Lineup
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...
San Francisco platform The Earth Girl Helen Brown Center For Planetary Intelligence Band (or E.G.H.B.C.P.F.I.B), lead by Helen Brown, was first devised by Sonny Smith for his 100 Records Project...
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...
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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...
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...
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,...
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...
The story of Somalia’s legendary Dur-Dur Band is one of regrouping and resilience. In the 80s, their vibrant Somali funk music embedded the nightlife of the capital of Mogadishu. Since dictator...
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...
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...
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...
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...
The adventurous, innovative Dutch band The Ex have defied categorization ever since their origination in 1979. Born out of the punk explosion, when anything and everything was possible, the band have...
Maâlem (or ‘master musician’) Houssam Guinia is the son and successor of the late Mahmoud Guinia, an emblematic figure in the practice of West-African Gnawa music. Gnawa is an extens...
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...
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...
Some bands exist to obey your sweetest aural proclivities, but Mueran Humanos is no such band. This Argentinian, Berlin-based duo aims to unnerve and shudder with their strangely fascinating, queasy c...
Brooklyn five-piece Gustaf have generated a surprising loud buzz for a band which hasn’t been in circulation for more than a few years. Formed in 2018, they quickly garnered a reputation in punk...
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...
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...
Four piece anarcho-punk band Subhumans began redefining the boundaries of the musical genre in the eighties and have continued to do so, on and off, for the past four decades. They are known for their...
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...
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...
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....
Made up from an ensemble cast of Finish rock musicians – with members hailing from bands like Speedtrap, Maailmanloppu, Perikato, and Kylmä Sota – Kohti Tuhoa is hailed as a...
Brigid Dawson may have become known as a centerpiece for Thee Oh Sees, in which her whimsical harmonies gave the band’s psychedelic rock new meaning. Now, she takes her keyboard and vocals elsew...
Even though the four members of Bo Ningen originate from various regions in Japan, the band was originally formed in London. With their fiery stir of psychedelic experimentation, vigorous noise and se...
According to the band itself, it was a ‘common misinterpretation of psychosis’ that led Ice Balloons to start making music. The Brooklyn-based noise/rock band features Sean Kennerly (Samia...
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...
Even with just limited material out, the enigmatic Black Country, New Road became a steadfast live sensation with their mixture of post-punk, ashen Slint-like minimalism and pastoral dark folk leaning...
Jesu’s and Goldflesh’s Justin Broadrick says he’s writing pop songs. Or, at least, his version of what a pop song might sound like - dark, gloomy and glittery, mixing twinges of elec...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Italian sonic shamans San Leo deliver a swarming, uncompromised blend of heavy music and minimalism, with a particular taste for epic, cathartic live shows. Thanks to constant touring and through...
Lycox is part of a long line of vital cutting-edge producers signed by pan-African Portuguese label Príncipe. Lycox laces elements from kuduro, batida and tarraxhina into a nimble sound that si...
2019 was quite a different year for ethnographic label Ored Recordings. Instead of setting out on expeditions throughout the frozen Caucasus mountains on a quest to collect traditional music from the...
Rarely has a band sounded so much like their name. It’s as if Egyptian-Austrian artist Leila Hassan and collaborator Francesco Cavaliere picked it out before the instruments themselves. Just lik...
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...
This avant-rock group's relationship with Le Guess Who? goes way back; the three-piece Montreal band has played the festival time and time again. This year, it only made sense to mark our return to fo...
Besides being a member of The Mauskovic Dance Band, Amsterdam-based Donald ‘Donny’ Madjid is also a drum-machine-wielding story-teller, whose debut album ‘Pure Donzin’, takes i...
Luc Bersier’s band Reymour exchanged the quietness of the Swiss Alps for Brussel’s busyness, and out of it came ‘Leviosa’, released under Amsterdam label Knekelhuis. Their debu...
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...
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...
This summer, The Mauskovic Dance Band’s Nic Mauskovic introduced the wonderful world of Nicolini with ‘Penni’s Palace’, released by Amsterdam label South of North. Picture this...
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...
Two full decades after their debut, punk group OvO sound just as hardcore as they did back then. Their latest record, 2020’s ‘Miasma’, sees the savage band seeking to represent...
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)...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Post-grunge/noise/hardcore juggernaut and overall cool Canadians METZ have released two albums worth of aural onslaught. This time around, the band frantically push their well-established sound even f...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Insecure Men is the wacky side project of Fat White Family-member Saul Adamczewski and Ben Romans-Hopcraft (Childhood). First release ‘Karaoke For One’ contains nine stripped cover songs d...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Essaie pas is one of the most exciting bands you’ll find on James Murphy’s influential label DFA Records. The group features burgeoning Canadian electronic maestro Marie Davidson as one of...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
In the universe of Mykki Blanco, art and real life don’t imitate each other, but are symbiotic and reciprocal. Few artists could infiltrate mainstream audiences with cinematic, experimental trac...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Alexander von Schlippenbach is the founder of the famous free jazz super-ensemble Globe Unity Orchestra, which at different points featured Peter Brötzmann, the late Jaki Liebezeit, Paul Rutherfo...
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...
Those familiar with acquainted acts like Meridian Brothers and Romperayo already how deliciously fun, kooky and strangely sophisticated Los Pirañas are on stage. But, to spell it out for the ye...
During this decade, Atlanta art-punkers Deerhunter have further established themselves as one of the finest bands alive, consolidating an unmistakable sound with restless reinvention. The electronic-d...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...