SHAPE platform’s April showcases and other news

SHAPE, the Creative Europe supported platform for innovative music and audiovisual art which unites 16 festivals from the ICAS network, has some news to share, including two showcases coming up in April, the latest episode of the SHAPE radio show and the line-up of this year’s cross-continental presentation – the showcase at MUTEK Montréal 2016.

First showcase of April will take place at Prague’s art center MeetFactory, which also happens to be the coordinating organization of SHAPE. It will happen as part of Public House – a traditional free-entry event, during which visitors of the MeetFactory can discover spaces, which are hidden during normal operation, meet some interesting artists and experience a unique evening. Such SHAPE acts as Portuguese producer (and chief of label Terrain Ahead) IVVVO and Polish rhythm based experimental electronics project We Will Fail will perform alongside electronic music composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith.

The second showcase will occur in Bucharest, Romania, at the Rokolectiv festival, where whole 8 acts from the platform’s 2016 roster will perform. Peder Mannerfelt, who had his SHAPE debut at CTM 2016 in January, will present a live version of his Swedish Congo Record, joined onstage by live percussionists, and the Polish ensemble T’ien Lai will continue the chain of percussion/electronics performances by presenting their own style of ritualistic techno music which they describe as “magic brutalism”. The line-up also includes French experimental techno producer Voiski, IVVVO, experimental vocalist and composer Stine Janvin Motland, Italian experimental dub duo Primitive Art, Janus affiliate KABLAM and Norwegian DJ and producer Charlotte Bendiks. Borusiade, a 2015 alumnus of SHAPE, will also join the programme.

SHAPE has also confirmed its main cross-continental showcase of 2016 – no less than 10 SHAPE acts will perform at the 2016 edition of MUTEK Montréal, one of North America’s largest festivals for electronic music and digital arts. In their announcement of the second wave of artists, the festival recently revealed its first 9 SHAPE acts: in addition to the aforementioned T’ien Lai and Peder Mannerfelt, there are the French-Japanese audiovisual duo Nonotak with a four-screen audio-visual techno performance, producer Lawrence Le Doux with his his wobbly deep and tech house styles, Warp Records artist Jackson with Light Metal Music, a sound and light performance utilizing his tailor-made instruments, Prague-based Mexican producer Laura Luna, who plays electro with a lo-fi feel and Spatial, a British producer who explores low frequency vibration with physical intervention. The SHAPE 2015 roster will be represented by „pointillist trance” artist Lorenzo Senni and Swiss-Nepalese producer/vocalist Aïsha Devi.

The latest episode of our monthly show on London’s Resonance FM is now streaming online, and features interviews with Stine Janvin Motland, Laura Luna, Julien Bayle and BAKK:  mixcloud.com/Resonance/shape_2903_resonancefm

The SHAPE platform is a three-year initiative, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.
To find out more details and full line-ups of the aforementioned events, please visit shapeplatform.eu/events