Lineup
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...
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...
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...
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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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Alex Figueira’s Conjunto Papa Upa brings the street scenes of his salad days in Caracas to the stage in infectious, celebratory fashion. Groove is the big overriding factor for Conjunto Papa Upa...
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...
“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...
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...
Zia Anger’s short films have premiered at the New York Film Festival and Locarno. She has directed music videos for an impressive roster of artists, including Angel Olsen, Mitski, Beach House, Z...
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...
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...
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,...
DJ 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...
SPAZA are a band with no permanent members, performing in line-ups curated by the South African label Mushroom Hour Half Hour for the specific purpose of recording improvised or workshopped material....
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...
The Necks know no precedent and no peers. And they like it that way – the trio, founded in Australia in 1987, have been happily making music on the fringes for over three decades, where they hav...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Many nomadic Tuareg artists channel and preserve the vibrancy of life that was once the everyday in Mali. Ahmed Ag Kaedy initially set out to do the same, but instead his haunting eight-track LP...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Model Home is a hyperprolific experimental hip-hop formation from Washington D.C., instigated by rapper NAPPYNAPPA and producer Pat Cain. The duo recruits an ever-changing cast of collaborators to giv...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Roberto SOLO Fonseca still lives in the heart of his birthplace Havana, which explains why his adaptation of Cuba’s musical heritage remains so refreshingly renegade and immediate. He spawned ex...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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)...
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...
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...
Minyo Crusaders breathe new life into traditional Japanese folk songs (‘minyo’) by merging them with Latin, African and Caribbean rhythms and flourishes of exotica. By doing so, the 10-pie...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Together, the most revered merchant of noise and two of the most resounding voices in grime form an alliance of gritty UK fringe music that simply knows no equal. These three artists will stretch the...
‘FIS’ stands for ‘forever in search’, and in all respects, this is exactly the intent of producer Olly Peryman. The monumental soundscapes of FIS highlight that sense continuit...
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...
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...
Like some people collect stamps, Sofia Jernberg collects vocal disciplines. Born in Ethiopia in 1983, the Oslo-based artist mastered myriad styles – from opera singing to pitchless singing &ndas...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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&...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 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”...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Colombia-born, Berlin-based experimental producer and sound artist Lucrecia Dalt has developed an enigmatic sound marked by tactile and hypnotic layers, synthesizers and vocoding. With compositions th...
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...
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...
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...
Eiko Ishibashi’s acumen as multi-instrumentalist, producer and songwriter speaks for itself: she spans genres like classical, jazz and improvisation with aplomb, crossing creative swords with li...
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...
Listening to this jazz quartet feels like catching a glimpse of something intimate through a door left open – and the chemistry is undeniable. But instead of a fleeting moment, time is suspended...
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...
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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...