Otherworldly Festival 2023 (English)

Information in Swedish

An evening of experimental music from some of the world’s most intriguing artists and musicians within ambient, drone, noise, and sound art. Curators: Christian Hutchinson Berg and Peder Bjurman.

Full festival programme with art, installations, and other activities.

Artists

William Basinski (USA)

William Basinski is the unrivalled rock star of the ambient scene. A legendary New York-based cult figure with more than 40 years in experimental music and sound art, he has gradually reached a broader public. He is a classically trained clarinet player, saxophonist and composer, but his heart belongs to avant-garde music. Early in his career, Basinski was inspired by prominent figures in ambient and minimalist music, such as Eno, Reich and Glass. In their spirit, he soon began experimenting with tape recorders and loops. Mixed with short melodic fragments and clips of radio noise that collide in waves of feedback and displacement, this formed the basis for his uncompromising musical vision, in the borderland between ambient and musique concrète. His terse and ingenious sound works evoke a subtle feeling of melancholia in audiences and listeners. With spine-chillingly exquisite harmonies and profoundly meditative soundscapes created entirely for intense, deep listening, beyond time and space.

Basinski has a long list of projects and albums under his belt. Among the most noteworthy is The Disintegration Loops (2002–2003), a monumental work in four parts that was created in an attempt to digitise old experimental recordings from the 1980s. This resulted in a series of shattering and poetically perfect releases that are considered to be among the best ambient albums ever.

In 2023, William Basinski is touring the USA and Europe with his recent The Last Symphony. The only stop in Sweden will be Otherworldly in Uppsala.

Listen to William Basinski

Alessandro Cortini (ITA)

The Italian multi-instrumentalist, producer, composer and instrument maker Alessandro Cortini is a pioneer of contemporary electronic music. He is best known as a long-standing member of Nine Inch Nails, but also has a career alongside industrial rock and has released several albums in his own name on labels such as Mute and Important Records, and in collaborations with other major artists, including Lawrence English and Merzbow.

Cortini moved to the USA from Italy to be a guitarist, but made a name for himself on synthesizers and keyboards. His own compositions are atmospheric, compelling, mighty and meticulous, with technical perfection.

A few years ago, in association with the synth builders at Make Noise, he designed his own semi-modular synth Strega (Italian for witch). The music for his latest album, Scuro Chiaro (Mute, 2021), was written for, and played on Strega. Pitchfork described the album as “pitched somewhere between purgatory and the planetarium […] consistently managing to thrill and surprise”. Live on stage, his music is equally frightening and hopeful.

Listen to Alessandro Cortini

Giant Swan (UK)

Robin Stewart and Harry Wright in the Bristol-based duo Giant Swan have carved out their own niche in techno, which can be compared to a wild and unhealthy love affair between aggressively energetic dance music and electronic noise. A live performance with Giant Swan is both captivating and psychedelic. On a table crammed with machines, synths, cables and pedals, their intricate music evolves in a process of telepathic interaction and frenetic improvisation, as they crank up hypnotic bass lines, industrial beats and fragmentary loops from distorted voices and instruments. No gig is the same, as quickly as a song is built up it can be torn to pieces and shift into something new in Giant Swan’s twisted universe of sound.

“Where so many techno artists – and musicians in general for that matter – have searched for full-length validation via lofty concepts and ever darker aesthetics, Giant Swan seem free of pretension. They’re two punk kids who cracked the rave code by accident, and they’re having a fine time.” – The Wire

Listen to Giant Swan

Tim Hecker (CAN) with Vincent de Belleval (SWE/CAN)

Canadian Tim Hecker’s finely-tuned skills in creating experimental sounds has made him a leading figure on the contemporary drone and ambient scene – both under his own name and in collaborations with filmmakers, choreographers and other sound artists. His music has been described as “structured ambient”, “tectonic colour plates” and “cathedral electronic music”. In his sound works, he explores the interface between white noise, dissonance and melody. The result is an immersive physical and emotional listening experiences, at once both ominous and soothing.

Since 2001, he has released albums on labels such as 4AD and Kranky, including the ground-breaking and critically-acclaimed Ravedeath, 1972 (2011), recorded by Ben Frost in a church in Reykjavík, based around the church organ. Each album reveals a new horizon in Hecker’s world of sound. On Konoyo (2018) and Anoyo (2019), he dives deep into classical Japanese music with a gagaku ensemble. He describes his latest album, No Highs, from last spring as a ”beacon of unease against the deluge of false positive corporate ambient” in the public domain. His ability to keep on developing and never giving in to prevailing trends and tendencies makes him a performer and artist who deserves our undivided attention.

For the concert at Otherworldly, Hecker collaborates with the Swedish-Canadian artist Vincent de Belleval, who has created a light installation for the tour project.

Listen to Tim Hecker

Maria W Horn (SWE) with Adèle Tornberg (SWE)

Swedish composer Maria W Horn lives and works in Stockholm since 2011. Her artistic practice verges on science and focuses on ambitious attempts to manipulate time and space with extreme volume levels as her tool. Her work is both digital and analogue, using acoustic instruments and audiovisual effects. In her multi-disciplinary pieces, she mixes synths, electronics, choirs, church organs, strings and other elements from chamber music. Through generative and algorithmic processes, she strives to control the music and the timbre, atmosphere and texture of the sounds, exploring different aspects of perception and how sounds and visuals can affect our moods in different ways. Despite her scientific and experimental approach, the result is a deeply emotional music that seeps into every pore.

Maria W Horn is one of the minds behind the record company XKatedral, which released the widely-acknowledged collaboration Funeral Folk (2022), with the famous Swedish folk musician Sara Parkman.

The last time Maria W Horn played in Uppsala she was the support act for Kite in a sold-out concert here at UKK in 2022. At Otherworldly, she appears with the artist Adèle Tornberg, who creates a visual concept for the concert.

Listen to Maria W Horn

BADA (SWE)

We regret to inform you that BADA is canceling their performance at this year’s Otherworldly due to personal reasons. We hope to feature them at the Uppsala festival next year.

For questions, please contact UKK’s ticket office at 018-727 90 00 or biljettkassa@ukk.se.