For the tenth installment of its Polymorphism series, CTM Festival presents Forest Swords, performing his critically acclaimed recent album, Engravings, with a new live AV show.

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The UK producer’s debut full-length LP sounds a dense and deeply evocative boreal tangle of dubstep, drones, and dark electronics. His hazy psychedelics and the oblique, introspective quality of his compositions feed into the similarly haunting sonic peregrinations of Golden Diskó Ship, though the rising Berlin Current artist allows more natural light to sluice through her handcrafted soundworld. UK producer Kuedo shares roots with Forest Swords, with post-dubstep beats heavily inspired by steely 808-driven dirty South and gutter rap, bass, and grime. His arcing, glassy synth superhighways create an environment of personal fantasy and escapism. Kuedo appears for a DJ set at Polymorphism #10.

Forest Swords: Thor’s Stone on Nowness.com

Forest Swords

Forest Swords is Matthew Barnes’ solo project. Barnes, based in the windswept coastal town of Wirral, near Liverpool, began releasing gauzy, hometown-flavoured drone-pop on cassette in 2009. His debut EP, Dagger Paths, was released by US label Olde English Spelling Bee / No Pain In Pop in 2010. Barnes has remixed the likes of These New Puritans, Gold Panda, The Big Pink, and Burial, and has DJed for BBC’s 6music. Barnes is also involved in Dyymond Of Durham, a collaborative project with fine artist Otto Baerst. His most recent album, Engravings, was released to critical acclaim on Tri Angle Records in 2013.

Kuedo

A renaissance man of electronic music and beyond, Jamie Teasdale made his name as part of the acclaimed duo Vex’d, whose brutal take on dubstep helped define the genre in its infancy. His early works under his Kuedo moniker, such as the acclaimed Starfox on Planet Mu, were colourful and playful, with a sense of freedom from genre. His subsequent releases, including his debut LP Severant, have developed as more introspective and melancholic than his earlier works, as emotive soundscapes representing a futuristic, sci-fi world. Kuedo’s sets, both as a DJ and live, also reflect a diverse range of influences and inspirations. Hard Atlanta rap instruments and fervent footwork sit side-by-side with 80s synth soundtracks, quasi-disco, and elements from the post-dubstep musical universe. What defines Kuedo is, paradoxically, the impossibility of definition.

Gut + Irmler (canceled!)

Gut + Irmler unfortunatley had to cancel their performance at Polymorphism #10 due to scheduling issues. They will be replaced by a rare appearance of Kuedo, presenting some new material.

Hans-Joachim Irmler began experimenting with sound-generating technology at an early age. In 1969, he moved to Hamburg, where he was drawn into a collective of musicians and filmmakers that would become known as Faust. Their eponymous 1971 featured electronically generated and distorted sounds and arguably constituted the most far-out album ever released on a major label. This musical and technological transmutation contrived through self-built or heavily customized equipment has become the leitmotiv of Irmler's aesthetic. Irmler went on to form his own label, Klangbad, and launched the internationally acclaimed Klangbad Festival. Since releasing his first solo-album Lifelike, in 2003, ongoing improvisations and collaborations with other musicians have included musician, composer and multimedia artist Alfred 23 Harth, percussionist Z’ev, drummers Christian Wolfarth and Lucas Niggly, trumpeter Franz Hautzinger, and ex- Einstuerzende Neubauten percussionist, FM Einheit.

Gudrun Gut first came to prominence in the early eighties as part of a scene dubbed by the media as “ingenious dilettantes”. She was a member of Mania D and 80s all-female art rock bands Malaria! and Matador. She has scored films, videos, and radio plays, co-presents weekly radio broadcast Oceanclub together with Thomas Fehlmann, and is the founder and owner of the labels Monika Enterprise and Moabit Music. Her most recent music release, Wildlife (2012) follows her 2007 debut solo album, I Put a Record On, and a collaboration with Antye Greie for BBC Late Junction, Baustelle.

Golden Diskó Ship

Golden Diskó Ship is Theresa Stroetges, a young Berlin-based multi-instrumentalist and video artist who performs live as a one-girl orchestra. Her imaginative soundscapes, shifting from delicate melodic lines steeped in nostalgia to the feedback arcs and textured distortion of machine abuse, evoke lucid dreams and have won critical praise for their fresh, eclectic collages of electronic and acoustic sound. Her debut solo album, Prehistoric Ghost Party, was produced at the legendary Faust Studio, home of the Klangbad label, and her tracks have also been released on Monika Enterprise’s City Splits # 1 and The Wire Tapper’s June 2012 compilation.

Berlin Current is a collaborative initiative from CTM Festival, Berghain, Boiler Room Berlin, BLN.FM, No Fear of Pop, and ICAS. Sponsored by the Musicboard Berlin.