Berlin Trendspotting: “Ever-forward moving momentum of now”

(7 Berlin-based bands you’ll probably never hear of again; prose-cast in raspy, barely readable, cutting-edge curatorial glitches; see www.3hd-festival.com for further unsteady information)

“For the Wednesday night celebration at OHM, 3hd Festival welcomes six producers to accompany a night of ‘Speculative Futurism’ with an expansive visual installation by artist Ink Agop. Often when we think of the sounds of the future, we imagine it in relation to the present. The present is, after all, our only point of reference when imagining an alternative universe. It’s something that Science Fiction, and now Speculative Realism, has been doing throughout its written history – looking at what is happening now through its forecast future outcomes.

Belgian producer Hiele’s breathless acid techno lingers between transcendence and an earthy urgency that draws on a jazz approach to reveal a weird world that his bandcamp bio describes as “Shades of Cronenberg, existential fear; Alien funeral dirge overrun by noise in the machine”. Japanese artist 食品まつり a.k.a foodman follows with an equally unique take on experimental Chicago juke and footwork that bounces cheerfully between offbeat samples. France’s Coucou Chloé mellows the mood with new emotional depth. Her crooked ballads offer romance without sentimentality on wavy vocal pitch-shifting and contemplative simulated environments that posit a passion for the future. Music for Your Plants performs his associative research into digital cartographies of post-­colonialism and the Exotics, with a distinct venture into sonic globalism using non-human agents as a mode of communication.

The self-described “anxiety rhythm” of Berlin’s Wilted Woman, meanwhile, dissects the internal processes of technology through post-industrial glitch, punk, and cut-and-copy aesthetics. Barely audible vocals, transmissions, sine waves, 8-bit melodies and pots and pans-like beats intensify the effects of contemporary life on its audience by looking beyond the HD facades to the machines that made them. Finally Belgium’s ssaliva brings these varied approaches to slick and unsteady visions of what’s to come with an amalgamation of crunchy syncopated and sweeping keyboard patches, melodies and samples into an ever-forward-moving momentum of now.”

Coucou Chloé
食品まつり a.k.a Foodman
Hiele
Ink Agop
Music For Your Plants
ssaliva
Wilted Woman