We are delighted to introduce Karolina and her roster: Christoph de Babalon, Silvia Kastel, Hiro Kone and Wetware!
These artists have forged their hard work, impeccable ethics and plethora of inspirations into strong and unique voices from DIY backgrounds. Each of them has developed into a truly exceptional live act: be it a legendary 90s figure like Christoph, or newcomers Silvia, Hiro Kone or Wetware. All of them escape easy categorisation, and place themselves at an interesting intersection where they can enchant both the audiences of regular club nights and concerts, as well as in less linear environments that offer the opportunity to showcase experimental electronics.
|
|
CHRISTOPH DE BABALON
"Christoph de Babalon's live show is a serious tour de force." RA
“The German producer’s world of mythic drones and breakbeats remains a blistering and confrontational touchstone of electronic music” - Pitchfork (8.4/10)
Known for tripping rhythms, dark wide spaces and eternal melancholy, legendary producer Christoph De Babalon came back into view with his outstanding Grim Zenith EP on Nina and Good News VIS label last year. Swiflty followed with a universally acclaimed re-issue of his 1997 album If You're Into It, I'm Out Of It, a work of textural, darkside fascinations that influenced the breakcore generation and still confounds 20 years later. IYIIIOOI combines fast and aggressive hypnotic jungle beats with Christoph's trademark intense melodramatic atmospheres – themes which extend throughout his live performance.
“De Babalon has the zeitgeist by the throat...There have never been more people who want to be Into It, but De Babalon has the integrity to stay "as far away from the music scene as I possibly can." If You're Into It, I'm Out Of It's staying power is a product of this puritan outlook. It's a lonely place to be, but that's often the price of timeless art.” - RA (4.8/5)
|
|
Mix for Nina's BCR show listen
BBC6 Music mix listen
Ransom Note interview read
|
Pitchfork review read
RA review read
Facebook · Twitter · Soundcloud
|
|
SILVIA KASTEL
"A genuinely grave experimental electronic album full of anhedonic synths and moody sound effects. Air Lows feels like a goth psychedelic ritual intended to plumb the depths of the listener’s unconscious; ...the moments that do sustain momentum radiate a delectably gnostic hum" Pitchfork 7/10
Both solo and in her work with others, Kastel has explored the outer limits and inner workings of no wave, industrial, dub, extreme electronics, free rock and improvisation, with 2018’s album Air Lows on Blackest Ever Black both her fullest and most refined offering to date. Utilising vivid, isolationist electronics, her contemporary sound focuses on the interaction between kinetic synthesis, the human voice and natural elements and how those structures can coexist and interact with each other. Taking her live show into a range of contexts including Berghain Saule, Sonar Reykjavik, and the London Barbican (the next up is Resident Advisor 24/7 @ About Blank) has allowed Silvia to create a fluid sonic world which combines a steady rhythmic pulse with the otherworldly sonorities of musique concrete, and avant-garde synth sounds inspired by Japanese minimalism and techno-pop.
As a DJ, Silvia honed her skills on her radio show Ultramarine Transmissions. Warming up for DJ Stingray in Ohm last year led to her finding confidence in her style as a club DJ, and the last year has seen a wealth of excellent mixes delivered - ranging from the Footwork, digi dancehall, jungle and ultra modern club sounds of her recorded set at Version Berlin, to an exploration of the otherworldly sonorities of new age, Japanese tradition, choirs and club music in her RBMA Choice Mix. Future DJ sets include Berghain and DeSchool!
“Excellent album of plasmic ambient dub pop, neatly balanced between weightless yearn and meatier industrial leanings” Boomkat
|
|
RA Mix of the Day listen
NTS show listen
RA Album review read
|
Resident Advisor - Machine Love read
Truants interview read
Facebook · Twitter · Soundcloud
|
|
HIRO KONE
"Exceptional debut LP" The Quietus
Hiro Kone is a New York based musician and producer: she uses a combination of hardware, synths, and modular to cultivate her sound - a visceral meditation on rhythm, noise, and melody. No stranger to manipulating macabre disorientations into enchanting new shapes, her music exposes the unsettling and sublime. Her cascades of twisted field recordings find an inherent partner in the effervescent current of synthesis and forge new terrains that respond to the precariousness of humanity. Recent solo album Love is the Capital is streaming on The Quietus - “a perfectly concise album of spacious, incisively political industrial techno and experimental soundscapes”.
It’s her most emotionally and politically driven work yet, a long coming opus, examining a number of all-too-relevant themes: capital, the state, egoism, anxiety, and steadfast optimism. Hiro Kone ventures deep into heady, prismatic runs of hypnotic techno; the album maintains a sense of transformation, burdened with an alien tension — the awareness of an impending and necessary collapse; and what may come next. Secret Thirteen selected it as one of the best releases of 2017.
Hiro Kone's close collaborator is Drew McDowall (Coil) - their album The Ghost Of Georges Bataille was released on Bank Records in March - “a superb collaboration; strung out in the ether between Alva Noto, Coil and contemporary Chris & Cosey, the pair have nailed a timelessly stylish darkside vibe herein”.
Hiro Kone’s next solo album Pure Expenditure will be released on Dais Records in August. She is on tour in EU right now, and will be back to premiere her new release live at Berlin Atonal.
|
|
The Quietus interview read
Secret Thirteen Mix listen
|
|
WETWARE
Wetware build on the legacy of industrial music fused with confrontational performance since their formation in Brooklyn 2015. Roxy Farman uses her voice as a vehicle for the band’s chaotic performances. Matthew Morandi cut his teeth in the electronic music world through his solo abstract techno project Jahiliyya Fields and as a member of Inhalants (L.I.E.S. Records). The synergy between them create live antics that ensures this techno show is unmissable.
Wetware stepped out from their live persona and released EPs on the impeccably curated Primitive Languages imprint and the much praised Bank Records NYC label. Their first album Automatic Drawing - "a hallucinatory evocation of both noise and dance traditions, a dark tour of an industrial dreamland" Noisey, followed on DAIS, and they are now on their first European tour of 12 dates including Säule, Berlin (with Essaie Pas), Bristol (with Young Echo) Supersonic Festival and Saturnalia @ Macao, Milan.
"Add one feral vocalist to salty rhythmic noise by a L.I.E.S. rogue, engineered by a Hospital Productions don, and you get Wetware. File next to: Factory Floor, Alberich, Group A" Boomkat
|
|
Noisey interview read
Album stream listen
|
|
BOOKING NOW
I'm really excited to be working with these artists and look forward to discussing your ideas for them!
All the best,
Karolina
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·
Karolina Bartczak
POLY. Artists
working with: Christoph de Babalon • Hiro Kone • Silvia Kastel • Wetware
|
|
|
|
