Lineup
Hailing from the town of Agadez, which is known as “the gateway to the desert”, Etran de L’Aïr capture the pulse of everyday life at weddings, baptisms, political events, outdoo...
Lili Boulanger (1893) is a unique and prodigious case studies in music history, taking up singing, organ, piano, violin, cello and harp at the premature age of five. In 1913, she became the first woma...
As a full-time member of Utrecht-based folk/slowcore formation I Am Oak, Dutch musician Robby de Selby is a versatile talent with an ear for both delightful melodies and foggy atmospherics. De Selby h...
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L.A. based experimental musician, producer, auteur and artist Joe Cardamone, formerly of The Icarus Line, stated ‘he doesn’t care about bands anymore’, so he began his own solo proje...
Gregory Shorter Jr., also known as Ras_G, is an instrumental hip-hop producer, DJ and afrofuturist. Active in L.A.’s avant-garde beats scene since the early 2000’s and associated with the...
Haley Fohr’s Circuit des Yeux creates an unprecedented deep and rich sound. On Fohr’s latest, acclaimed album Reaching for Indigo, she combines 50s & 60s avant-garde with drone, experi...
Brooklyn born and bred experimentalist L’Rain’s music can’t be put on just as background noise; it urges the most attention. This is because this ambitious multi-instrumentalist is l...
In the late 80’s, Doug Hream Blunt moonlighted music with a job at a care home in San Francisco. As a relative late bloomer at age 35, he started writing songs after attending a How To Start A B...
After attending a workshop in deejaying and music producing by East African platform Femme Electronic, model Anita Kevin decided to try it herself. Watching her do her thing as DJ Turkana, we would be...
After attending a workshop in deejaying and music producing by East African platform Femme Electronic, model Anita Kevin decided to try it herself. Watching her do her thing as DJ Turkana, we would be...
K Á R Y Y N is a producer, composer and vocalist who makes textured and emotional music inspired by the human condition, science and spirituality. Born in Alabama, baptized in Aleppo and raised...
Once dubbed the ‘High Priest of L.A. Freak Folk’, Devendra Banhart leaves a swirling trail of mystic folk, raga spirituals and Latin-American rock in his wake. With his weird and wonderful...
Ben Frost’s interests are as vast as his output is, creating music for dance companies and films, and collaborating with visual artists and poets. Frost’s music is influenced by classical...
Mazaher are a small group of mostly women musicians and singers who play Zãr music: chanting songs and playing hypnotic polyrhythms used as a purification and exorcism ritual to help pacify and...
Set in Swiss Lausanne and Belgian Brussels, Meril Wubslin is the musical project of Christian Garcia-Gaucher, guitarist-composer of Velma and Valérie Niederoest, with Jérémie Conn...
One oath sworn by Hello Skinny – founded by Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner – is to create improv music that doesn’t sound improvisational. Inspired by New York’s late &lsquo...
Gaining reputation as an ‘all-round musical badass’ and self-proclaimed Synth Queen, SASAMI (Ashworth) is a prolific contributor to the L.A. music scene. On top of that, she’s a musi...
De Nijverheid is a cultural freeport full of artists from all kinds of disciplines. Over fifty artists call this their second home, making De Nijverheid an artistic hub that sparks new creativity, une...
Dominican producer and multimedia artist Kelman Duran creates a club-situated, tense merger of Afro-Caribbean rhythms. Despite being rooted in the thriving L.A. club circuit, his music doesn’t l...
Hidden Musics
Ustad Saami is the last living khayál master, widely considered a precursor of qawwali music that originated in Pakistan. That’s no small distinction, as Saami’s voic...
Singing in their native language of Portuguese, Boogarins’ music will let you reevaluate the turbulent life of today. On their latest EP ‘Lá Vem a Morte’, the Brazilian psych...
Theater Kikker x U? presents The EarIn the 30-minute one-on-one performance Sensory Sensation Series No.1 – The Ear, the ear of the participant is central. The participant, the ear and the...
In the vocabulary of Icelandic artist dj. flugvél og geimskip – translation: ‘dj airplane or spaceship’ – the notion of choice is pretty overrated. Why not rapturously e...
Loving is an experimental pop collaboration between musicians David Parry, Lucas Henderson and Jesse Henderson. Latest release ‘If l am only my thoughts’ marks a newfound appreciation for...
Hailing from the idyllic Caribbean island of Martinique, DJ Noss’ music is deeply rooted in his Martiniquan heritage. Armed with both turntables and a traditional Bèlè drum, his ec...
Mélissa Laveaux’s most recent album ‘Radyo Siwèl’ reclaims the Ottawa-born, Paris-based songwriter’s Haitian roots with a collection of native folk spirituals. Th...
Acid Rooster are pretty much a wet dream for heads who cram their cabinets with Amon Düül, Spacemen 3, Wooden Shjips and Magma. The dynamics of this band diverge from weightless, spaced out...
La Double Vie de Véronique is a story of two women that go by the same name and share the same hopes and dreams, even though the one lives in Poland and the other in France. Unaware of the exis...
The tour if full. You can sign up for the waiting list via this form.Le Guess Who? and Triomf invited nine artists to present their work in the public space of Utrecht during Le Guess Who? 2021....
De Witte Kunst is a Dutch musical ensemble consisting of multi-instrumentalist Lyckle de Jong and songwriter and singer Koen van Bommel. In their songs they dream about a better world, resulting in a...
Take a tour around the Ulu Mosque in Lombok. This is one of the biggest mosques in the Netherlands, and possibly also one of the most striking ones. When your train pulls into Utrecht Central Station...
Wanderwelle & Floor van het Nederend present their debut graphic novel ‘De Duizendpoot’ (The Millipede). The Wanderwelle duo is known for their electro-acoustic compositions and more....
The art of storytelling gives you an imaginative experience and a great opportunity to connect, learn, share, exchange and have fun. Accompanied by music and photographs, Women of De Voorkamer will pr...
Through the Buurt tour, you will explore the neighborhood Lombok and discover some favorite spots of De Voorkamers’ community members. They will match Dutch speaking with non-Dutch speaking part...
Brewpub De Kromme Haring is the house brewer of Le Guess Who?. Visit the brewpub and see where the festival beer is made, drink a pint of the LGW Yuzu Pale Ale or try YAYA's non-alcoholic Kombucha. Th...
Kaap De Goede Hoop builds a landscape of warm analog tones, crackling beats and disorienting voices. The live set is always different, reacting to the environment and atmospheres in the room. In a war...
When De Ambassade first began dropping music unannounced, the Dutch scene noticed and proceeded to ask for more; and so, there came more cold and distant synth-wave tracks, whose reverb wrapping made...
Having become somewhat of a mainstay in Utrecht, Stranded FM celebrate and share music from all over the globe, becoming the city’s bastion for discovering fresh sounds. During their four-year r...
In collaboration with Centraal Museum
The Colombian ambient producer Lucrecia Dalt composed a commissioned piece for the exhibition De Line Up, which displays a rich overview of the power of drawing...
Meant to perform at last year’s LGW OFF event, in 2021 Gebroeders Dieleman van Eeckhout join the main line-up of Le Guess Who?. This project is carried out by unorthodox duo Colin H. van Eeckhou...
Based in London, born in Lagos, Funmi Ohiosumah began calling herself Flohio as a teenager. Nowadays, her self-given alias is synonymous with the harsh, bleak electronic beats that surround her &lsquo...
The cult album Faust IV was the fourth studio album released by the German krautrock group in 1973. Listed in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, where it is referred to as a "krautrock...
In Eavesdrop with Christine Kakaire, the Berlin-based writer, editor, teacher and speaker invites artists performing at this year’s Le Guess Who? for live interviews, discussing the inspirations...
The famous Bulgarian women's choir Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares ('Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices') is comprised of 22 members. Performing in traditional clothing, the varying voices of the cho...
In 1970, soul artist Jerry Williams, Jr. radically reinvented himself as Swamp Dogg: an anti-hero who smashes the conventions of commercial R&B music, and whose subversive lyrics earned him a spot...
As kaleidoscopic as tUnE-yArDs manages to sound, it's always remarkable how she seems to pull sounds out of the hat by sampling a modest drum set, a small detuned ukelele or her own elastic vocals. On...
Rotterdam’s new livewire post-punk act Tramhaus have quickly carved out their own space within the iconic Dutch port city. On stage Tramhaus create shell-shocking havoc, with fragments of unfort...
As a resident photographer for LGW and a resident of Utrecht, Juri Hiensch has been rediscovering the city of Utrecht. He has captured the unique character of several neighborhoods outside the city ce...
Petersburg is one of the most mysterious and unique indie bands in the Netherlands. The band, formerly known as Petersburg Orderer and consisting of Camiel Muiser, Erik van de Paardt, Boris de Klerk (...
Han Bennink will engage in a sonic tête-à-tête with none other than Thurston Moore. Moore claimed fame as co-founder and singer/guitarist of influential noise rockers Sonic Youth. A...
Named after a Yoruba deity, OSHUN preaches spirituality, rebirth, identity, unity and the blessings of Mother Earth with an Afrofuturistic center of gravity. The duo of Niambi Sala and Thandiwe...
Pharoah Sanders isn't just one of the biggest jazz icons to ever set foot on a stage. In many ways, he transcends jazz music's conventions like few others. His employment of the tenor sax is unequaled...
Hidden Musics
If it makes any sense – mystical phenomena rarely do – Octavia Mendoza Anario, aka La Bruja de Texcoco (‘The Witch of Texcoco’), reinvigorates the canon of Mexic...
With her enrapturing deviations of electronic music, R&B, jazz and all-out pop, Sudan Archives - born Brittney Parks - doesn’t just bend the rules, she breaks them. Her innovative take on th...
As Yves Jarvis, Jean-Sebastian Audet’s gauzy post-R&B vignettes are driven by color, both as a visual and thematic component. His 2017 album ‘Good Will Come To You’ (released und...
Having been raised in a religious household, you might not expect Klein's career path started by making droned-out versions of Carly Rae Jepsen songs at open mic nights. It typifies her music though,...
Since the release of his self-titled debut in 2011, Benjamin John Power, aka Blanck Mass, has demonstrated his versatility as an experimental drone/ambient musician and producer. Apart from being one...
The Violent Magic Orchestra (VMO) is an offshoot of Japan’s brutal orchestra of everything Black, Vampillia. In collaboration with Pete Swanson (ex-Yellow Swans) and French composer Paul R&eacut...
Islaja is the moniker of Finland-born, Berlin-based sound artist Merja Kokkonen. The ever inventive musician often furnishes her malformed pop with surprising influences and bold instrumentation. Isla...
Hailing from Brixton, vocalist and producer GAIKA developed his own take on the numerous currents of London’s contemporary music scene. With Jamaican and Grenadian roots, GAIKA creates a sonic b...
Over the past decade, Malian, Grammy-nominated artist, musician, and actress Fatoumata Diawara has been universally praised as one of Africa’s most trailblazing and outspoken voices. Diawara&rsq...
It was at Le Guess Who? 2016 that Niger quartet Les Filles de Illighadad made their European debut - and, six years later, after incessantly touring the world, they are back to Utrecht with a brand ne...
Have a look inside one of Utrecht’s biggest creative hubs. At Vechtclub Market a large number of entrepreneurs from Vechtclub XL will be showcasing their work. From ceramics and illustrations to...
De Schuurman’s 2021 release – ‘Bubbling Inside’, a collaboration between Kampala-based label Nyege Nyege Tapes and Rotterdam’s platform Pantropical – centers around...
Kleine Crack is the only Belgian artist signed to Burning Fik. The cult-rapper and his producer-teammate Slagter create ominous hip-hop, set to heavy beats. In their hometown ANNA (Antwerp) they are s...
Somewhere close to the sounds of trains leaving and entering Utrecht Central Station, you can find the Ping Pong Club. Ping Pong & DJ’s will take place in this industrial former warehouse. P...
This event will hit you just as hard in the face as the rest of our program. No, you don’t have to step into the ring yourself, but you will be able to marvel at several intense boxing-matches a...
French label Versatile Records prides itself on encouraging artists to stray far from the norm. ‘Jours De Grève’, helmed by French folk muse Emmanuelle Parrenin and German electroni...
The Amsterdam-based trio Marathon started out as a psychedelic shoegaze band, until they got a taste of the exuberance of garage punk. This discovery eventually led to the sound that characterises Mar...
Location: Weerdsluis
Boneless, brainless and bloodless. Jellyfish are fascinating creatures that can survive in various aquatic environments. They can thrive in the ice-cold depths of the Arctic as w...
At the Lombok Food Market you will encounter a world of flavours. Local entrepreneurs and residents are serving delicious food all day; from masoesa to tulumba and from hummus to mash. Fill your plate...
At De Voorkamer you can learn the Syrian folk dance Dabke. Amer, who will be the teacher, is a health and food enthusiast, a body builder whose message is that everyone should stay fit and healthy wit...
Joey van der Kaaij and his neighbor Nuno Monteiro began experimenting recording together in a studio in a student building in de Bijlmer, Amsterdam. That collaboration has transformed into Ayman Maas...
Peach Tree, Ambiguous is a research project mapping production processes of value and meaning in the spiritual void around luxury goods. Simulating a tribalized department-store, the exhibition shows...
Location: Korte Minrebroederstraat
AKMAR is a multidisciplinary artist working with a range of disciplines, from video and computer generated work to physical sculptures. Vanitas is about digital tra...
Location: Vredenburgplein
Aïda Gómez is an urban artist based in Berlin. Working with language games and the playful replacement of social codes in our everyday environment, she finds a w...
Raised in North Carolina as the daughter of two devout Jehovah’s Witnesses, Kelsey Lu moved to New York at the age of 18 to study cello. Her debut EP ‘Church’ - which gained acclaim...
There is something odd, but at the same time staggeringly honest, about Klein’s music. Her tracks sound delightfully disheveled - ghostly R&B tracks not meant for the world to listen to. It&...
As former choir-boy suppressing his queer feelings, New York producer and songwriter Josiah White unleashes his true nature in the boundary-breaking project Serpentwithfeet. Creating an elaborating, e...
Violinist and vocalist Sudan Archives writes, plays, and produces her own music. Drawing inspiration from Sudanese fiddlers, she is self-taught on the violin, and her unique songs also fold in element...
The music of visionary Dutch/Iranian-born Sevdaliza is an open and safe arena for human expression. For this Rotterdam-based artist and musician, rigid concepts of sex, gender, image and ethnicity are...
Natasha Kmeto's music sounds like pure pop exposing itself under the x-ray machine: fully-formed, but its anatomy and innards laid bare for all to see. Her albums ‘Crisis’ and ‘Inevi...
Chicago-bred singer and producer KeiyaA may be a newcomer to R&B, her airy yet thoughtful 2020 debut, ‘Forever Ya Girl’ may very well be her ticket to being spoken in the same breath a...
Dallas-bred Liv.e is as much as a crossover between Erykah Badu, DJ Screw, and Sun Ra as she is her own lone breed of lo-fi - making her, according to Afropunk Magazine, ‘one of the most intrigu...
Ambient drones, cowboy psychedelia and fuzz folk - that's how singer-songwriter Bart de Kroon AKA Homemade Empire from Utrecht describes the sounds with which he takes us back to the future. With his...
Common Frames and Radio Einstein present Greet & Meet: films, podcasts, photographs, talkshows and art, about and by newcomers from Utrecht and the surrounding region. In the wooden trailer you ca...
Are you ready for music from Afghanistan? Ghafar Amini is known within the Afghan community in the Netherlands and plays well-known Afghan songs. Along with the music, you will be able to fully experi...
Since 2012 Big Hare has been creating electronic mantras about things like internet phenomena, awkwardness and masquerades. In late 2019 they launched their second LP 'Lucky Dip' with Blowpipe Records...
This will be the première of Aurélie Poppins (Cocaine Piss) and RomanOwitch (Detroit Underground) newest project. IDM scented alchemy of dirty, wet concrete-like hip-hop; acid synthesize...
Aestrid is a three-piece veteran post-rock band from Utrecht. They're well-known for their intense live performances as well as their post-hardcore mentality; they wear their hearts on their sleeves.&...
KULTUS, a solo project by Otto Kokke, is exploring the lines dividing music from sound. Stripped of all rhythm and melody, KULTUS songs are all about creating a physical sound that is much larger than...
The Amsterdam-based, but born and raised in Incheon, Korea, Sun-Mi Hong has a unique perspective of life. With a signature of rooted groove in combination with well-tempered outbursts, Sun Mi has plac...
DUTCH CULT/CAMP TV, THINGS THAT DRIVE YOU MAD, AND NOISY GRINDPUNK!!!!!! ZALM IS A NEW EINDHOVEN-BASED ONE-MAN BAND THAT BRINGS UNPREDICTABLE SCREAMS AND DEEP, DARK GRUNTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ZALM IS FOR...
During Le Guess Who?, Stranded FM will be hosting radioshows by renowned festival artists and gems from the Utrecht scene alike from their studio. Situated in print-studio Kapitaal, this com...
Insert Blank Records is very proud to present to you their very first real-life showcase event. The new record label worked hard to build a diverse and joyful organization that represents the exciteme...
Velvet-Rebel’s dynamic and energetic sounds carry an important message of living fully with a mysterious dark edge. His use of a tight rhythmic spine of drums combined with bass with acceleratin...
Location: Vredenburgviaduct
Climate change is destroying our planet, but nature has no voice to protest it or warn us. In their poetic art project Letters from Nature, Jeroen van der Most and Peter v...
Howart is operating in the psychedelica, kraut and noise pop realm. The project was founded by Anneke Nieuwdorp and has been her vehicle for experimenting, exciting art for the past ten years. The ban...
Foundation De Pastoe Fabriek presents
De Pastoe Fabriek favours a new international counter-culture to break the hegemony of the global financial institutions and to reverse the tide of narrow-minded...
An intimate portrait of the circumstances surrounding the creation of Jerusalem In My Heart’s live recording of “Wa Ta’atalat Loughat Al Kalam” (The language of speech has brok...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & De Utrechtse Boekenbar
Within the setting of one of Utrechts’ finest curated bookstores, our artistic director Bob van Heur will discuss with Grammy-winning pro...
Originally a punk band, Lola’s Dice have evolved into a tropical, funk, and psychedelic rock rhythm machine. With sounds that are rooted in Latin American percussive music, Lola’s Dice is...
Three veterans from the Dutch hardcore scene bring you an intense and melodic form of post-hardcorepunk in the vein of Wipers, Black Flag and Bad Brains. With two full-length albums under their belt,...
Location: TivoliVredenburg
Wilhelmusvlug is a contemporary artist whose main focus for the last 15 years has been on monumental light art and video art installations. All My Colours is a light art in...
19-year-old Nelcon is THE rapper from Utrecht. He recently dropped his debut album Nelconic on one of the most interesting independent labels in the Netherlands, Burning Fik. An album filled with fres...
Jasper Boogaard has felt at home in Rotterdam all his life, but to find his musical peers he needed to look elsewhere – in Philadelphia, home to bands like Hop Along, Alex G and Algernon Cadwall...
Artists community NoEsUnaGaleria NL is organising a program with live painting sessions and performance art by artists Ricardo Saga and Mario Gildardo from Mexico and Harmke Datema-Chang and Laur...
Location: Neude
What happens when you embrace noise? FROM NOISE is an audio-visual sculpture consisting of countless noise frequencies. The noise is used as a building block in an abstract landscape...
Kamiel Thomas is an indie songwriter and former member of the avant-garde dark rock ensemble GOLD. Kamiel's songs are worthy of arthouse films while also creating a sense of home. Kamiel Thomas i...
Colombian artist Julián Mayorga reminds us how freeing it can be to not take ourselves too seriously. Upon graduating from a Masters degree in electroacoustics and algorithmic composition in Ma...
Le Guess Who? will host a special lunch at LOU Oudenoord. A place for conversation, reflection, relaxation and great food. Engage in talks with your fellow festival visitors about all the things you&r...
Collective Stadwevers explores new grounds together with you to discover how we can experience the city in various and different ways. I Let’s Walk Make Sense / 12:15PM - 1:00PMGet to...
Combo Qazam is a post-punk band from Utrecht that relies heavily on grooves and eerie vocal harmonies. On their well-received debut Flight Music (2020), they link this to 90s indie, math rock, prog an...
Rotterdam-based, eclectic Kraut collective Smudged blends elements of hypnotic synth patterns, garage drums, fuzz guitars and kraut basslines resulting in a scuzzy mix of energetic garage and electron...
The Flare Quartet, with violinists from the Netherlands, Spain and Canada, was founded in 2020 by a group of master students from the Utrecht Conservatoire. They are joining the Palestinian, Syr...
Shoko Igarashi, born in Yamagata prefecture, Japan, took her talent for the saxophone and flute all over the world, from New York to Brussels. Shoko has dabbled in a variety of musical genres, includi...
Luc Bersier, Low Bat, Leonard Prochazka and Ariel Garcia may all hail from different places in Western Europe, but the Jean-Luc project drew them together to make several vibrant EPs – each...
Right nextdoor to the chaos of Utrecht Central station is Perron West, an old train car revamped to serve as a get-together. Party by day in the Stiltecoupé; a channel serving silent disco by l...
For a decade and a half, Mary Ocher has been weaving thought-provoking and often challenging art concerning authority, identity, and conflict. The artist's musical output encompasses everything from t...
I Think I Think is a dreampop duo consisting of Aurelia Wurfbain and Silva Westera. With the technological testcases in their music, like using computer controlled hammers/solenoids, tape loops and li...
Foundation De Pastoe Fabriek presents
De Pastoe Fabriek promotes the objective of good design from an aesthetical and corporate social responsibility perspective, stimulating designers to appreciate...
Location: TivoliVredenburg
Ginta Tinte Vasermane studied audiovisual arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and graduated from the Netherlands Film Academy in Amsterdam. She works in the field of motion...
Dutch composer Wouter van Veldhoven explores the possibilities offered by archaic magnetic sound recording, processing and playback. He uses refurbished/adapted tape recorders, wire recorders and disc...
The Fire Harvest balances beautifully between slow core, country-noir and post-rock. They master the art of dosage, of giving substance to their music in the right way so that tension is preserved. Wh...
The performative character of the work of painter Koen Delaere can be compared to experiencing a live music performance or to making music in which meaning evolves while listening and playing. A spont...
The Botanical RevolutionGardens have appealed to our imagination for centuries. We associate them with harmonious bliss, a place to witness the cycle of life and death, a place of contemplation, and a...
Keys of Light is a piano installation for everyone; it allows the audience to co-create the work by playing the piano. Every note that is played creates a pulse of light or visual element th...
The ‘Orchestre de Nouvelles Créations, Expérimentations et Improvisations Musicales’ (ONCEIM) is an orchestra of 34 musicians dedicated to the art of creation and experimenta...
Many questions arise when listening to K Records’ Old Time Relijun. Is it for real? Is it ironic? When leading man Arrington de Dionyso channels his best David Byrne impression under a cacophoni...
The ‘Orchestre de Nouvelles Créations, Expérimentations et Improvisations Musicales’ (ONCEIM) is an orchestra of 34 musicians dedicated to the art of creation and experimenta...
As Moor Mother, Philly-based noise artist, activist and wordsmith Camae Ayewa shapes the vocabulary of hip hop and energy of punk rock into a musical tour de force. Informed by history, Afrofuturism a...
Efterklang singer Casper Clausen presents his (yet to be released) solo music, made up in a small studio by the river in Cacilhas (Lisbon). With songwriting still in progress, Casper has only played s...
This experimental duo, born from members of Dutch dream-pop ensemble Bird On The Wire, has been telling vivid stories with their music since 2017, the year in which they released their debut EP. Altho...
Visit two art installations at Hof van Cartesius.Boomhut & FriendsBoomhut is an Utrecht-based collective and they focus on interactive and immersive art installations. Their works are not only abu...
Singer-songwriter Immen has a warm, intriguing voice and knows how to evoke a dreamy atmosphere with a dark edge. While most of her songs are written in English, she sometimes reverts back to her Fris...
Centraal Museum presents
Utrecht artist Robbie Cornelissen creates films, drawings and installations and was one of the main curators of the Centraal Museum exhibition De Line Up. Cornelissen is know...
Originally from Uganda, Daniel Okiror is an ethno-fusion musician and change-maker passionate about telling the ‘true’ African story. His performance, accompanied by other musical instrume...
Through sampling and re-sampling of pre-recorded material and live performed pieces, Jos Smolders (modular synthesizer) and Guido Nijs (saxophone and other wind instruments) are trying to find new way...
The Late Frique Show, hosted by Arp Frique, is a late night talk show highlighting the music and artists you need to discover in order to grow and glow. The Dutch synth funkster making waves in the in...
Utrecht’s own synther-songwriter BoterBoter uses his hilarious, absurdist and poetic Dutch-language super-disco as a coping mechanism for his existence in this bizarre world. His unpolished but...
Berlin-based, Spanish-born musician Adrián de Alfonso has collaborated with names like Lydia Lunch, El Guincho and Le Guess Who? curator Lucrecia Dalt. However, it is on his own that...
Inkhorn Controversy is a band from Utrecht that plays both Dutch and English alternative pop rock. Their sound is Britpop/Postpunk-like with some Progrock influences. With theiridiosyncratic texts the...
The ongoing project Nonsense Note began with several pages of notes with instinctive drawings. The album is a collaborative work composed of sounds and videos created by various musicians from around...
Through live interviews and performances, listening sessions, art exhibitions and all things print and sound, Kapitaal, Utrecht’s beloved independent print workshop, will transform into a three-...
burger service is a solo project by Jan Tromp that combines lofi, punk, Dutch, and wave. burger service is een soloproject van Jan Tromp waarin hij lofi combineert met punk, Dutch, en wave. ...
Juan Juan taught his girlfriend to play the drums to his own songs, which draw on the music of Devendra Banhart and The Velvet Underground. His debut album ‘New Mexico’, recorded on a four...
presented by Jongerentheater Link
Discrimination, prejudice, exclusion, racism; these subjects are all up for discussion at Open Podium West. Hear and meet people of all ages from the neighbourhood,...
Location: TivoliVredenburg
Charlotte Roger is a visual artist based in Utrecht, evolving in the field of experimental photography. Her work explores the concepts of archives, remembrance and individu...
In the Ubuntuhuis you can listen to Ubuntustemmen (voices) Part 1 & 2. In Part 1 you will hear Roos and Amara. Amara plays traditional Guinese kora music and djembé. Roos adds a layer of te...
We all share similar yet different life stories, our goal is to get you to Speak UP about this during our event. We’ll talk about topics ranging from environmentalism to making friends abroad. T...
Loui Lind (Louise Lindskov), a Danish Amsterdam-based artist, combines indie-folk/rock genres with her expressive high range vocal and storytelling. Loui Lind was inspired by musicians such as Mitski,...
Whether it’s a stage, a computer screen or a page from a book: Jenny Hval’s multi-disciplinary work aims to break beyond these confining zones to form a deeper connection with her audience...
Johanna Constantine presents "Rise"&Kembra Pfahler and the Girls of Karen Black present "Fuck Island"
Founded by New York-based artists Kembra Pfahler, Johanna Constantine and Anohni, Future Femi...
Declared a ‘cult hero’ by The Guardian, Perfume Genius has invited Canadian songwriter and actress Mary Margaret O’Hara to Utrecht for a very rare live performance. The undisciplinar...
In collaboration with Casco Art Institute
Throughout Beverly-Glenn Copeland’s extraordinary 74 years on this planet, he has consciously and constantly dealt with his process of becoming and bei...
Cycle or walk through Utrecht suburb Lombok's main street, and you're immediately welcomed by Turkish and Moroccan grocery stores, bakeries, the smell of kebab, and huge piles of colorful fruits sold...
Despite Sun Foot being a three piece, they could easily be defined as the exact opposite of a power trio. Labeled as surf noise and anti-beach pop, the members of Sun Foot play at a low volume, frisky...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver
The Devil and Daniel Johnston is a stunning portrait of a musical genius who nearly slipped away. Director Jeff Feuerzeig exquisitely depicts a perfect ex...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Centraal Museum
As co-creative director for Björk on visuals, mask-maker James Merry is primarily known for his hand embroidery on sportswear, but he also create...
Fashion designer Iris van Herpen and sound artist Salvador Breed curate a lineup of artists and performances symbolizing their highly intertwined aesthetics, developed over years of collaborating on n...
Through live interviews, listening sessions, art exhibitions with select LGW? performers and all things print and sound, Kapitaal will transform into a three-day meeting place for craftsmanship and de...
True child prodigy, German musician, curator and radio host Felix Kubin first began experimenting with synthesizers at the tender age of twelve. Of course, such a keen interest in sound and music coul...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver
The directorial debut from Boots Riley presents an alternate reality of present-day Oakland, California, when telemarketer Cassius Green finds himself in...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver
Part film, part baptism, in Black Mother director Khalik Allah brings us on a spiritual journey through Jamaica. Soaking up its bustling metropolises and...
Le Mini Who? is a spin-off festival of Le Guess Who?. It turns venues, cafes, art spaces and even a fire station of the fast-developing and creative area Cartesius into improvised venues for (mainly)...
As a spin-off festival of Le Guess Who?, Le Mini Who? transforms many of Utrecht’s local bars, restaurants, venues and warehouses into improvised venues for (mainly) Dutch underground bands to p...
When you picture a professional cello player, you would be hard-pressed to imagine them on stage next to a screeching, guitar-smashing Nirvana. But that is just how wide Lori Goldston has cast her net...
Automatic is a fairly recent Stones Throw export, and the positive attention captured by their debut, 2019’s ‘Signals’, prove they are a successful gamble for the left-field label. T...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & BAK - basis voor actuele kunst
Le Guess Who? and Jeanne van Heeswijk connected the Chicago-based pianist, clarinetist and composer Angel Bat Dawid with visual artist,...
The guitar has always occupied a special place in Spanish music - namely in flamenco, where players often perform with complicated and acrobatic techniques. But Madrid-born Víctor Herrero rose...
Born and raised in China and currently residing in Berlin, Pan Daijing is a groundbreaking artist, composer and storyteller who creates a raw and rare mixture of noise music, performance art, dance an...
Despite being a relative newcomer, South London artist Lucinda Chua is blessed with a singular sensibility for music and artistry. Chua utilizes little more than her voice, a cello and an array of eff...
Experimental rapper and producer JPEGMAFIA vouches for a stunning and destructive performance, delivering a thorough reminder that in a dangerous world, sometimes nowhere is safe. Earlier this year, t...
Fela Gucci and Desire Marea are on a mission. As performance art duo, FAKA could just as easily be labeled as a cultural movement. With a combination of sound, live performance, literature, video and...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver, hosted by John Doran (The Quietus)
Hream follows the 25+ year career male nurse and adult music student Doug Hream Blunt as he embarks on a world tour, p...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver
In this genre-defying film, Zerzura follows a young man from a small village in Niger who leaves home in search of an enchanted oasis. His journey leads h...
Hidden Musics
Grammy-winning producer and author Ian Brennan has accumulated a resume that would make anyone in his fields blush. Brennan’s most pertinent and important work, however, isn&rsquo...
Sonic tinkerer Paddy Steer dives into the realms of lo-fi pop, new age, acid jazz and cosmic funk like a kid with a new box of crayons. With a multitude of instruments at his disposal, this Manchester...
Kelman Duran presents‘To The North II’ is an experimental documentary by Dominican producer, multimedia artist and filmmaker Kelman Duran. It is the follow-up to ‘To The North I&rsqu...
After notable stints as Inga Copeland and Hype Williams (the latter with Dean Blunt), Alina Astrova once again brandishes her signature Baudelairean hybrid of pop and stripped-down tech...
Lebanese legend Abdel Karim Shaar is the last of his generation still performing classical ‘Tarab’ repertoire: a musical form that expresses a state of emotional transition. Shaar develope...
Jazz musician and poet Alabaster dePlume is Le Guess Who? 2021’s Artist in Residence. DePlume can be described as many things: a cleric of the written word, a maverick of sound, a conductor of c...
Phil Elverum's latest Mount Eerie album ‘A Crow Looked At Me’ opens with the words "Death is real/someone's there and then they're not". The album is a deeply personal document of grief, h...
Libya’s Ahmed Fakroun is a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and pioneer in modern Arabic music. As a rhymist (based on a form of Algerian folk music dating back to the 1920s), he is one of the...
In Utrecht’s suburb Lombok, you're immediately welcomed by Turkish and Moroccan grocery stores, bakeries, the smell of kebab, and huge piles of colorful fruits sold in the streets. The impressiv...
The past and the future wage a perpetual dialogue with one another and Damon Locks’ Black Monument Ensemble could be considered a testament to that very notion. What started as Damon Locks proce...
In the late 70’s, as member of the notorious Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Lydia Lunch was a leading figure in the rise of New York City’s no-wave scene. Grounded in a dissonant and atonal...
Vivian Wang is one of the founders and multi-instrumentalists of Singapore-based art rock ensemble The Observatory. After initially honing her skills as a classically trained pianist, Wang approaches...
Listening to Mari Kalkun’s beautiful voice and songs, even if just for a brief moment in time, will certainly transport you to the Estonian countryside - even if you’ve never been. It&rsqu...
‘’7: Triptychon - Dreamtime' is an interdisciplinary project: a combination of dance / performance, a three-dimensional art installation and a magical ritual that makes Nicole Beutler phas...
As hard as it may be to pigeonhole certain acts to a determinate category or adjective, perhaps this mission is never as hard as when trying to pin down what kind of music you can expect from a Marcel...
Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s 1970 album, reissued by Super-Sonic Jazz this year, is a lush folk-jazz album in the vein of peers such as Tim Buckley and Joni Mitchell. After a twenty year absence, th...
FRKWYS is a series initiated by Brooklyn-based independent record label RVNG Intl.; aimed at an ambitious and unique pairing of modern artists and their musical predecessors for the creation of a coll...
Willis Earl Beal has gone incognito as a new masked superhero persona: Nobody. By leveling everything all the way back to zero, Nobody can continue to captivate with the idiom of his previous guise: a...
Presented by Le Guess Who?, Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, No Seat At The Table, BAK - basis voor actuele kunst, Urban Futures Studio (Utrecht University), RAUM
“In urban social...
After a hiatus lasting over thirty years, the musical career of singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan finally got back on track at beginning of this century. Her 1970 debut album ‘Just Another Diamond...
Throughout her chronicle of life, it’s easy to understand how Vivien Goldman earned the title ‘Punk Professor’. In the 70s, Goldman wasn’t simply satisfied standing on the side...
Though a prosaic name like Circuit may not jump at you on a festival poster, this bunch’s modus operandi epitomises all kinds of absurd. Circuit isn’t so much a band as it’s a lab of...
Alanis Obomsawin is a renowned filmmaker and visual artist. Before she released her album 'Bush Lady', which she will perform in full for the first time at our festival, she made Incident at Restigouc...
Together with three powerful Maghreb voices, the ultra-low TR-808 bass and potent beats, Tunisian producer Sofyann Ben Youssef (a.k.a AMMAR 808) takes you into the dark realms of North African futuris...
Overviewing the impulsive career of Asha Puthli, it’s dizzying how one individual can encapsulate such a ridiculous range of juxtapositions. Puthli’s notoriety really depends on who you as...
Hosted by FACT
A pact made between Justin ‘JK Flesh’ Broadrick and Takeaki ‘Goth-Trad’ Maruyama when they released split-EP ‘Knights Of The Black Table’ resulted i...
Hailing from Amsterdam, The Mauskovic Dance Band is a brainchild of producer and multi-instrumentalist Nic Niggebrugge, a.k.a Nicola Mauskovic. After years of playing drums for bands like Jacco Gardne...
Finnish experimental metal band Dark Buddha Rising combines ghostly drone music, sinister guitar currents and shamanistic singing to startling effect. A constantly evolving beast, Dark Buddha Rising d...
Jonathan Bremer and Morten McCoy are two Danish musicians knee-deep in many different endeavors. Bremer is a renowned jazz player, producer and owner of the Unity Rec. label. McCoy, meanwhile, is a pi...
As a teenager, Klavikon’s Leon Michener saved years worth of allowance to get himself a small analogue Moog synth. Needless to say, Michener has yet to surface from the rabbit hole experimentali...
Equipped with an unorthodox vision of a centuries-old tradition, singer, producer, NTS radio host and engineer Arushi Jain has made waves with her music, which re-imagines North Indian ragas with the...
Mo DJ is one of the first artists to successfully integrate Malian music within the electronic mixing spectrum. His journey began as cassette salesman at one of the station roads in Bamako, Mali, moon...
Roy Montgomery has been a staple artist of Kiwi imprint Flying Nun. The native of Christchurch lives in an environment often struck by natural disasters, which could be why his work generally has a su...
Les Amazones d’Afrique are a gathering of some of the strongest artistic voices of West-Africa campaigning for gender equality. These musicians and vocalists have joined together to create a for...
Tropical Fuck Storm’s wailing backing harmonies sound like a coven chanting hellish incantations, and the filthy percussive thrusts, the otherworldly synth flourishes of the band’s debut L...
Blazing Suns is an ever-evolving entity of artists, musicians, audiofreaks and sound explorers orbiting around it. At Le Guess Who?, the quartet of Salvador Breed, Boris Acket, Nick Verstand and Maart...
Montreal-based singer-songwriter and producer Michael Rault executes his fine-polished rock and roll perfectly, shining with swooning guitars, gorgeous vocal harmonies and a steady groove. Despite Rau...
Serrated guitar assaults, check. Sinister bass rumble, check. Piercing drums, check. And a sardonic sneer that oozes pure misanthropic disdain, well, check. Indeed, Italia 90 checks off a lot of boxes...
Musician, producer and composer Kevin Richard Martin’s chosen moniker has always been a fitting one. As a defiant experimentalist ceaselessly exploring sonic extremities, contrasts and frictiona...
This Belgian band has been continuously re-inventing itself, mixing and deconstructing genres to create its own unique sonic palette, ever since they first emerged over forty years ago. The only perma...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Centraal Museum
Initiated in 2015, Elegy is a long-term commemorative performance project by South African artist Gabrielle Goliath. Staged in various locations...
The incomparable Instant Composers Pool Orchestra are like the Jedi Knights of improvisation: a collective of musical marvels hacking the conventions of their individual instruments, setting an arena...
For musician, composer, and new media artist Antye Greie (aka AGF), limiting sound to music is too meek. The self-described sonic sculptress frequently utilizes her recordings to capture everything fr...
Collaboratorium
With Brian Chippendale and Greg Fox – two figures of drum royalty – are in the neighborhood, we felt a deep urge to bring them together in the same room. Both artists have...
The Sweet Release Of Death triumph over doom-and-gloom with a pinch of dark humor and a penchant for stretching guitar-based music’s outer peripheries. The group forms a maelstrom of ear-splitti...
Every year, Le Feast invites you into a living room in Utrecht, to enjoy a feast together with people you don't know (yet). Many Utrechtian home-chefs will transform their living room into a cozy brun...
Besides being one of Chicago’s finest producers, Kavain Space a.k.a. RP Boo is also known as the originator of footwork music. Emerging from Chicago house in the late 90’s, the genre inclu...
Before our very eyes, the mysterious Yves Tumor suspends set expectations of music and performance into a vortex of sheer disbelief. His unforgettable show at last year’s Le Guess Who? was a bre...
You know that mechanism where you whisper a message in a circle of people – and as its passed on back to you, that message becomes distorted? That’s a little bit what Portland duo Visible...
With ‘Devotion’, UK-based producer and songwriter Tirzah has created one of the most critically-acclaimed and downright magnetic debut records of 2018. A childhood friend of Mica ‘Mi...
In early 2017, modern art rock outfit FACS rose from the ashes of Chicago band Disappears. Joined by Cat Power’s Alianna Kalaba, FACS use minimalism and space to constitute a darker and more bru...
Here’s a first impression of London four piece ensemble Ill Considered to spark your curiosity: their self-titled LP sounds like free-wheeling jams left on the cutting room floor for Curtis Mayf...
In collaboration with Future Feminism
New York-based performance artists Kembra Pfahler and Johanna Constantine call for the emergence of a feminine collective consciousness with their project Future...
Curated by Shabaka Hutchings; dir. Marc Levin
‘SLAM’ is an 1998 independent film starring actor, screenwriter, noise poet and hip hop futurist Saul Williams. The film tells the story of R...
Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s 1970 album, reissued by Super-Sonic Jazz this year, is a lush folk-jazz album in the vein of peers such as Tim Buckley and Joni Mitchell. After a twenty year absence, th...
The duo Ko Shin Moon are entertaining in a similar way as back when you changed the instruments of sample tracks on a keyboard, just out of sheer curiosity how it would sound. Musicians Axel Moon and...
Based in both New York City and Berlin, Delia Gonzalez is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work spreads over a wide variety of disciplines, including composing, choreography, sculpting/painting and p...
Le Bazarre is a renowned and travelling market inspired by quality vintage, second hand and indie craft. It hosts curated vendors and takes place on a new, inspiring location within the city of Utrech...
Although best known for his work evoking the sounds of classic country music, Daniel Romano has always been a free and restless spirit, as well as a gifted and masterful musician. His new brainchild i...
Lombok Festival, one of Le Guess Who?’s satellite events, returns on Friday 8 November. The freely accessible festival is a celebration of the cultural diversity of this city’s district, i...
When ex- COIL member Drew McDowall decided to revive the group’s 1998 masterpiece ‘Time Machines’ to the present, two decades after its release, the joke was probably not lost on him...
In recent years, Ghanaian star King Ayisoba ascended the West African pop charts with his futuristic approach of traditional styles. A master of the ancient kologo instrument - a two-stringed lute -,...
Xylouris White is firmly rooted in the past and future: a tight alliance between Greek musician and songwriter Georgios Xylouris and drummer Jim White. Xylouris White reconciles not only the tandem&rs...
dir. Maris Curran
As a prolific artist, musician and lover of Mother Earth, Lonnie Holley treasures the discarded. Nurturing the neglected, he finds healing in the transformative power of art. This s...
In cooperation with Utrecht Early Music Festival
Olga Pashchenko, one of the world’s most accomplished piano and keyboard virtuosos, will bring a unique take on one of the most famous horror so...
Jessica Pratt’s peculiar brand of astral folk has a way of stopping you dead in your tracks. The LA-based songsmith’s captivating, wistful coo evokes a mirage-like warmth, seducing the lis...
Conrad Tao first touched a piano as a one-year-old toddler, and by the age of eight, he already performed Mozart’s Concerto No. 12. So, becoming one of the most exciting new faces in classical m...
Presented by SPRING Performing Arts Festival
Happiness explores the area where man and artificiality converge, where synthetic substances help us to re-humanise, maxi-humanise or, for a while, abando...
Queens based artist Alexandra Drewchin, a.k.a. Eartheater, throws you back and forth with her unconventional, tumultuous sound. Featuring bizarre clashes of acoustic and digital music, Eartheater&rsqu...
With his nimble improv playing, composer Eli Keszler can make an average drum kit sound like electronic textures. It’s not much of a surprise that sonic contortionists such as Oneohtrix Point Ne...
As Vive la Void, Sanae Yamada emerges from Moon Duo’s copious fuzz-drenched blast-offs like a floating space capsule. Inspired by the constant going and froing of tour life, Yamada’s glass...
Angus Fairbairn (aka Alabaster DePlume) has a knack for turning the everyday into the absurd. On the opening track of his recent LP ‘The Corner of a Sphere’, he wails: “I’m mak...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver
Franco Rosso’s Babylon had its world premiere at Cannes in 1980 but was deemed “too controversial, and likely to incite racial tension”...
Having formed only a year ago, London four piece Black Midi is storming UK’s underground scene with tremendous and terrifying force. Following a notorious live session at NTS radio - during whic...
Norwegian-born, Berlin-based artist Stíne Janvin has the special ability to morph and manipulate her vocals into beautiful sound abstractions, to the point even where you forget it’s a vo...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver
Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story, tells the time-traveling tale of the mystical musician and vocalist - who gave a very rare performan...
DNMF is a Lovecraftian abomination comprised of death jazz zealots Dead Neanderthals and prolific experimental musician Machinefabriek. Two formidable elements – the latter’s shrewd on-the...
FRKWYS is a series initiated by Brooklyn-based independent record label RVNG Intl.; aimed at an ambitious and unique pairing of modern artists and their musical predecessors for the creation of a coll...
Before TivoliVredenburg opened in 2014, Le Guess Who? had its headquarters at beloved pop venue Tivoli Oudegracht. This year, we are happy to return to our roots with a very special project: Collabora...
Hailing from Jogjakarta, Senyawa pushes traditional Indonesian music and experimental music far, far beyond their accustomed boundaries, resulting in a thrilling blend of their cultural heritage, avan...
Since its inception a decade ago, King Midas Sound’s gloom-ridden transmutations of dub, lover’s rock and ambient music have made an unyielding impression. Producer Kevin Martin (The Bug)...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver
The Burial Of Kojo follows the story of Esi, as she recounts her childhood and the tumultuous relationship between her father, Kojo and her uncle, Kwabena...
‘What’s in a name?’, they say. In Richard Fearless’ case, a lot. He’s the mastermind behind Death In Vegas, not to mention an accomplished producer and DJ whose scope ext...
Priscilla Telmon & Vincent Moon are a collaborating multidisciplinary artist duo working as independent filmmakers and sound-explorers. Together they produce ethnographic experimental films and mu...
The audio-visual happening of Jerusalem In My Heart has roots in both Montréal and Beirut, also combining the best of both worlds. Figurehead Radwan Ghazi Moumneh has been nursing the craft of...
Brain-melting psychedelic pop that trespasses your neurons like a dream machine on some spaceship. Argentina’s Los Siquicos Litoraleños is truly a baffling operation, embracing wacky expe...
Grouper, the moniker of Liz Harris, continues to bewilder with the most basic resources: a voice, one instrument and the ambience of her surroundings. Her sparse compositions occupy an intimate space...
This year, Le Guess Who? will host a special collaboration between Chicago-based songwriter and accomplished fingerstyle guitarist Ryley Walker and Japanese psych-rockers Kikagaku Moyo. With both arti...
With a career that dates back to the 80s, Soichi Terada has long been a bastion of soothing house music in Japan. Thanks in part to Hunee, who provided a showcase of Terada’s work via the Rush H...
Despite its apparent frigid exterior, Hilary Woods’ debut LP ‘Colt’ is ultimately an inviting listening experience. Woods’ minimalist ambient pop compositions come to life with...
His impressive body of work includes stints as "dub poet", political orator, recording artist and author/journalist. His 1978 reggae album ‘Dread Beat an' Blood’ is a statement akin to Gil...
Singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Leonardo Campelo Gonçalves, stage name Negro Leo, stands out from Brazil’s flourishing experimental music scene, without a doubt. By adding ele...
Like Patrick Higgins, Tyondai Braxton is an innovator in the purest sense. As a former member of Battles, he ventured far beyond the outer dimensions of what we consider pop music. Braxton earned his...
RVNG Intl. presents; dir. Tony Lowe
‘ICON EYE’ is RVNG Intl.’s first film production, about the making of the FRKWYS recording ‘Icon Give Thanks’. The film evokes a feel...
French sound sculptor Félicia Atkinson once curiously speculated that “music always existed, even before humans appeared." She might be onto something: under her spell, a seemingly random...
Montreal's Big|Brave occupy a unique sonic space. Merging guitar torrents, withered noise bursts and shamanic yelps into a fully fleshed-out artistic vision, Big|Brave make believers everywhere their...
With her signature Southern drawl, bold experimentalism and whip-smart lyrics, Tennessee-based artist Bbymutha has established herself as a bona fide hip-hop truther. As one of the most refreshing rol...
Angel Bat Dawid’s first album ‘The Oracle’ provides a new radical benchmark for contemporary jazz music, capturing a unique mystique within its economical recording methods. Meditati...
The steady yet ever versatile Kevin Morby extends his musical range with each project he's a part of. Morby exhibits a fleeting beauty and folk rock romanticism in his songwriting, hypnotically explor...
Anatolian psych folk revivalists Altın Gün are, most simply put, a power pact between members of Jacco Gardner and Jungle By Night, who wound up crossing paths with musicians Erdinç Ecevit...
The Star Pillow is a drone/ambient moniker of Italian guitar impressionist Paolo Monti. Monti's craft is mainly informed by his research on the relation between sound, space and human emotion. On stag...
Oiseaux Tempête’s cross-cultural, multi-genre improv rock has a tendency to unfold in places of turmoil, recording records in Greece, Turkey and Lebanon in the past. The core duo of Fr&eac...
Like his forbears Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, Sessa casts a beguiling spell over the listener with his sultry, jazz-flavoured folk rock. But there’s a gravitas to Sessa’s music as wel...
The Israel-born, Switzerland-based Omri Ziegele is a self-taught alt sax player, honing his skills in London and at Boston's Berklee College of Music. Ziegele has performed in theatre and with the cir...
British composer Tom Rogerson’s wizardry skills as a pianist has been on full display with experimental rockers Three Trapped Tigers. His debut solo LP 'Failing Shore' - which finds him collabor...
France’s Aquaserge shape their own fantastic musical planet, sprouting out lush prog workouts, weirdo pop and meditative dance grooves. Comprised of a rotating cast of characters from acts like...
Taiwan duo Scattered Purgatory is named after a Taoist ritual that redeems and releases souls from a state between life and death. As it turns out, they adopt this notion quite literally in both perfo...
Senegalese house producer Stephen “Ibaaku” Bassene’s dazzling debut ‘Alien Cartoon’ was originally meant to be the soundtrack of a sci-fi fashion show created by fellow c...
Mary Lattimore is a Los Angeles-based musician and composer who uses her Lyon and Healy concert grand harp to conjure up beautiful glacial melodies that evoke a host of memories, landscapes and allusi...
Jazz musician, composer and visual artist Matana Roberts nosedives in concepts of ancestry and creative expression. The stories she tells through music; of human experiences, spirituality, improvisati...
Hosted by FACT
Belgrade-based DJ Vladimir Ivkovic sees his chosen profession as a deeper philosophy than just filling up dancefloors. For him, DJing is a way to enter or create new places, to trigger...
Producer and musician Cate Le Bon creates a unique vocabulary of freak folk, post-punk and psych pop. Thanks to her jagged guitar playing and Welsh diction, Le Bon is the definition of elusive. Behind...
A true scion of the experimental noise scene, Lasse Marhaug embodies the term noisenik and then some. The Norwegian artist frequently applies a brutalist heavy metal sensibility to his potent and loud...
Does OSEES leader John Dwyer ever sleep? The prolific musician has added a new entry to his never-ending catalog this May - Bent Arcana’s sophomore effort, ‘Moon Drenched’, courtesy...
Farida Mohammad Ali's mastery of the ancient maqam discipline - a lifetime’s pursuit - is truly extraordinary. In execution, this traditional singing technique requires full command of complex m...
South Korean outfit Jambinai performs a thrilling mix of post rock, noisy jazz, dreamy ambient, electro and metal. Their traditional rock instrumentation is given quite the upgrade with electronics, e...
Príncipe Discos presents, hosted by FACT
DJ Firmeza is a member of the Príncipe Discos crew, one of the most interesting and landmark-shifting movements within the modern European club...
Príncipe Discos presents, hosted by FACT
DJ Marfox’s raves are like spinning a Ferris wheel of Afro-Caribbean beats, Kuduro, footwork, grime and urban electronics until it goes supersoni...
Producer and musician Kelly Lee Owens is a cosmonaut in her own self-shaped zero gravity space. A space where machinery and ambience swell and orbit. Owens shapes this pliable universe to her liking,...
Renowned for her work with guitarist Sonny Sharrock in the 60s and 70s, Linda Sharrock has become a leading light in the world of experimental jazz and avant-garde. Her vocal delivery is a hallmark of...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Centraal Museum
James Merry is a visual artist, originally from Gloucestershire in the UK, who is now based in Iceland where he has been living and working with Bj&ou...
Julianna Barwick’s neoclassical/ambient compositions revel in the art of reverb, a crystalline pollination of tiny sonic particles into soothing bundles that fill up entire rooms. Having such a...
Coby Sey is a NTS Radio DJ and musician who released a 5-track record on Young Turks' sub-label Whities this year. A long time collaborator of Mica Levi and Tirzah, Coby now forges his own path as pro...
German DJ & producer Mark Ernestus is a sucker for African and Jamaican music. Ernestus’s seven-year collaboration with Ndagga Rhythm Force started during a trip through Senegal, where he wa...
Le Guess Who?-curator Patrick Higgins, visual artist Matthew Schreiber and choreographer Monica Mirabile will present the European premiere of their awe-inspired audiovisual project DOSSIER X, immersi...
You could describe Detroit’s Protomartyr as a post-punk outfit, but then again, the foursome could probably care less about what genre you stick to it. ‘A flaying intensity’ might be...
With a super contagious cocktail of Afrobeat, disco and funk, Arp Frique is the past, present and future scrambled together in one groovy, bright-lit musical skirmish. The Dutch producer’s new l...
The ever-versatile Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe is a soul that keeps creating, with each undertaking achieving new depths, textures and vocabularies. Lowe's been a mainstay with math rockers 90 Day Men and...
Gonjasufi established himself as a mainstay in the Warp Records-family with druidic masterpiece 'A Sufi And A Killer', effectively patching together psychedelic music, drones, electronic music, sampli...
If you could paint the world black, rediscover it with a flashlight illuminating every single detail and turn each finding into an obsession while gliding across the murk, then you might stumble into...
Ben Bertrand is a Brussels-based bass clarinetist who cut his teeth in the Belgian modern classical scene. Bertrand once invented a device that enables him to transform the natural sound of his instru...
Cate Le Bon, Tim Presley & H. Hawkline present
Cate Le Bon and Tim Presley form the musical duo DRINKS, but also practice other arts and crafts as a means to enter a different headspace. Together...
Danish sample-duo Den Sorte Skole creates magical, musical storytelling across time and space. By sampling obscure records from all over the globe, all possible genres and from all times, these guys t...
Vilde Tuv has been dubbed as Norway’s finest one-woman orchestra. With just voice, bass drum and guitar at her disposal, Tuv’s songs can swell from raw minimalism to celestial beauty on th...
The Wire is an independent, monthly music magazine celebrating and interrogating the most visionary and inspiring, subversive and radical, marginalised and undervalued musicians on the planet, past an...
Listening to Proto Idiot is listening to Bass, Drums and Vocals, like they’ve come straight from the 80’s, as a missing link between the likes of Gang of Four, Wire, and Swell Maps. But ac...
As a former member of legendary Tokyo-based psychedelic band Yura Yura Teikoku, Shintaro Sakamoto became a cult star in his motherland of Japan. In his solo work, Sakamoto creates post-apocalyptic exo...
12-Hour Drone artist Martijn Comes composition 'Eann' will be performed by Malgosia Fiebig on the Dom church carillon. He wrote it for his son, exploring themes like family, roots, saying go...
The sprawling universe that is the great Acid Mothers Temple was formed in 1995 by Kawabata Makoto. This fabled Japanese collective always held a deep dedication and devotion to improvised music. From...
Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda’s devotion to spirituality defined the final decades of her life. In 1983, she established the 48-acre Sai Anantam Ashram outside of LA, where she quietly began...
No one is doing mystical psych quite like Vanishing Twin. The London-based psychedelic quintet is intriguing even just looking into their line-up, which includes singer Cathy Lucas (Innerspace Orchest...
There is so much underlying this trumpet-and-percussion duo’s mix of free jazz, Afro-Caribbean traditions and electronic production that their music urges multiple, infinite listens, only to pee...
As a live act, Japan’s Vampillia are an anomaly if there ever was one. They embrace and command both eerie silences and punishing volumes of dark oozing noise. It’s no surprise this 11-pie...
Ekin Fil's ambient compositions sound like eerie, disintegrated remnants of a Cocteau Twins tune. Istanbul-based musician and composer Ekin Üzeltüzenci happily chooses full-on abstraction ov...
Regarded as one of Chicago’s most versatile and in-demand drummers, Makaya McCraven moves between genres like jazz, hip-hop and funk at lightning speed. Unquestionably respected as a jazz artist...
Steven Warwick is a British-born, Berlin-based musician and visual artist who performed under the moniker Heatsick in the past. Warwick moulds hypnotic dancefloor-focussed tracks in a similar way to h...
Invoking the cosmic spirits of Sun Ra, futuristic three-piece The Comet Is Coming creates an impetuous blend of jazz, afrobeat and electronica. The group turn their intergalactic jazz into a mythologi...
Príncipe Discos presents, hosted by FACT
“Her music is dazzling in all senses, a trance-inducing tangle of boxy drums, vivid swirls of synthetic melody and buzzsaw grime bass,” The...
Listed by NPR as one of the Top 100 Young Composers of today, Pakistani singer Arooj Aftab carries in her music a seasoned tranquility that inspires calm to whoever listens. Inspired by the work of Su...
Ever since Phil Elverum began releasing records as the Microphones and Mount Eerie, he has been continuously moving the goalpost of musical storytelling to new and exciting horizons. The Microphones&r...
That strange intermediate state during lucid dreams, when the body physically reacts to images summoned by your imagination: that’s a pretty apt way to describe the impact of Sarah Davachi&rsquo...
Centraal Museum presents
Black Chords is an installation by the French ‘post-conceptual’ artist Saâdane Afif, which consists of thirteen electric guitars and the same number of ampl...
Casco Art Institute presents
‘Evolved in shared relationships’ is a solo-exhibition by Finnish artist Alma Heikkilä. Feeling the urge to understand our ecological atmosphere and cons...
Mega Bog instills a wonderful and somewhat disorienting kind of confusion on her stunning latest LP ‘Dolphine’, conjuring a nautical journey of seventies folk, soft rock, new age and psych...
As J-E-T-S, producer compadres Jimmy Edgar and Machinedrum (Travis Stewart) developed a project that’s a wee bit more complex than your average cross-pollination of ideas. By applying their comm...
US-born, Swedish-based artist Kali Malone builds a truly remarkable synthesis of analog and electronic music, drawing in listeners with discernible warmth and timelessness. Whether she’s utilizi...
Spazio Disponibile presents
Aimée Portioli, also known as Grand River, is a Dutch-Italian composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer based in Berlin. While mainly connected to the fields of...
In collaboration with Future Feminism
This screening event dives into the performance archives of Future Feminism, giving an insight in the project’s history of creating explicit and extreme pe...
DJ Quesadilla and DJ Fitz, two swashbuckling archeologists of music who habitually turn dancefloors all over the world into journeys of sweet sonic oblivion. The former is one of the most prominent fi...
Composer Maarten Vos is what you’d call a voyager: he transforms traditional instrumentation into newfangled sounds and wields technology like something intricately human. Known as much for his...
Oorutaichi takes the word ‘fun’ into hyperdrive. This Japanese producer shakes the rules of techno, electro pop and sampling like a can of soda and lets things fly with contagious enthusia...
Chasing Reels presents; in collaboration with Leiden International Film Festival; dir. Ethan Hawke
The film ‘Blaze’ is about the unsung songwriting legend Blaze Foley, a relatively obscur...
Chasing Reels presents; dir. Paul Elliott & Sean Lamberth
‘The Library Music Film’ is a quest for some of the most original, but largely unnoticed music ever recorded. In the document...
As Lone Taxidermist, musician, performance artist, costume maker and provocateur Natalie Sharp relishes in the grotesque. Her unruly and flamboyant electro-punk performances make audiences an active p...
A librarian by day, Richard Youngs spends pretty much every other minute of his waking life living and breathing music. His fascinations reach all corners of the world, from Syd Barrett’s quirky...
If you think sinister post-punk/no wave undertones and ornamental art pop make strange bedfellows, then you haven’t heard a Moon Relay album yet. The group (featuring frequent Jenny Hval-collabo...
Tongue-in-cheek, hilarious and often controversial, Ghanaian duo FOKN Bois coined their sound as gospel porn rap, which might be a cryptic way of calling their art slyly subversive. Their music has be...
Adrift somewhere in purgatory between Syd Barrett and Robert Wyatt, the immense spacious beauty of Ed Dowie’s debut LP ‘The Uncle Sold’ can’t be overstated enough. Drawing insp...
Hidden Musics
Lakha Khan is a living legend of Rajasthani folk music. As the undisputed master of the sindhi sarangi, Khan is one of the last remaining Manganiyars to have honed this complex instrume...
Naming a band after something concise and universal seems to naturally generate some of the most physically punishing music in existence. If Sunn O))) and Sleep are part of a three-headed beast of &ld...
Psychedelic/krautrock mystics Moon Duo have risen up, understatedly, as one of the most intoxicating live acts of this decade. The Oregon band’s trademark sound is as much acquainted with minima...
After initially cutting her teeth with critically-acclaimed drone ensemble Vibracathedral Orchestra, Bridget Hayden’s first solo outing ‘An Indifferent Ocean’ turned a lot of heads w...
Cellist and composer Mariel Roberts plays her instrument of choice like an actor performs a scene, completely engrossed and enraptured within the composition’s totality. As both solo performer a...
For a band whose name translates to “Trees, Grass and Stone”, obviously, these lionized Swedish innovators have upheld their utopian ideals both in ethos and sound since the early 70&rsquo...
Quintessential Ethio-groove performer Ayalèw Mesfin has joined forces with the renowned US-based ensemble Debo band for his first European live performance ever, and in truth, few collaboration...
Hidden Musics
Christopher C. King’s relationship with the folk traditions of Epirus, a mountain region connecting Greece with the southern parts of Albania, occupies a special place in his hear...
Like Stereolab and Broadcast exemplified so fervently before them, Empath’s offbeat brand of guitar pop turns discord and noise on their upside, turning and twisting them into agents of jo...
Music derived from Rastafarian sound system culture has known many incarnations over time, but Jah Shaka remains true to its spiritual roots and essence. He arrived as teenager from Jamaica in London...
YĪN YĪN is a jam-packed romp of South East Asian psych pop, funk, disco grooves and electronic music. The project was conceived by Kees Berkers and Yves Lennertz, two familiar faces in the Maastricht...
In 1979, The Raincoats helped shape the timeless notion that punk is what you make it to be—an act of raw expression, not any one sound. Their anarchy was poetic. The group’s debut album &...
Porto collective HHY & The Macumbas compose mind-blowing permutations of experimental jazz, dubbed-out noise, and hypnotic African folk. Lead by artist Jonathan Saldanha and a rotating cast of pla...
The most riveting, template-shifting music often comes from a state of displacement or transience, and the Luxembourg-based, Cape Verde-born ensemble Grupo Pilon is certainly no exception. Founded by...
DJINN, an alliance formed by musicians in Swedish outfits Hills and GOAT, has quickly flourished into a marvel in and of itself. Extracting sonics from the fabric of Alice Coltrane’s astral jazz...
The words ‘wacky’ and ‘profound’ often walk hand-in-hand in the world of Gruff Rhys. The Welsh artist is best known as spearhead of perpetually wry pop oddballs Super Furry Ani...
Joseph Shabason demonstrated his mastery of woodwind, horn and brass instruments on iconic records such as Destroyer’s ‘Kaputt’ and The War On Drugs’ ‘Lost In The Dream&r...
In cooperation with Gaudeamus
Ivan Vukosavljević’s brand new work arms Ensemble Klang with an array of deconstructed electric guitars, the ensemble reborn as prepared/tabletop/eBow guitarists....
Deerhoof is one of those fantastic beasts the world has been lucky to find, an anomaly of a band that can twist any crunch of noise into saccharine hook-heavy pop euphoria. Their wide-eyed trial-and-e...
Ami Dang, a Sikh-American electronic pop artist living in Baltimore, splurges the canvas with a stupefying range of influences, including Indian hymns, Bollywood hits and nineties diva house. She swir...
Gyedu-Blay Ambolley is the true originator of simigwa-do, a Ghanaian fusion of afro funk, soul and jazz. His work with the Uhuru Dance Band and the The Apagya Show Band (the latter with one-time mento...
Caspar Brötzmann has embraced a similar vocation as his father, free jazz legend Peter Brötzmann: disrupt conventions through the virtues of noise, innovation, and chaotic physical performan...
Hosted by FACT
As sparkplug of dubstep’s golden age the previous decade, Mala is now part of a select group of producers taking it to thrilling forward-thinking pastures. Responsible for some o...
In the early 70’s, free-jazz evangelists Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids sprung from the tutelage of the great Cecil Taylor. Drawing furthermore from the vast cosmos of Fela Kuti, Pharaoh Sand...
Born and raised in Brazil, DJ/producer/vocalist LYZZA is becoming a familiar face during radical, underground club nights all over the world, from Amsterdam all the way to Shanghai. LYZZA recently rel...
The Philadelphia-based, noise-infested 700 Bliss is a collaboration between spoken word artist & sonic time-traveler Moor Mother and Discwoman-affiliated producer DJ Haram. Originated during Phill...
Driven by trance-like repetition and adventurous spirit, Colin Stetson’s performances are an unworldly display of sonic inventiveness and emotional release. Exploring the full scope of his instr...
Veni Om is the guise of towering sax fiend Otto Kokke, one half of death jazz deconstructionists Dead Neanderthals. Kokke takes less of a Lovecraftian approach as Veni Om however, proving he can pull...
Dälek’s signature corroded rap experimentalism bubbled up with masterpiece ‘Filthy Tongue Of Gods And Griots’, released on Mike Patton’s Ipecac label. These veteran agitat...
“The Jimi Hendrix Of Africa” Sekou Kouyate is a renowned Kora-player, a free radical with one leg planted into the tradition of his homeland Guinea. The other travels out and about into mo...
Le Mini Who? presents the contemporary (Dutch) underground, in collaboration with independent local stores, shops and bars. It transforms Utrecht's city streets into a festival area, with more than fi...
In PAINT, LA guitarist and songwriter Pedrum Siadatian is no longer one fourth of the band Allah-Las, but rather his own person. By himself, he has an opportunity to stretch out his musical and lyrica...
The image post-hardcore group Pissed Jeans paint on their violent and earth-scorching new LP ‘Why Love Now’ isn't a pretty one. It's nevertheless a vivid reflection of post-Trump America t...
Rabit is the moniker of Houston producer, composer, DJ, and record label owner Eric Burton. He combines industrial, hip hop, noise, and sound collage to foster sonic spaces for the exploration of sexu...
Justin 'KUTMAH' McNulty was born in Brighton, England to an Egyptian mother and Scottish father. After moving to the United States at twelve years old, KUTMAH ultimately made a name for himself as an...
Margaret Chardiet doesn't need to change costumes to completely transform on stage. As Pharmakon, she creates an echo chamber of monstrous proportions, making Pharmakon one of the heaviest and most di...
Stockholm musician and composer Ellen Arkbro is motivated by generating and absorbing sound. Whether she has her hands on a 400-year old pipe organ or a grid of digital equipment, the results are equa...
In the mid-1960s, Art Ensemble of Chicago sprung from the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). Ever since, they have been celebrated as one of the most remarkable free jazz mo...
With Sons of Kemet, sax wizard Shabaka Hutchings takes cues from Afro-Caribbean carnival to contemporary UK grime and hip hop. This is music played with punk drive, the immediacy of club music and rid...
Swiss-American musician Manuel Gagneux funnels the spells of black metal into howls of Tom Waits-esque juke joint blues. Suffice to say, results are nothing short of spectacular. Debut album ‘De...
In early 2015, free jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements first came together to perform at the Musicians Against Police Brutality event in New York. Drawn from the instrumentalists’ indivi...
Oft-sampled though never imitated, Italian composer Gigi Masin’s deft ambient collages first entered our consciousness in the 1970s. Masin finally earned recognition with his 1986 LP ‘Wind...
The multitalented British-Ghanaian Kojey Radical is an ever-evolving artist. Performing a sensational balancing act between UK grime, hip hop and alternative rap, this 25 year old poet-turned-rapper i...
As a transgender, Katey Red was one of the first openly gay artists within the masculine bounce hip hop-scene. Red became known for her rapid, machine gun-like beats and her explicit, gender fluid lyr...
Much of John Dwyer’s curatorship for this year’s Le Guess Who? reflects his attraction for music that is as exciting as it is mad, loud and potentially deafening. All these attributes can...
Seattle icons Mudhoney are widely regarded as trailblazers of the grunge movement. With shock and awe, they stormed onto the scene with ‘Touch Me I’m Sick’, a song that riffs on acer...
Monolithic and majestic, elusive Montreal guitar drone wanderer Thisquietarmy presented a whopping forty releases over the past twelve years. One of the more recent, ‘The Democracy of Dust&rsquo...
Rapper and producer Pink Siifu’s mercurial talent for intersecting styles and culture can be compared to the manifestation of a tropical storm: an unchecked force of nature that hoovers up every...
Charles-André Coderre is a Montréal-based filmmaker dedicated to working with analog techniques. Coderre is a member of the Montreal collective of experimental cinema Double Negative and...
As we struggle to keep up with a world enwrapped in digital technology, its influence on art and communication is often dismissed as harmful. Spencer Doran and Ryan Carlile's ambient project Visible C...
Jerusalem In My Heart is the main project of Lebanon-born, Montreal-based artist and producer Radwan Ghazi Moumneh. Moumneh collects sounds and melodies, both archaic and futuristic, to create a trans...
University Challenged are Ajay Saggar (Bhajan Bhoy), Oli Heffernan (Ivan The Tolerable) and Kohhei Matsuda (Bo Ningen). The trio, which splits itself between the Netherlands and the UK, is also glorio...
Noise brutes Sex Swing violently grasp the listener with a probing sense of acute danger. You can expect no less from an alliance of musicians from bands like Part Chimp, Bonnacons Of Doom, Dethscalat...
Paul Clipson is a San Francisco-based experimental filmmaker who often collaborates with sound artists and musicians. His Super 8 and 16mm films aim to bring subconscious visual abstractions to light....
Multi-instrumentalist and composer Steve Beresford applies his impressive background in free-improv and jazz with witty intellect. Whether he uses toy instruments to create soundscapes, scores TV prog...
Award-winning Dutch composer, bass clarinet player and saxophonist Joris Roelofs has performed with Han Bennink multiple times since forming an experimental duo together last year. Roelofs has practic...
Best known for his famous four-part masterwork ‘The Disintegration Loops’, William Basinski has been a vital figurehead in the New York art scene for over three decades. Starting his music...
The duo endeavors of Marcia Bassett (guitars) and Samara Lubelski (violin) originated in 2009, creating alternate musical scores to existing films. It became a neat starting point to create original m...
Toukadime is comprised of two DJs, Krimau and Bachir, with the intent of preserving music from the Northwest African Maghreb region. Both DJs garnered steady following by deejaying and mixing differen...
The phenomenal Yat-Kha, a legendary Siberian ensemble led by Albert Kuvezin, has expanded Tuvan folk music and throat singing into a global phenomenon. Kuvezin was also the founder of traditional Tuva...
Composer, guitarist and producer Patrick Higgins (also a member of New York avant-garde outfit Zs) will perform with string ensemble of the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra. The performance will feature...
Six standalone stories are featured in this film, which are united by a common theme of violence and vengeance. Director Damián Szifrón takes the idea of human behavior of people in dist...
The involvement of Meredith Graves (Perfect Pussy) in both mainstream and underground culture is as wide-ranging as it's confronting. Through her roots in hardcore-punk, and her activities as a writer...
Born to missionaries in Atlanta, Angel Bat Dawid followed her family from Georgia to Kentucky to Kenya – and when they settled in Chicago, she took up clarinet and music education. Nowadays...
Two years ago, Zimbabwe-born, UK-based musician/poet Farai delivered a straight-up banger in ‘The Sinner’ on the Vol. 1 compilation of African diaspora collective NON Worldwide. Consider t...
There is plenty of intrigue surrounding Buenos Aires-based musician Juana Molina. At the height of her popularity as a TV host, she fully immersed herself into her prime interest: music. Over a two de...
Innerwoud is the moniker of Ghent-based double-bass player Pieter-Jan Van Assche. His music is often described as ambient, drone and neoclassical. Drones are layered on top each other, revealing a vas...
Canadian artist Sarah Davachi's creates immersive soundscapes with a playful exchange between ancient acoustic instrumentation and analogue synths. Davachi is a real sonic thrill-seeker who enjoys pus...
Brian Case’s debut solo album ‘Tense Nature’ consists of abstract ambient tracks depicting a dark environment, built around tape loops and repetitive grooves. The Disappears-frontman...
Equal parts acoustic guitar visionary and urban mythologist, South-Africa’s Sibusile Xaba creates a wonderful blend of African folk, flamenco and jazz. Supported by expressive fingerpicking and...
Maria Chavez approaches the turntables as an instrument of transmission. This Peruvian artist doesn’t opt for just its function of mixing different types of music. Her approach is more primordia...
Electronic explorer James Holden is not only a musician, he’s also a producer, remixer, and the founder of the Border Community label, where he releases the music of equally genre bending electr...
Presented by IMPAKT - Centre for Media Culture
The Sound Of One Computer Thinking invokes a paradox or question that is essentially unanswerable. Are love, death or humour uniquely human or biologica...
Yonatan Gat became known as a member of revolutionary Israeli punk band Monotonix, as well as an acclaimed recording artist. After powwow drum group the Eastern Medicine Singers initially turned down...
Cinema Perdu is the moniker of Utrecht-based Martijn Pieck, who has also been involved in woodbender and the [law rah] collective. Fascinated by urban found sounds, he works with manipulated samples a...
Seattle-based singer-songwriter Austin Crane (aka Valley Maker) has one of the most remarkable voices in contemporary pop music. Accompanied by heartfelt, wistful acoustic guitar arrangements, Valley...
As Olan Mill, UK sound artist Alex Smalley’s work holds a sublime measure between the realms of modern neo-classical composition and ambience, with tender and elegant clusters of sound. His late...
Co-founder of celebrated poly pop duo Cibo Matto and collaborative partner of influential acts as Gorillaz and The Beastie Boys, Miho Hatori is a rare and inimitable talent from New York City. As prol...
Writing to us, Mark Wynn mentioned that he “leaves the UK to dance for money when the money is acceptable.” With remarkable British accent and lyrics dipped in parody, Wynn creates noise-r...
Nadah El Shazly is one of the most versatile and progressive Egyptian musicians. The Cairo-based artist garnered that status by immersing herself in many different stylistics, including jazz, classica...
So what do inventive New York-based sound wizard Sarah Hennies and avant-folk/electronic artist Jessica Sligter have in common? Well, they’re both reality-augmenters: Hennies can use any space t...
Presented by Centraal Museum
Visual artist Eva Spierenburg from Zeist is the winner of the K.F. Hein Stipendium 2018. Physicality is omnipresent in Spierenburg’s work. Whether it is the visuali...
Presented by BAK - basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht
Trainings for the Not-Yet is a project convened by artist Jeanne van Heeswijk and BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, in collaboration with many other...
Having fled from the fundamentalists in their home country of Sudan, the original members of psychedelic group The Scorpios established themselves in London during the 80s. Once there, they built a gr...
Armed with a twenty-two stringed Kora (a West African cross between lute, bridge and harp), troubadour Sourakata Koite uses this traditional instrument to interpret his Senegalese roots. Moving to Par...
The Graindelavoix ensemble from Antwerp is notorious for their daring and alienating performances that embrace the imperfections of what it means to be human. Now, they presents the four-hour piece &l...
This multi-nationality Anatolian rock outfit is fronted by Turkish vocalist and musician Derya Yıldırım. With members from Germany, France, Great Britain and Italy, Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek of...
Over the span of two albums, the dynamic of pedal steel player Heather Leigh and brass/woodwind maestro Peter Brötzmann has become truly transcending: a continually evolving high-energy exchange...
Hidden in the rural area of Limburg until recently, this Belgian post-punk gem is ready to take the world head-on. With their latest release ‘Winter / Milk,’ Fornet displays their nonconfo...
Berlin-based, Argentina-born noiseniks Mueran Humanos enlisted Carmen Burguess to direct a companion film for their last LP ‘Hospital Lullabies’, which will be screened before the group&rs...
Emerging from Bristol’s thriving artistic community, the four lads of LICE create a rather peculiar and inventive crossing of rockabilly and post-punk, featuring in-your-face lyricism covering s...
‘Concrete Desert’ is a colossal masterpiece created by The Bug (Kevin Martin) and Earth's Dylan Carlson. On this tandem project, Carlson and Martin plunge into deep sonic abysses, with dro...
Please note: limited capacity, sign up (between 5-7 November) via bit.ly/lgwlonnie
Since 1979, Lonnie Holley has devoted his life to the practice of improvisational creativity through drawing, painti...
Once labeled as one of the greatest songwriter of his time, California-based artist Cass McCombs has made quite a name for himself. On his ninth studio album ‘Mangy Love’, the songwr...
It is no wonder that this Spencer Clark project is inspired by eighties cult horror movies, such as ‘Hellraiser II’ and ‘Pin’. Every album released under Typhonian Highlife sou...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Fotodok & Casco Art Institute
Being born and raised on the island of Curaçao, the work of Kevin Osepa (1994) revolves around his identity and the identity...
Summoning songs that are deeply vulnerable and achingly confessional, Perfume Genius has become a formidable force. Applying both pop smarts and sonic innovation, the work of Mike Hadreas is a primal...
Before Hailu Mergia fled to America in 1981, his group Walias Band was a guiding light in Ethiopia’s thriving nightclub scene. In America, Mergia ended up driving cabs for almost 30 years, but h...
In her enigmatic avant-pop excursions, Jenny Hval breaks free from rigid concepts of sex, mortality, biology and pop culture. Her concept album ‘Blood Bitch’ occupies a fractured but heroi...
Vera Sola is a New York-based vocalist, poet and multi-instrumentalist. In recent years, she has worked on numerous projects, including performing with folk-rock artist Elvis Perkins and writing sever...
Alanis Obomsawin received worldwide acclaim as a filmmaker and visual artist. Her work is binded by crusading for the rights and well being of indigenous populations while simultaneously celebrating t...
Triggered by various Latin American rhythms and tremendous joy, a Meridian Brothers concert always results in one big dance party. Led by composer and multi-instrumentalist Eblis Álvarez, this...
Clarinet master Cüneyt Sepetçi and his Orchestra Dolapdere are among the greatest musicians Turkey has ever produced. Not just adept at blasting out Turkish gypsy music with firecracker fe...
Chicago stalwart Tim Kinsella initially made his mark with emocore trailblazers Cap ’n Jazz. Over the past twenty years, Joan Of Arc has been the primary instrument of his limitless imagination....
Renowned for her extraordinary vocal range, The Chicago Reader described Maja S. K. Ratkje as “one of the most astonishing singers on the planet.” Even more of an accomplishment when you t...
Crack Cloud is a rather peculiar project: a multimedia collective that includes members from different cities, ethnicities and origins. Their debut release ‘Anchoring Point’ is based aroun...
Step into the boundless and ambient-overlaid world of Chihei Hatakeyama; a sound artist, mastering engineer and record label founder from Tokyo, Japan. By processing acoustic instruments such as guita...
Fred Warmsley was once a vital member of Joey Bada$$'s Pro Era crew under the moniker Lee Bannon. Gradually however, the Sacramento native started to veer into more amorphous sonic territories. Under...
A librarian by day, Richard Youngs spends pretty much every other minute of his waking life making music. This sonic shapeshifter’s fascinations range from Syd Barrett’s oddball folk to Gr...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver
A selection of short films of Glitterbeat's acclaimed Hidden Musics series curated by GRAMMY-winning record producer Ian Brennan (Tinariwen, Zomba Prison...
In the early 2000s, Hot Snakes rose to combine Rocket From The Crypt’s walloping garage rock anthems and Drive Like Jehu’s feverish post-hardcore stabs. With aforementioned bands reuniting...
Painting, dancing, baking, and a degree in neuroscience for good measure; Madeline Kenney is good at a lot of things. One of those things also happens to be music; more specifically, writing and produ...
Fronted by Kenia-born musician Ajay Saggar, King Champion Sounds are an impetuous, eight-headed band from The Netherlands and England. Fronted by the inimitable G.W. Sok (former singer of the iconic D...
Art Feynman is a musician and recording artist based in California. Rooted in the world’s oldest religion ‘Animism’, which asserts that all things living and inert are endowed with s...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Utrecht University
In the wake of his recently published fifth book ‘Silenced by Sound: the Music Meritocracy Myth’ and driven by his ongoing field-record...
Holly Herndon’s vital album ‘PROTO’ is an inquisitive, affirmative work that interplays elements like Sacred Harp choirs with an A.I.-entity called Spawn, therefore splicing the orga...
Holly Herndon’s vital album ‘PROTO’ is an inquisitive, affirmative work that interplays elements like Sacred Harp choirs with an A.I.-entity called Spawn, therefore splicing the orga...
Spazio Disponibile presents
Crossing Avenue is one of the central projects of Donato Dozzy's and Neel's Spazio Disponibile label. Debut EP ‘Malandra’ provides a taste of what to expect: a...
Collaboratorium
The cartoon physics of Brooklyn experimental outfit Zs, the Lovecraftian doom tandem Ex Eye with Colin Stetson, the blast beat barrages of Liturgy; Greg Fox has an uncanny knack for t...
In cooperation with Gaudeamus
AEAEA is the new duo from composers and performers Patrick Higgins and Nicolas Jaar. Utilizing instrumental performance and live digital resampling, the aim of the group...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver
Following the footsteps of Islamic mystics on the Indian subcontinent of Pakistan, the Swiss director Annette Berger managed to document the spiritual eve...
Spazio Disponibile presents
Few DJs and producers are as universally acclaimed in techno circles as Italian connoisseur Donato Dozzy. Dozzy possesses that rare ability to zigzag his way into peoples&...
Collaboratorium
Step inside the tractor beam, because at Le Guess Who?, Mythic Sunship will organize a momentous assemblage of wondrous sound. Of course, this Copenhagen quartet has room aplenty for...
The “demonic” and “physical” shows of this feisty Flemish couple are well-documented, ruthlessly steamrolling onlookers like some indomitable force of nature. The Glücks b...
Presented by Centraal Museum
Alles is Rond (All Is Round) was made in the city where Louis Andriessen and Madelon Hooykaas both grew up: Utrecht. Both artists have worked together before, but this is...
Former Screaming Tea Party-member Koichi Yamanoha was once better known for his scream than his whisper. ‘Hazy Eyes Maybe’, the Japanese-born, London-based musician’s debut LP under...
Russian collective Shortparis is all about tension, friction and disruption, obscuring the boundaries between audiovisual theatre, techno raves and punk rock performance. Whether it’s shattering...
Hosted by FACT
Ziggy Devriendt doesn’t exactly tiptoe around his many music-related interests. Whether he’s hosting his monthly show at London’s NTS radio station, running streaming...
Hidden Musics
Female vocal ensemble Isokratisses both uphold and reinterpret one of the world’s oldest remaining folk music traditions: the polyphonic songs of Epirus. Thanks to the vast mounta...
Stella Chiweshe, The Queen of Mbira, broke new ground by becoming the first artist to successfully combine the mbira with the marimba. She took up the homegrown instrument back in 1964, originally use...
Before Vicky Chow's performance in TivoliVredenburg's Hertz (curated by Patrick Higgins), the Canadian piano virtuoso will perform at Domplein as part of the Keys of Light project,...
Group Listening is a joint project by UK-musicians Stephen Black and Paul Jones. Black and Jones met at music college before their respective paths strayed. Reconnecting years later after various ende...
Unconventional and hard to categorize, producer/lyricist Quelle Chris is well-versed in several genres, including punk rock, poetry, abstract soul, and experimental hip-hop. As a beatsmith, he tends t...
London grime MC Flohio made her presence known during her ace collaboration with beatmaking duo God Colony. On killer tracks like SE16, Flohio displays rapid-fire delivery and jaw-dropping wordplay, l...
Revolt comes in all shapes and sizes for São Paolo-guitarist, producer and songsmith Kiko Dinucci. He cut his teeth in various punk and hardcore bands, filtered that subversive spirit through t...
Holly Herndon’s vital album ‘PROTO’ is an inquisitive, affirmative work that interplays elements like Sacred Harp choirs with an A.I.-entity called Spawn, therefore splicing the orga...
Kiwi musician Aldous Harding stops you dead in your tracks with her remarkable dark folk hymns. A magnetic stage presence, Harding taps into different moods and characters, often in the very same song...
Lightning Bolt’s floor shows are the stuff of myth and legend, unleashing a hailstorm of noise that would leave every venue smoldering in dust and vapors for weeks. Two decades after their accla...
Tokyo-based group Kikagaku Moyo forges heavy-improv psychedelia, including elements of German Krautrock, classic Indian raga and acid folk. Kikagaku Moyo - Japanese for "geometric patterns" - finds a...
The legendary Sun Ra Arkestra isn’t so much an ensemble as it is an ideology passed on from generation to generation. Founder Sun Ra (visionary pianist, poet, electronica pioneer and composer He...
Club 3voor12/Utrecht is a free entrance event, showcasing 3 local/Dutch bands. Featuring the loop-based, lo-fi electronics of Bieldermann; Fungo Bat, the project of multi-instrumentalis...
Islam Chipsy’s hyperactive keyboard mashing and drum duo EEK’s chaotic bliss rev up crowds into utter frenzy. This mighty Egyptian alliance is without question one of the most rowdy live a...
Brazilian singer-songwriter Rodrigo Amarante is most famous for writing and performing ‘Tuyo’, the theme song for the Netflix hit series ‘Narcos’. Just don't pin his work down...
Roger Eno is a multi-instrumentalist, producer and composer from Suffolk, England. Known for his minimal approach, Eno crafts an ambient sound rooted in classical music. Together with his original pia...
Oliver Coates is an exceptional cellist, composer and producer from London. Guided by his atypical music tastes, Coates transcends the traditions of classical composition and finds a new definition fo...
The sensational Afro-psychedelic collective BCUC (Bantu Continua Uhuru Consciousness) started out as a social gathering in their native township of Soweto, South Africa. BCUC is an alliance of guitari...
Originally formed by Pixies’ Kim Deal and Throwing Muses’ Tanya Donelly, The Breeders are back in rumbling, restless style. Gaining worldwide recognition with their smashing, gummy hit sin...
Belgium’s STUFF. is much more than your typical jazz quintet. Adding dazzling layers of hip-hop, funk and electronic sounds to their jazz foundation, the group forges an energetic storm of instr...
Takuro Kikuchi’s subdued piano compositions move adrift between tranquility and contemplation. The 35-year-old musician hailing from Sendai, Japan, has been playing since the age of nine, drawin...
Lucy Railton’s voice has bloomed from the root of more than 25 years of classical instrumentalism. The cellist and electronic composer’s acclaimed 2018 solo debut 'Paradise 94' marks a new...
Enter the dark, mythical world of minimalist composer and praised lute-player Jozef van Wissem. Accompanied by his twin-necked, 24-stringed baroque instrument, Van Wissem creates strange, sonic sounds...
By Special Arrangement with Ecstatic Peace Library. No matter how far his musical interests stretch, Thurston Moore’s stylish poise is always prevalent in his work: red-hot, risqué and ra...
In the early 00s, Eleanor Friedberger became known as one-half of indie sibling duo The Fiery Furnaces. Since their hiatus in 2011, Eleanor Friedberger unleashed her true songwriter capabilities and h...
Originally from the forests of a mountainous region in East Bohemia in Czech Republic, Please The Trees is grounded in the psychedelic riffs and motorik beats of krautrock, striking out with mesmerizi...
The King of Keyboard himself, Rizan Said, remains one of the most famous and influential musicians from Syria. He’s made a name for himself as composer for all kinds of Syrian artists, as well a...
Using the drums as his main outlet, Greg Fox is a multi-instrumentalist, interdisciplinary artist, and teacher based in New York. Attaching sensors to his acoustic drum kit, Fox triggers sequenced syn...
Belgian dancer and choreographer Judith Clijsters isn’t just someone who constructs and performs a dance movement. She observes. More specifically, she observes our bodies, and how we use them....
Although Psychic Ills started as a bedroom recording project fifteen years ago, this New York-based band has been in constant evolution ever since. Never one to shy away from experiment, their music i...
“Ceramic popcorn exploding in craniums.” This is just one of many lyrics that encapsulates Orchestra Of Spheres’ strange but infectious experimental pop, sounding like a Moebius sci-...
Experimental electronic music doesn’t always have to be dark and twisted, such proves Moscow-based producer Kate NV. Normally, she’s a guitar-wielding post-punker and performer within Mosc...
Rock ‘n Roll revolutionary and punk veteran Ian Svenonius is back in town. The mythical performer, author, and filmmaker is currently taking the world by storm with his solo project Escape-Ism....
New York-based musician Martin Bisi is hailed as iconic producer who defined the sound of New York noise. This year’s release ‘BC35’ celebrates the 35-year Anniversary his of BC Stud...
Joe Coleman is a performance artist, collector and painter whose hyper-detailed works depict celebrities, historical figures and artists with the same graceful iconography as the Gods and prophets of...
Cindy Lee is the 60s girl group persona of Pat Flegel, once the voice of now-defunct indie pop outfit Women. Though his former band flirted with sounds of the past, Flegel now follows through, bending...
Luka Productions is the bedrock of Mali-based producer, multi-instrumentalist and rapper Luka Guinda, responsible for 2017’s more mysterious and downright sensational releases. ‘Fasokan&rs...
Last year, Dunedin lo-fi pop singer Kane Strang debuted his winsome first album ‘Blue Cheese’, and just like that, he joined the Dead Oceans roster. On sophomore LP ‘Two Hearts And N...
They’re fast, they’re fearless, and they’re amazing. Meet screaming vocalist Jackie Jackieboy, shredding guitarist Dick Riddick, and their super tight friend: the drum machine. Toget...
Cate Le Bon is celebrated for her playful lyricism, and her inventive pop melodies combined with post-punk takeoffs. Last year, the Welsh avant-pop songwriter released her most tantalizing record yet...
Wolfgang Voigt's groundbreaking project GAS is the sound of organic matter and technology living in perfect harmony. As he himself puts it: 'bring the forest to the disco and vice versa'. Voigt struct...
Liu Fang is known for her virtuosic and expressive interpretation of traditional pipa and guzheng music from China’s classical and folkloric traditions. Celebrated as being one of the greatest v...
Julie Byrne's lucid and enchanting folk songs speak immensely to the imagination, providing visions of the stars of the high desert, the fatigue of change, the wild flowers of the California coast, as...
Lending his singular talents to artists as diverse as Liturgy, Glenn Branca and Colin Stetson, drummer extraordinaire Greg Fox’s rapid fire, blistering playing style is a true force of nature. F...
Born Otis Calvin III, OCnotes has been an artist, musician, DJ, author, motivational speaker and vibrant figurehead within Seattle’s music scene since the turn of the decade. An ever-curious art...
If you were to compare the world of noise music to our physical world, Prurient occupies the very bottom; the deepest and darkest dwellings in our oceans. Sound artist Dominick Fernow's output of obli...
It’s obvious why Caila Thompson-Hannant chose the moniker Mozart's Sister. Like that ersatz sibling, the Montreal musician has a swift ear for bubbly, uplifting melodies. In hyperkinetic and gle...
Musician Arish Ahmad Khan – better known as King Khan – will read ‘Black Power Tarot’ cards for festival visitors. It’s a series of tarot cards he created with filmmaker...
‘The Invaders’ talks about a generation of civil rights activists who originated from Memphis in 1967, consisting of students, Vietnam veterans, musicians and intellectuals who were inspir...
Yves Tumor is one of the most mysterious and gripping experimental musicians to emerge in recent memory. On his critically well-received LP ‘Serpent Music’ he combines abrasive, slithering...
UK-based musical collective Ex-Easter Island Head incorporates multiple prepared electric guitars struck with percussion mallets, creating music that explores group interplay, repetition and melodic i...
Lost Horizons is a new collaborative dream-pop project formed by Simon Raymonde of Cocteau Twins and Richard Thomas of instrumental quartet Dif Juz. The duo's upcoming album 'Ojalá', released o...
Seattle-based musician Jesy Fortino (who also formed Mirrorring together with Grouper’s Liz Harris) returns as Tiny Vipers after an eight-year album hiatus. With the electronic soundscape-based...
Madensuyu have always been charmed by the mysterious and esoteric, the notion that two mortal souls can inhabit a stage and conjure something bigger than themselves. Their angsty, sprawling brand of n...
Nora Mulder is a renowned Dutch pianist. California-born, Amsterdam-based multi-instrumentalist Mary Oliver performs the violin, viola and Hardanger fiddle in free-spirited fashion as member of Nieuw...
Moon Duo’s torrent blotchy psychedelics inventively coalesce with meditative, minimalist pop. Indeed, this is inflammatory music that submerges and manifests within the subconscious like a livin...
On one of her newer songs, Cut Connection, Jesca Hoop tries to reconcile a love with the words "be the drummer in my heart". The magnetic Hoop laces her distinct anti-folk with likewise playful lyrici...
Still the crudest, strangest and loudest band from Atlanta. On their eighth LP, the cheekily titled 'Satan's Graffiti or God's Art?', the band unrolled an 18-song epic revelling in Wall Of Sound grand...
India-born, The Netherlands-based sitar player Surajit Das is a savant in the canon and exploration of Indian Classical Music, having studied under Kashinath Mukerjee and vocalist Chinmoy Lahere. Mast...
H. Hawkline’s goofball pop has the special ability to make the mundane sound quirky, whether it’s a perfectly formed bit of toothpaste on your toothbrush or shoelaces tied equally tight to...
In the lexicon of John Maus, pop music has always been a vessel for endless possibility. Much like fellow voyager Ariel Pink, pop serves as the Trojan Horse for Maus's avalanche of ideas, philosophies...
Founder of the Moving Furniture label Sietse van Erve has been composing under his Orphax-moniker for the better part of the past two decades. Van Erve wields his minimalist music as a stream-of-consc...
In her home country of Zimbabwe, music icon Stella Chiweshe is endearingly called The Queen of Mbira, becoming the first female artist to gain widespread recognition for a strictly male-dominated disc...
New York musician/composer Lea Bertucci threads the needle between the physical and abstract. The soothing movements she creates with alto saxophone, electronics and bass clarinet interact with device...
As a hurdy-gurdy player, composer and sound artist, Yann Gourdon focuses on the various ways acoustic instruments work together with landscapes, objects and man-made structures. Simultaneously, he lea...
Ashtoreth is the solo moniker of Belgian musician Peter Verwimp. As Ashtoreth, Verwimp draws heavily from the power of shamanism, to adapt and incorporate influences from other religious and spiritual...
Manchester-based synth pop duo Virginia Wing fully embrace the perfect counterbalance of the considered and the superficial. Wrapped in catchy, playful synth tunes and upbeat drum loops, their latest...
Renowned Slovenia-born, Netherlands-based pianist Kaja Draksler brings a wondrous revisionist stamp on homegrown folk, classical modernism, improv and pop. Draksler will perform with none other than T...
In 1995, Serbian-born, Brazil-based producer Mitar Subotić – also known as Suba and Rex Illusivii – created ‘Wayang’, an album that would be considered visionary even by today&...
Flaunting an impressive resume of bands (notably as singer/guitarist of trance-rock cosmonauts Spacemen3) and production credits (Panda Bear, MGMT, Beach House), Pete Kember’s genius has now spa...
Japanese artist Hatis Noit’s accomplished range is astonishingly self-taught. Hoit is inspired by everything she can find from Gagaku — Japanese classical music —, Bulgarian and Greg...
Justin Broadrick (Jesu, Goldflesh, Napalm Death) and Kevin Martin (The Bug, King Midas Sound) initially consolidated their mutual love for abrasive noise, dub and industrial as Techno Animal. If that...
Lebanese-born producer and DJ Rabih Beaini (formerly known as Morphosis) specializes in grainy, imaginative analogue techno. A range of influences—improvisational jazz, krautrock, new wave, elec...
Few musicians are as versatile, risk-taking and compulsively explorative as Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe. This nomadic musician redefined math and noise rock with 90 Day Men and helped spearhead druidic dr...
The power of the imagination is arguably the greatest during youth, and Oslo-based collective DNA? AND? bring this notion into play in the most remarkable fashion. Comprised of special needs children...
Somehow, Faten Kanaan composes mesmeric, hypnotic music without the use of sequencers or arpeggiators. With that tranquil sense of endlessness as her core principal, she tells evocative stories with b...
Whether they intend to or not, Negativland have bursted many bubbles over the decades with their quizzical remapping of pop culture, media and advertising. Though Negativland consider themselves artis...
The Chilean colossus known as Föllakzoid, are clerics of both the cosmic heritage of Can and the more progressive electronics. The trio are no longer bound by concept or narrative on their latest...
Drone-based music often wields the power to blur that stark hierarchy between audience and stage, to level everyone in the room as both participant and listener. Korean duo TENGGER are no exception to...
Michele Mercure’s shrouded cinematic works overlap ambient, abstract, and industrial sensibilities, always with a keen and playful sense of their surroundings and acoustics. Not surprisingly, th...
Under the name Nivhek, Liz Harris (Grouper) maps richly detailed inner worlds where enigmatic vibrations and voices glide dimly in and out of the void. Double album ‘After its own death / Walkin...
Prana Crafter summons cobwebbed guitar meditations, kosmische drones, and mystic acid folk mantras. In their 2018 Best Albums-list, Aquarium Drunkard described William Sol’s project as “an...
Godflesh is an austere beast that intersects elements of industrial, metal, noise rock and post-punk in truly defiant, engrossing fashion. With its juggernaut drum thuds, shredding bass throbs, cauter...
After 15 years of performing for passersby at Paris’s Line 2 Metro, Algerian musician Mohamed Lamouri’s trademark ragged voice and buoyant Casio keyboard melodies are reaching ears all ove...
Istanbul’s Lalalar remind you of your favorite 80’s cult show theme, and simultaneously sound like a delightful dumpster dive of spaghetti western-psychedelics, Anatolian funk, sampling an...
Great pop songs with magic sprinkles of Eastern soundtracks, Spaghetti Western’s spacious twang and some grooving yé-yé sounds, that’s Khana Bierbood in a nutshell. Not surpr...
Equally adept at noisy, feedback-laden jams as spaced-out, repetitive voyages, Mythic Sunship's self-styled "anaconda rock" has been described as one of the most riveting movements of the European psy...
When Girl Band prowl the stage, you’d best prepare for a barb-wired wallop of first class agit-rock. This Irish wrecking crew has become one of the most fearsome live units of the decade thanks...
Over the past decade, Mali rapper Master Soumy has been a key figure within the West-African nation’s youth movement. Along with his peers, Soumy’s sharp-witted lyrical mastery became the...
Presented by Le Guess Who? & Springhaver
Lutz Gregor’s documentary Mali Blues takes a vivid look at the West-African nation’s rich and diverse musical fabric, following folk star Fato...
Along with Shy Girl and Sega Bodega, French artist and producer Coucou Chloe is the co-founder of burgeoning label/collective NUXXE. Her malformed take on pop music is as mind-melting as it is urgent,...
Felix Manuel’s ears are attuned to the spontaneity of jazz while his production chops create original compositions out of a wellspring of samples, textures and beats. Manuel’s extraordinar...
Amnesia Scanner isn’t so much music as it is a movement, one that intrudes living rooms and sweltering, neon-lit dancefloors alike. The Berlin-based duo’s profoundly impressive debut &lsqu...
Whether it’s the early, more electronic-driven beginnings or excavating field recordings at an abandoned settlement in the Arctic Circle, these Danish pop adventurers express boundless enthusias...
Multi-disciplinary artist Lafawndah (Yasmine Dubois) uses performance as something strangely non-performative: her shows become a safe space to communicate with as many curious listeners and onlookers...
Hosted by FACT
Slikback is Freddy Njau, an emerging Kenyan producer currently situated in Poland. Associated with the infectious Kampala collective Nyege Nyege, his 2019 EP Tomo renders footwork, gri...
“Her playing conjures a vision of some vintage piano genius like Art Tatum coming back to life and getting high on post-minimalism,” Pitchfork once concluded. Indeed, if some renowned comp...
With his self-taught piano improvisations and stream-of-consciousness lyrical approach, Lonnie Holley is a storyteller of the highest order. Apart from being an acclaimed visual artist, Holley also cr...
While growing up, Amsterdam based electronic music producer Vincent-Paolo developed an early fascination for the chords in soul music and the drums in his dads jazz records. Initially getting into ele...
Deeply embedded in the Utrecht music scene, Luke Cohlen tries to celebrate all things that spring from his city via his involvement in Stranded FM and with his own Cultfarm events. A DJ himself as wel...
Besides running a festival, label, and events series, Thomas Martojo and Casper Tielrooij somehow still manage to find time to dig in to through every inch of record stores to build their music collec...
While some records appeal to the brain’s immediate pleasure zones, other music trickles down the subconsciousness like a warm and alleviating light. Swedish duo Thet Liturgiske Owäsendet&rs...
British collective Seefeel straddled that chasm between experimental rock and ambient techno long before artists like Radiohead and Broadcast – and even later, Dirty Beaches and Caribou –...
The Avonden is the brainchild of prolific Dutch musician and visual artist Marc van der Holst (ex-Hospital Bombers and Spilt Milk). Debut LP ‘Nachtschade’, issued on Subroutine Records, ta...
Composer Howie Lee’s greatest triumph isn’t even his immediately satisfying jumbling up of the traditional and futuristic. It’s how he channels such giddy enthusiasm into each one of...
Across decades, Neneh Cherry traversed and transcended every known faction of the music world; from bona fide pop stardom to the peripheries of punk rock, club music and jazz. Even more recently, Cher...
Do you know what total destruction sounds like? It’s sounds like MC/singer Miss Red, aka Sharon Stern, and producer The Bug, alias Kevin Martin, hitting the stage. The Bug’s monstrous, all...
Dutch multi-instrumentalist and psych pop traveler Jacco Gardner will be heading back to Le Guess Who? this year, where he premieres the ‘Somnium’ experience. This will also be the live de...
Once, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs’ guitarist Adam Ian Sykes said: “on stage is where the slaughter takes place.” This is probably the best way to describe a performance of thi...
As one of the many groundbreaking brainchilds of renowned Philly producer and musician King Britt, Fhloston Paradigm will return to Utrecht to host a DJ set featuring impulsive experimentation, cosmic...
Formed in 1997, Endless Boogie is an American rock band who are living up to their own band name. They’re well known for their seemingly infinite, minimalist jams, onstage as well as on record....
RVNG Intl. presents; dir. Misha Hollenbach & Johann Rashid
‘Sunshine Soup’ is a documentary about the making of the FRKWYS recording ‘We Know Each Other Somehow’ by Robert...
Indeed, as adroit players of the harp and the violin respectively, Marilu Donovan and Adam Markiewicz’s joint project LEYA inspired some emphatically gorgeous music. With the help of fellow expe...
Ian Svenonius & Alexandra Cabral present
The mythical performer, author, and filmmaker Ian Svenonius, who performs as Escape-Ism, shows a selection of experimental short films he made with filmma...
Public Poetry takes the written word into our shared communal life in public space; it brings people together for the sake of the most intimate of verbal arts. In this session, LGW artists are invited...
BAK presents
London research agency Forensic Architecture is known for its unconventional research methods in order to investigate the violation of human and nature rights. As a Turner Prize 2018 nom...
Le Bazarre is a renowned and travelling market inspired by quality vintage, second hand and indie craft. It hosts curated vendors and takes place on Utrecht’s famous Domplein (Dom Square), locat...
Operating on a crossroad between genres like rock, jazz and avant-garde, Schnellertollermeier execute with great precision, skill and clarity. With instrumental power at the heart of their music, they...
Diving headfirst into genres like shoegaze, post-rock, noise and black metal, Bliss Signal unleashes a claustrophobic blast of furious energy. The project marks the collaboration between two experimen...
For eclectic London-based group The Heliocentrics, musical boundaries are invisible. This collective has the ability to fluently string together a broad spectrum of genres, including jazz, hip-hop, ps...
While the festival’s numerous performances spread all over the city of Utrecht, there will be one moment we all come together, and that is at the afterparty. The line-up will feature dub-king Ke...
Sun Kil Moon challenges the notion that life imitates art. In the curious case of Mark Kozelek, life is art. His stream-of-consciousness folk narratives and nylon-stringed guitar meanderings make Sun...
He reimagines classical composers like Bach with modern-day instrumentation. He interrogates the role of individuality in the digital world. He tackles the cataclysms of climate change. Indeed, music...
Embracing music from both bygone and current eras, Miranda Cuckson is regarded as one of the most acclaimed performers of classical and modern music. The New York Times called Cuckson “a prodigi...
Composer and cellist Leila Bordreuil grew up in rural Aix-en-Provence, France, before moving to Brooklyn in 2012. Having composed in silence for most of her life, the bustle of Broadway didn’t d...
Singer-songwriter and producer Emel Mathlouthi combines the vibrant sounds of psychedelic folk with heavy electronics and atmospheric melodies. She gained global recognition when her recording 'Kelmti...
Other pages
"Overcoming lockdown obstacles, Le Guess Who? united a global cast of adventurous artists." - Crack Magazine
The Netherlands
3voor12: Le Guess Who? strooit alvast met eerste namen en curatoren voo...
The Netherlands
3FM: "3voor12 is op Le Guess Who?, waar basketballen tegen aan het plafond geschroefde gitaren worden gegooid"3voor12: "Eerste 67 namen voor Le Guess Who? 2017" &n...
The Netherlands
3FM: Eva Koreman nieuwe presentator 3voor12 radio 3FM: Le Guess Who? 2018: Ralph-Herman snapt niet wat Colin Stetson doet3FM: Timo op Le Guess Who: van gevoelige liedjes in een kerk t...
“With the able steer of festival curators Jenny Hval, Moon Duo, Fatoumata Diawara, and Iris Van Herpen, this year’s boundary-crossing festival Le Guess Who?? welcomed visitors from over...
3voor12 Live Sessions
At Club Nine on the top floor of TivoliVredenburg, the main location and hub of Le Guess Who?, Dutch broadcaster VPRO 3voor12 recorded live sessions with artists from LGW21. Wat...
The Netherlands
3voor12: Dit zijn de vijftig belangrijkste festivals van Nederland3voor12: Le Guess Who? slaat 2020 over3voor12: Beverly Glenn-Copeland blijft onverstoorbaar hoopvol3voor1...
Thanks to our dedicated, open-minded and adventurous audience, Le Guess Who? has grown to become a leading international festival. Over the past fifteen years, LGW has developed into a platform that showcases underrepresented sounds that are rarely presented on other stages and in other places, but deserve to be heard because we believe they enrich our worldview.
In order to keep developing the festival the upcoming fifteen years on the same level as we did the last fifteen, we could use your support.
Learn more about who are helping us realize the festival.
Le Guess Who? 2022 (English)
Le Guess Who? is a Celebration of Sound in Utrecht, The Netherlands. As one of the most forward-thinking festivals, Le Guess Who? returns 10-13 November 2022 for its 15th...
Le Guess Who? exists to bring people together through art and music. In 2021, the international festival for boundary-crossing music and culture makes a new addition to the upcoming festival edition: U?, a new, participative and freely accessible day program created for and with the city of Utrecht. U? will return in 2022, 10-13 November.
Le Guess Who? heeft het doel om mensen samen te brengen door middel van muziek en cultuur. Daar werd tijdens de editie van 2021 een nieuw onderdeel aan toegevoegd, genaamd U?. Een nieuw, verbindend en gratis toegankelijk dagprogramma gemaakt voor en mét de stad. U? keert terug in 2022, 10-13 november.
From 10-13 November, U? returns Utrecht. Want to participate? We’d love to hear from you!
U? keert van 10-13 november terug naar Utrecht. Wil je deelnemen? Dan horen we graag van je!
General info about U?
Algemene informatie over U?
Press Archive
Our archive includes press previews, reports and interviews for LGW21. Have a look at all published articles at the link below.
VISIT PRESS ARCHIVE
Le Guess Who? takes place across 20 locations in the city center of Utrecht; ranging from churches and galleries to theaters and pop venues. Most are within walking distance from each other. Here are a couple highlighted.
Le Guess Who? takes pace across 20 locations in the city center of Utrecht; ranging from churches and galleries to theaters and pop venues. Most are within walking distance from each other. Here are a couple highlighted.
Le Guess Who? takes pace across 20 locations in the city center of Utrecht; ranging from churches and galleries to theaters and pop venues. Most are within walking distance from each other. Here are a couple highlighted.
Le Guess Who? takes pace across 20 locations in the city center of Utrecht; ranging from churches and galleries to theaters and pop venues. Most are within walking distance from each other. Here are a couple highlighted.
Le Guess Who? takes pace across 20 locations in the city center of Utrecht; ranging from churches and galleries to theaters and pop venues. Most are within walking distance from each other. Here are a couple highlighted.
Le Guess Who? takes pace across 20 locations in the city center of Utrecht; ranging from churches and galleries to theaters and pop venues. Most are within walking distance from each other. Here are a couple highlighted.
Le Guess Who? takes pace across 20 locations in the city center of Utrecht; ranging from churches and galleries to theaters and pop venues. Most are within walking distance from each other. Here are a couple highlighted.
We are grateful for all your support; thanks to all artists, visitors, volunteers, crew, venues & partners. U? will return in 2022, 10-13 November. We can’t wait to have you with us again!
Volgend jaar zijn we er weer. We zijn dankbaar voor al jullie steun; dank aan alle artiesten, bezoekers, vrijwilligers, crew, locaties & partners. U? keert terug in 2022, 10-13 november. We kunnen niet wachten om je weer bij ons te hebben!
https://www.citycenterlodgeutrecht.nl/There are many good places to stay in Utrecht. Stayokay Utrecht Centrum is a top pick for festival visitors, located ideally at Neude Square in the city center (just a couple of minutes from TivoliVredenburg and other venues).
"Spiralling outwards from the cobbled, canal-studded streets of the old town, Utrecht is an architecturally beautiful city in the centre of the Netherlands." -
Crack Magazine
Le Guess Who? 2013
Live videos from LGW13
VPRO 3VOOR12 captured live performances from different locations in Utrecht. Watch below:
Le Guess Who? 2014
Audio Recordings
There are lots of recordings available in our audio archive, including Selda Bağcan, Baba Zula and many more from other editions of the festival.
Audio Recordings
There are lots of recordings available in our audio archive, including Junun feat. Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood and the Rajasthan Express, Elza Soares, Patty Waters, Tortoise, Scot...
Le Guess Who? is a Celebration of Sound in Utrecht, The Netherlands. As one of the most forward-thinking festivals, Le Guess Who? returns 10-13 November 2022 for its 15th Anniversary Edition.
ENTRANCE: Le Guess Who? is only accessible with a valid wristband, unless otherwise noted.
AGE RESTRICTIONS: There is no age restriction for Le Guess Who?, but we strongly advise that persons under t...
"Eclectic and probing" - New York Times
"LGW proves that even in times of political divide, music and art can bring us together into a more hopeful future" – The Line of Best Fit
"Je w...
Op deze pagina is de selectie van de vier portretten van Melanie te vinden, behorende bij de Centercom Subsidiefonds-pitch van Le Guess Who?, evenals een schets van de opzet voor twee van de posters (...
Op deze pagina is de selectie van de vier portretten van Melanie te vinden, behorende bij de Centercom Subsidiefonds-pitch van Le Guess Who?, evenals een schets van de opzet voor twee van de posters (nog geen definitieve ontwerpen).
Le Guess Who? 2018 Line-up
Le Guess Who? 2018 featured programs curated by Devendra Banhart, Moor Mother and Shabaka Hutchings. View the full line-up via the link below.
LE GUESS WHO? 2018 LIN...
To make sure Le Guess Who? is a safe environment for everyone involved, we ask you to follow up on the below:
BEFORE LE GUESS WHO? 2021
Please note that traveling to and from the Netherlands is the...
Le Guess Who? 2022
4-Day Passes & Day Tickets for Le Guess Who? 2022, 10-13 November in Utrecht, The Netherlands, are now available.
4-DAY FESTIVAL PASS - SOLD OUT
DAY TICKET Th...
Audio Recordings
Listen to performances of the Microphones, Mazaher, FLOHIO, Slumberland feat. Sainkho Namtchylak, Zwangere Guy, Suuns, Ice Balloons and Plague Organ.
VISIT...
Video Recordings
Relive the festival; watch live performances by Mazaher and Suuns. The upcoming time, we'll be sharing more performances on this website and our social media.
VISIT VI...
Dive into our 2016 program guide, with info on artists, side programs during the festival, like Le Mini Who?, Le Bazarre, Juri Hiensch's Photo Exhibition on 10 Years of Le Guess Who?, and Le Gig Poster.
Le Guess Who? is an ever-changing format: we are always full of new ideas and looking for new ways to do what we do. In order to keep developing the festival the upcoming fifteen years on the same lev...
Facts & Figures
Browse through our Facts & Figures magazine, in which we offer you an insight into the impact and results of LGW ON/OFF, with data from both events, photos, and quotes from me...
Le Guess Who? is an ever-changing format: we are always full of new ideas and looking for new ways to do what we do. In order to keep developing the festival the upcoming fifteen years on the same lev...
Relive performances from LGW19
We captured some performances by Aldous Harding, Ayalew Mesfin & Debo Band, Efterklang, Girl Band, Makaya McCraven and Minyo Crusaders on...
LGW17 Photo Archive
Our photo team captured a lot of special moments during Le Guess Who? 2017. Take a scroll through our 2017 photo archive:
VISIT PHOTO ARCHIVE
The First 5 Years
Dive into our Five Years publication with pictures, reports and all the details about the first five editions of the festival.
The First 5 Years
Dive into our Five Years publication with pictures, reports and all the details about the first five editions of the festival.
LGW19 Line-up
Le Guess Who? 2019 featured programs curated by Fatoumata Diawara, Jenny Hval, Moon Duo, Patrick Higgins, Iris van Herpen & Salvador Breed and The Bug. View the full line-up via the...
Program & Other Guides
Dive into our 2016 Program Guide with artists biographies; info on Satellite Events like Le Mini Who?, Le Gig Poster and Le Bazarre; and Juri Hiensch's Photo Exhi...
Version March 2021
Since the 2018 implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Le Guess Who Foundation (hereafter referred to as LGW) is obligated to outline what personal...
Do you want to help us to make Le Guess Who? the best experience possible? Or do you want to gain working experience at a festival? Become a part of our team as a volunteer, where you’ll meet like-minded music lovers from all over the world.
Representing the Underrepresented
During LGW18, Canal180 shot a documentary of our festival. “Who is a headliner? Everyone has his personal headliner and I think that’s what music sh...
COSMOS
As an international festival, Le Guess Who? has always worked with a borderless and boundary-crossing ethos. Now, the organization further enhances this focus with the launch of COSMOS: a new,...
Le Guess Who? x Front
As part of our new, hybrid platform COSMOS, we once again collaborated with Dutch music platform Front to bring you live sessions with rising Dutch artists. Watch and listen to...
Thank you for supporting Le Guess Who?. We look forward to welcome you to our 14th festival edition, 11-14 November 2021 in lovely Utrecht.
Photo Gallery
Our photo team captured a lot of special moments during Le Guess Who? 2012. Take a scroll through our 2012 photo archive:
VISIT PHOTO GALLERY
Photo Archive
Our photo team captured a lot of special moments during Le Guess Who? 2014. Take a scroll through our 2014 photo archive:
VISIT PHOTO ARCHIVE
Le Guess Who? aims to present a festival that is accessible to everyone, but unfortunately not all festival venues are equally accessible. You can find more information about the accessibility in our venue map overview.
LGW ON Program
LGW ON introduces a freely accessible online TV channel with films and documentaries selected by past performers, Reports from Other Continents, previously unseen LGW recordings, and m...
LGW? 2021 Line-Up
Le Guess Who? 2021 featured programs curated by John Dwyer, Lucrecia Dalt, Matana Roberts, Phil Elverum and Midori Takada. View the full line-up via the link below.
LE GUESS WHO? 2...
Le Guess Who? presents ON/OFF
Together we are stronger than when we are alone.
With LGW Embassies, organizations and initiatives from around the world will give a view into their local and cultural scenes via live streams.
LGW ON TV Guide
For the broadcasting times of all programs, have a look at the TV Guide or download and print your own PDF version.
BROWSE THROUGH THE TV GUIDE
Learn more about who are helping us realize the festival.
Supervisory Board: Silvie Dees (chairperson), Matthijs Timmer (secretary), Roelof Bleker, Cas Boland, Ayla Schneiders
As an international festival, Le Guess Who? has always worked with a borderless and boundary-crossing ethos.
With COSMOS, we amplify local scenes from around the world to an international audience.
Le Guess Who? Recordings
Audio and video recordings of some performances from Le Guess Who? 2017 are available in our archive. Including Mary Margaret O'Hara, Sun Ra Arkestra, Les Amazones d'Afr...
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Relive performances by Elza Soares, Julia Holter & Digable Planets
VPRO 3VOOR12 captured the full performances on video at TivoliVredenburg's Grote Zaal. Watch below:
WATCH THE VIDEOS
Le Guess Who? 2016:
A Take Away Show with Wilco:
Elza Soares live at Le Guess Who? 2016:
Junun live at Le Guess Who? 2016:
Le Guess Who? takes pace across 20 locations in the city center of Utrecht; ranging from churches and galleries to theaters and pop venues. Most are within walking distance from each other. Here are a couple highlighted.
Le Guess Who? takes pace across 20 locations in the city center of Utrecht; ranging from churches and galleries to theaters and pop venues. Most are within walking distance from each other. Here are a couple highlighted.
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