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FriWith CTM.14 Prelude on October 11, CTM Festival invites its longstanding community of artists and festival-goers to join with curious new comrades in spurring its 15th festival season into motion. In a programme sampling the scope of CTM.14
Dis Continuity, London-based trio Factory Floor’s kaleidoscopic sound allies the lush danceability and vintage synths of East India Youth, INNEN + AUSSEN, and Hyetal with the hypnotic acceleration and raw noise of Reliq and Opium Hum.
Factory Floor
UK renegades and free radicals Factory Floor came together in 2005. The group released a handful of singles and EPs on labels like Blast First Petite and Optimo, but gained notoriety for the ferocity of their live performances – the sheer volume and intensity of which occasioned audiences ripping off their clothes and equipment erupting into flames. Developed over two years, Factory Floor’s self-titled LP refines their idiosyncratic and combustible sound: an improbable synthesis of raw, spontaneous experimentalism and keen, even unnerving acuity. Nik Colk Void’s drowsily lush and dispassionately coercive vocals and loamy guitar riffs, Gabe Gurnsey’s deliciously propulsive percussion, and Dominic Butler’s intuitive, phosphorescent modular synth playing convene in an electric collection of configurations that animate from the inside out. Shake the feeling back into your limbs and feed yourself into the stream.
East India Youth
London compatriot and synth pop aerialist East India Youth, aka William Doyle, joins
Factory Floor for their EU tour. Following a handful of releases with Doyle & The Forefathers on 6 Music, Doyle’s first solo effort, Total Strife Forever, was quickly singled out for its fresh take on home-brewed bedroom electronica, and his most recent EP, Hostel, was released on The Quietus Phonographic Corporation in March. Built around naked, imperfect vocals and glowy synths, the young producer’s compositions come together like time-lapse photography, stuttering frames flipping into morphing, mutable loops.
Hyetal
Hyetal (David Corney) shores up Doyle’s synth pop with the bass-heavy, melodic, and atmospheric “purple” sound distinctive to his UK home base. Hyetal has also played as Velour with fellow Bristol producer Julio Bashmore, and his most recent album, Modern Worship, was released on True Panther Recordings in May this year.
Reliq
Berlin-based avant-doom unit Reliq adulterates the neon-prismatic patina of the programme’s predecessors, drawing from the dark matter of an unraveling psyche to craft simultaneously ecstatic and suffocating sound worlds. The group, comprising vocalist grayl, drummer Xorzyst, and guitarist Niko Lfo, performs in conjunction with CTM Festival’s ongoing Berlin Current initiative, presenting new and experimental music from local artists with support from Musicboard Berlin.
→ Bandcamp
Innen + Aussen | Opium Hum
Rounding out an already immoderate lineup, CTM.14 Prelude also presents INNEN + AUSSEN, a formidable new DJ collaboration from nd_baumecker and Jenus Jackman, and the roving, ritual drones and hazy narcotics of Leisure System co-captain, CTM curatorial force, and creator of the N ≠ E (not equal) club night series Michail Stangl, aka Opium Hum.
Berlin Current is a collaborative initiative from CTM Festival, Berghain, Boiler Room Berlin, BLN.FM, De-Bug, and ICAS. Sponsored by the Musicboard Berlin.