electronic musics, there is a niche where many experimenters are clearing the edges of genres. The three members of Nze Nze (UVB76 and Sacred Lodge) are among these: summoning sequenced machines, digital samplers and multi-effects. They’re making the instrumentals telescope guttural vocals, war stories from Fang mythologies (vernacular language of Central Africa) and arrange everything to create hybrid, unclassifiable and disconcerting pieces.
The fundamentals of radical electronic musics are there, but the production, close to the great free-jazz records, lets claim a heritage far from obvious current proposals.

Adzi Akal

Nze Nze - 03 - A Kele Nkoo Oking

Neng Sweeping

Neng Gardening

Neng Cooking Sound

Neng Chopping Garlic

From Κ​λ​ί​μ​α (Klima)- Out September 29th on Editions Basilic. 

Preorder:
https://johnalsobennett.bandcamp.com/album/klima

CV & JAB - Pottery Fragments

ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴀʀᴛɪꜱᴛ

Aho Ssan is the artist name of Paris based Niamké Désiré. After studying graphic design and cinema, he began to com-pose electronic music and create his own digital instruments. Shortly thereafter he went on to win the Foundation France television prize for his soundtrack to the film of Ingha Mago in 2015 and has worked on several projects related to IRCAM/GRM in France. His debut LP «Simulacrum» was released on the 7th of February 2020 via Subtext Recordings.Based on the concept of Jean Baudrillard, it navigates through society’s presentation of inclusivity and equality against my own experience of growing up black in France.

https://soundcloud.com/ahossan
https://ahossan.bandcamp.com/music
https://www.instagram.com/aho_ssan/

🌿 ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ꜱᴏɴɪᴄ ᴀɢᴇɴᴄʏ

Spurred on by the acuteness of current global events, we are raising our voices in solidarity with the oppressed, the tortured, the silenced, and the unheard. While humanity is at stake, and our values are on trial, in moments of despair, rage and endless grief, acts of solidarity are needed more than ever. The events that shake Palestine and Israel are resulting in an ever-tighter spiral of violence and desperation. They are a horrific wake-up call that brutally brings the precarious situation on our planet to the fore. The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, and Israel’s collective punishment of Palestinian civilians are intolerable. On top of that, the military actions threaten the lives of the remaining hostages in the Gaza-Strip, and even more innocent people in Gaza.

…being together, in community

Read the full curatorial statement here
strumandiodine.com/article/sonic-agency/

SONIC AGENCY - AHO SSAN - "EBi (Patch Improvisation)"

first single from my next album 'hexed!' out on hyperdub march 28th

off to the ESSO

Prod:
1, 5, 8 - Erva.
2, 4 - Ostrowski.
3 - twe.exe.
6 - IFS
7 - Maciej Maciągowski
9 - Avtomat
10 - paszka

Blaq Bandana - Neighbourhood Watch

release on 28 November 2024 : www.wabi-sabi-tapes.bandcamp.com
@savvasmetaxas

Greek composer Savvas Metaxas is based in Thessaloniki, Greece. His music revolves around field recordings, experimentation and minimalism.

Savvas Metaxas - Folk Tales & the Rain (Side B extract)

Friday 31 January 2025
CTM 2025
radialsystem

Artist talk and workshop by Dadabots

Musicians are exploring new sounds and creative processes with generative machine learning. In a world of easy fast food AI music apps, trve kvlt music hackers take on the arduous path of building, training, and breaking their own neural nets. If this is you, this talk will start your journey.

Dadabots highlight a decade of their underground experimentation with neural synthesis, from numpy and RNNs to diffusion, alongside 24/7 live streams of infinite death metal, legendary artist collaborations, human vs AI beatbox battles, machines that invent new genres, prompt jockeying as a live music format, open source AI, and more.

@dadabots

CTM 2025: Hack Your Own Music AI

Saturday 25 January 2025
CTM 2025
OXI

Gadutra is pure combustion: DJ, producer, tattooist, and force of nature weaving chaos into creation. Her collision of baile funk, footwork, noise, and industrial grit transforms dancefloors into arenas for sweat-soaked resistance and sonic transcendence. She performed as part of a Meta Rave takeover at CTM this year. Meta Rave is a Berlin-based collective championing diasporic and queer LatAm artists. With a pulse that merges underground club culture with shadowy atmospheres of wildness, they’ve fostered a multi-heritage rave community where diversity thrives.

@gadutra

CTM 2025: Gadutra at OXI

A phone call with a past mentor who at age 95 is still teaching piano, a memory of giggling at her transfixed mother photographing swans, a feeling of being floored whilst unearthing letters from her parents’ relationship. Exploring her most personal narratives to date, Laenz’s album ‘88 keys’ is suffused by the power of unwavering devotion - both towards others and towards lifelong study of music. Leaving behind the guilt of adolescent indignation and deviation from classical music towards fascination with leftfield dance music, the release circles back: a reverence to former piano teachers and the nurture they instilled in her.

Across ’88 keys’, loosely tethered memories and the intricate yet unpredictable sonic turns Laenz is known for are grounded through bass frequencies. On ’’11’ which samples recordings of Laenz’s last public performance of Bach’s ‘Chaconne in D minor’ arranged by Busoni, sustained solemnity is beset against misty, dubbed-out percussive explorations of piano acoustics. ’’24’ reminisces on lazy walks by Berlin canals, basslines ebbing hazily below spiralling hi-hats and caliginous melodies. ’9-30-91’ delicately re-casts one of the many love letters written by her father to her mother when they began dating, into a sonically distinct, tenderly stripped back vocal track. The lyrics read: ‘My dear, I miss you so much, I miss you deeply, from the bottom of my heart. Thoughts of you, occupy my whole heart, and every corner of my mind’.

Conversations, past performances, and archival recordings are run through iterations of radio transmission-reception, audio becoming irreversibly lost or altered into ambiguity. Each titled after a year, though not emotionally bound to it, the tracks are an aggregate of Laenz’s desire to calibrate them actively in her current memory—resisting any inevitable, obsolescent effects of time’s passing. In Laenz’s words ’88 keys’ ‘though a fraction of the appreciation I have for my parents, Carolyn Shaak, and Larry Graham, this project was from start to finish an ode to their impact. 

The singles ‘’11’ and ‘‘24’ are out on the 2nd and 9th May, ahead of the full album release on 16th May 2025.

Artist Bio:
Laenz is a producer based in Brooklyn, NY, working within radiophonic textures and caliginous dance music. Her work explores the sonification of indeterminate spaces, saturating abstract musical forms with intensely tender and personal observations. She uses vocals, radio equipment, and live processing in her performances, sonifying unknowable sounds into unsuspecting ears. She holds a Lot residency, and has released projects under Woozy, Early Reflex, Dance Data, and more.


Abyss Versions

Unseen Forces and How to Use Them by Boduf Songs

Nusasonic is a multi-year project that plunges into a broad spectrum of experimental sound and music cultures in Southeast Asia, enabling dialogue within the region, with Europe, and beyond.

Adopting a multi-perspective approach, the project is collaboratively created by Yes No Klub (Yogyakarta), WSK Festival of the Recently Possible (Manila), Playfreely/BlackKaji (Singapore), and CTM Festival for Adventurous Music & Art (Berlin).

Nusasonic is an initiative of the Goethe-Institutes in Southeast Asia.

Neng Chopping Garlic

Nusasonic

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