TERRAFORMA

British electronic musician Darren J. Cunningham, known as Actress, sums complexity with elegance. At Terraforma, he will present an immersive live audio-visual experience that will merge with the unique setting of the labyrinth, resulting in an unmissable, mind-blowing show.

Paris-based artist Aho Ssan will present his latest project “Rhizomes”, soon to be released on Nicolas Jaar’s Other People label. The artist collects different sound materials to create a musical rhizome, a concept that links back to ideas of horizontality, collaboration and cross-disciplinarity, at the core of the new edition of the festival. 

Aho Ssan is supported by SHAPE+.

After her beginnings in a jazz band and multiple interventions in the electronic scene in Tunis, the Tunisian producer and DJ Deena Abdelwahed moved to France in 2016. Her musical explorations are hopeful attempts to reclaim the elements that make up the diversity of Arabic music, drawing inspiration from electronic dance music - influenced by Club music - and the current avant-garde and experimental scene.

This year, Terraforma sparkles with sugar together with Scottish-American producer, composer and dj, Hudson Mohawke. Mohawke’s third album, “Cry Sugar”, features soul samples, gospel choirs and scat-sampling, glowing in a fractured and colorful approach to electro and hip-hop.

Down the streets of London, Josey Rebelle's name is synonymous with underground. Her heavyweight cross-mixing selection blends acid house, techno, tropical disco and more, and has earned her a solid reputation across the world. 

Electronic musician Asma Maroof’s sonic fascinations are rooted deep within her upbringing. Born outside of Washington DC to Indian parents, music was always present in her home, along with her own traditions, Hip-hop, R&B, as well as Baltimore club. Mesmerized by the connections sound makes internally, externally, and socially, she continues to explore its powerful storytelling capabilities.

Dj and producer Batu plays with weightless experiments and intense, precise beat-driven cuts, testing the limits of club music. His forward-thinking, Bristol-based signature style returns to Terraforma after the release of “Opal” (2022), a stand-out debut album.

Dawuna, alias of singer and instrumentalist Ian Mugerwa Byenkya, will bring New York free jazz vibes to the festival. His music is tainted by R&B, gospel and experimental electronic overtones, further explored in his lyrics, referencing religious existentialism and invoking biblical scenes of death and divine supplications.

Lamin Fofana is an artist and musician whose music contrasts the reality of our world with what is beyond and explores questions of movement, migration, alienation, and belonging. Fofana’s overlapping interests in history and the present and his practice of transmuting text into the affective medium of sound manifest themselves in multisensory performances featuring original music compositions, field recordings, and archival material.

Electronic and digital musician Lolina uses CDJ players to loop, scratch and manipulate her existing recordings, and developed an improvisational cut up style exemplified on her releases. Ahead of Dr. Pit's release on Lolina's Relaxin Records label, they will perform a collaborative live show at Terraforma festival. 

The Master Musicians are a legendary, historical group from Jajouka, a village in northern Morocco. Their music is marked by highly complex rhythms and melodies passed down from their fathers. The Master Musicians of Jajouka play folk songs, both ancient and newly composed, and perform using traditional instruments produced in their village.

Originally from Paris, Marine Tordjemann alias OKO DJ’s impeccable taste for the weird and wonderful has seen her establish as one of the finest DJs and producers to pace the world’s stages. At Terraforma, she will be joined by Ostend-based DJ Nosedrip, that in the space of just a few years, has gone from somewhat of a now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t presence on the fringe electronic scene to a firm fixture on Belgium’s burgeoning leftfield landscape.

Patrick Belaga is a cellist and composer. His distinctive style, considered contemporary classical music, often uses improvisation and includes a range of influences from Western classical, Middle Eastern classical, pop, new-age, Jazz and Folk. At Terraforma, he will perform together with saxophonist and electroacoustic musician Tapiwa Svosve, whose practice explores the relations between sound and space and the electronic and/or physical manipulation and abstraction of acoustic sounds.

Death by Tickling is the latest project by Scotch Rolex and Shackleton, just released on Silver Triplet: a rocket of a collaborative album from two of electronic music’s most free-spirited mavericks. Combining the surrealist punk ethos of Scotch Rolex and the bass-heavy psychedelia of Shackleton, Death by Tickling is full of wild and unpredictable changes, incorporating odd time signatures, cosmic synth freak outs and dubbed-out space vibrations.

Still House Plants are Jessica Hickie-Kallenbach, Finlay Clark, and David Kennedy. Using a bare-bones, litecore set-up of guitar, drums and vocals they create “sharp, fractured music with a melting pop heart”. Their recordings are constructed and deconstructed at the same time through elements of sampling, slowcore, and R&B.

Based in Berlin and Amsterdam, musician and sound artist Thomas Ankersmit will liven up the labyrinth with a unique project celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Serge Modular synthesizer, one of the most powerful and versatile electronic instruments of the analog era. His distinctive sound combines intricate sonic detail and raw electric power, generating a physical and spatial experience of sound through acoustic phenomena such as infrasound.

As electricity blossoms and leaves glisten, dutch dj and producer upsammy creates interpretative space, cleverly paradoxical in its concurrent comfort and desolation. Soon out on PAN, her narrative approach takes cues from trippy electronics, experimental DnB and oddball techno.

Babau is the post-world project created by Artetetra founders Matteo Pennesi and Luigi Monteanni in which a fascination with exotica, world music 2.0 and field recordings meets the compositional and improvisational techniques of computer music as well as the imageries of digital folklore.

Avant-garde, electronica and experimentation will be key ingredients in the live performance by London-based electronic musician Beatrice Dillon and British tabla player and composer Kuljit Bhamra. Among the pioneers of bhangra, a popular musical style of the Punjabi diaspora in the United Kingdom, Bhamra shares with Dillon an interest in rhythmic patterns, synthetic and acoustic percussion.

Barbados-born reggae guitarist, bass player and record producer Dennis Bovell has earned himself the reputation of Britain’s Reggae Maestro. From pioneering early developments in the genre over 40 years ago to producing classic hits, he is unquestionably one of the leading historical and contemporary dub scene producers.

Few DJs and producers are as universally acclaimed in techno circles as the legendary Donato Dozzy. This year, he returns to Terraforma b2b Marco Shuttle, among the most dazzling and crystalline talents that blossomed in Italy in the last years.

Multidisciplinary artist Kenichi Iwasa and musician and visual artist Naima Karlsson form the duo Exotic Sin. Improvisation and live recording are at the core of their collaborative process, integrating acoustic instruments and simple electronics to play with the contrasts and cohesions of natural, digital and intuitive sounds. The duo collide piano, trumpet, flutes, percussion and two of Don Cherry's "zen saxophones". At Terraforma, Exotic Sin will be joined by singer, songwriter and performer TYSON, co-founder of Ladies Music Pub (LMP), a non-profit organisation for women, non-binary and gender variant people working in and around music.

From Honduras to Paris, Low Jack’s sets move fluidly between dancehall, sound art and techno. At Terraforma, his distinct club constructions will take the stage B2B another PAN artist, STILL, founder of Hundebiss and Invernomuto, and a well-established name in Milan, and beyond.

Through her experiments in electronic music, the London-based, Congolese-Belgian DJ, producer and activist Melika Ngombe Kolongo aka Nkisi considers the impact of sound on the human psyche and behaviour. In the labyrinth, she will perform her visceral new live show, “Invisible Gestures”, drawing on her research into vibrational rhythm and ancient Kongo traditions. Sound materializes as vibrational fields and visuals move through the space.

Terraforma welcomes back its resident Paquita Gordon, one of Italy's most fussed-over selectors. Last year, she guided dancers through a sonic journey that started from dub, touched hedonistic peaks of house and techno and ended up in a well deserved reggae contemplation. This time, her set will be infused with spiritual jazz overtones.

Salò have existed for only a few years, but their ever-changing live performances remain a rarity of the great occasions and their project one of the most enjoyable and original in recent times in Italy. A visual identity decidedly out of the ordinary and a sound horizon that receives impulses from the bottom of the Capitoline underground, between psychedelia, noise, avant rock, and a distinct taste for performance that also finds its raison d’etre in the interaction with the audience.

Legendary dub reggae vocalist Paul St. Hilaire, aka Tikiman, will soon release “Tikiman Vol. 1” via Berlin imprint Kynant Records. He lands at Terraforma together with Scion, an integral part of the Berlin techno scene for almost two decades. Scion are René Löwe (aka Vainqueuer) and Peter Kuschnereit (aka Substance / DJ Pete).