Taking place in the beautiful capital city of Latvia, Skaņu Mežs 2017 brings some top-notch experimental names for versatile music lovers and sonic explorers.

[social_warfare]

For a number of years Skaņu Mežs has been a good reason to visit Riga, the charming and beautiful Latvian city of stunning gothic architecture with a wonderful riverside. This year’s diverse and carefully curated edition has a number of solo acts and impressive collaborations and, as usual, some surprises. It nicely balances between experimental forms of sound art and quality dance music, thus making the experience pleasantly versatile.

This year the festival will feature a special performance from the reunited AMM with their classic line-up of Eddie Prévost, John Tilbury and Keith Rowe. The more extreme spectrum of sound will represented by Merzbow’s collaboration with Hungarian drummer Balázs Pándi, as well as American noisemaker Pharmakon, whose performances are always sincere and personal transmissions via subtle noise outbursts and shrieking vocals. Shabazz Palaces will stir the waters with their intelligent, multilayered dreamy cloud rap. Further on, the festival presents James Dillon, the legendary Scottish composer of the New Complexity school, whose Traumwerk will be performed by Duo Gelland. Roscoe Mitchell, a founding member of the world renowned Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians will also give a solo performance. Roscoe is also famous for experimenting with woodwind instruments. The more danceable part of the festival will be represented by dub techno pioneers Porter Ricks, the industrial/EBM induced techno of Broken English Club and Jlin, who delivers high quality dark, noirish footwork. Of course, there many more names to explore and discover. The full line-up can be found below.

The festival is curated in cooperation with SHAPE platform and it will take place at the music house “Daile” on October 13 and 14 with an opening event on October 6 at the art museum Riga Bourse.

Full line-up

- October 6, 18:00 – 22:00, art museum Riga Bourse, Dome Square 6, Riga:

Stephen Grew (SHAPE)
AMM
Nordic Affect perform works by Anna Thorvaldsdóttir, Þuríður Jónsdóttir, Hlynur Aðils Vilmarsson and María Huld
Sofia Jernberg

- October 13, 20:00 – 3:00, music hall „Daile”, K. Barona street 31, Riga:

STROPS
„Artifex Auditionis”, Anna Ķirse
Joe Morris / Daniel Levin
James Dillon
Pharmakon
Shabazz Palaces
Jlin
Machine Woman
Oriole / Linda Konone

- October 14, 19:00 – 2:00, music hall „Daile”, K. Barona street 31, Riga:

„Akusmātika”, Rolands Kronlaks
Roscoe Mitchell
Moor Mother
Mary Lattimore / Jeff Zeigler
Merzbow / Balázs Pándi
Broken English Club
Porter Ricks
Sign Libra

Festival tickets can be purchased here: ticketservice.lv