Supersonic Festival are delighted to confirm that internationally versed sound manipulator Holly Herndon shall practice her neuro-dissecting electronic anomalies on patrons at this year’s event, in support of her recently announced second LP, Platform. Herndon has become a leading light in contemporary music by experimenting within the outer reaches of dance music and pop songwriting possibilities. Herndon makes music that is impossible to ignore and could be viewed as the 21st century’s answer to the protest singer, tackling a host of topics ranging from systemic inequality, surveillance states and neo-feudalism. Her tactile live shows recast the laptop as an untapped physical instrument, to be used in the limbo that links noise, dance, avant and pop.

Liturgy released their new album, The Ark Work, yesterday, on Thrill Jockey. The Ark Work is swiftly becoming a firm favourite at Capsule HQ; it’s everything you could want from a long-awaited third full-length from a band who has always fearlessly prioritised its own staggering creative vision, to a point where the band itself almost disintegrated. Like a phoenix rising from its ashes, though, Liturgy are back, better than ever.

Ghastly genre gatekeeper bores, beware: this album is a rap/metal hybrid. Not only that, it also contains synthesised and real bagpipes, glockenspiels, time signature changes galore and is not shy about its pretensions to elevate life above the everyday.

The album was reviewed in The New York Times yesterday. Read the full review here.

Liturgy perform at Supersonic Festival this year. Tickets available here.

I think my soul haunts a bridge somewhere in Venice, wearing a blue raincoat.

Artist, musician and producer Elizabeth Bernholz, aka Gazelle Twin, answered 10 questions for Nurse With Wound’s Andrew Liles recently. Those curious about where Gazelle Twin’s unique art comes from will enjoy these little nuggets of minutiae from her daily life, which, we think, can often be more illuminating than asking the big questions.

Read the interview on Liles’s website, here.

Supersonic Festival is delighted to be partnering with the British Library to offer an opportunity for an artist to develop a new work as part of the festival programme in June 2015.

The British Library is home to the nation’s sound archive, an extraordinary collection of over 6.5 million recordings of speech, music, wildlife and the environment, from the 1880s to the present day. For this commission, a selection of wildlife and environmental recordings from the collection will be made available.

The the deadline for applications for our Open call for British Library Sounds Commission is this Friday, 27 March.

Full details about the commission and how to apply can be found on the Capsule website.

But then there is Hunt-Hendrix, who often sits upright with his eyes closed, breathing slowly and steadily. He pushes himself up from a bench and silently goes to another room, very rarely announcing his next move. Later, he intellectualizes the experience, telling me places like this play into his plan to be healthier and more agreeable in the future. In the last few years, he’s given up drugs, drinking, cigarettes—he even stopped drinking coffee in January. These spas, he suggests, are a way for Liturgy to go a little less crazy. “I’m older now,” he says. “I can go to a schvitz instead of staying up and partying until 6 a.m.”

A recent in-depth interview with Liturgy in Pitchfork features some memorable and illuminating descriptions of the band members as they relax in a schvitz (a Turkish bath to us not native to New York). An outing to the local schvitz is revealed as one of the band’s favourite bonding rituals, and it seems that the time spent sweating it out together in the name of friendship has been fruitful. Each member’s passion for the band is palpable as they are interviewed individually, and this is not forgetting that Liturgy’s infamy in recent years ultimately pushed the entity to breaking point for a spell. Now, Liturgy appear to be more confident, excited, bonded and dedicated than ever to the genre-pushing music that they make. Read the full article here.

Liturgy are set to release new album, The Ark Work, their first since 2011’s Aesthethica, on Tuesday 24th March. You can currently stream the The Ark Work at NPR music. It’s an incredible, fearless piece of rap/metal invention and highly recommended listening.

We welcome Liturgy to Supersonic Festival this June. Tickets were put on sale today along with the release of a new wave of artists added to the line up, including Gazelle Twin, Selvhenter, Apostille and Ravioli Me Away amongst others. The festival sold out in record time last year so do not delay if you don’t want to miss out.

Tickets – www.supersonicfestival.com/tickets/

Supersonic Festival, an internationally-renowned experimental music and arts festival with genre-bending sound and performance at its heart.

Whether you’ve been to every Supersonic that ever was or this year you’ll be dipping your toes into our welcoming waters for the first time, we are sure you’ll love our unmissable line-up, that already includes an opening concert with Will Gregory Moog Ensemble, post punk provocateurs The Pop Group, Liima, a new collaborative quartet formed of Danish indie-pop trio Efterklang and Finland’s finest improvisational percussionist Tatu Rönkkö. post-everything black metal lone wolves Liturgy and many more, and is bolstered by today’s batch of artist announcements. Without further ado…

Supersonic are pleased to announce that Gazelle Twin, the creation of producer, composer and artist, Elizabeth Bernholz shall be performing at the festival. From the start, Bernholz has utilised the anonymity provided by costumes, masquerade-like, to assist in her performance. Her unnerving, Cronenberg-inspired craft is, according to Bernholz, ‘like a shedding of skin’, creating an uncompromising and unmissable live set.

That’s not all – grit’n’synth solo punk Apostille (also of London ear-graters The Lowest Form and label boss of Night School Records) will be pummelling samplepads and synapses for the cathartic good of everyone involved; Ravioli Me Away bring their brightly coloured prickly post-pfunk; maxi-percussionist Danes Selvhenter explore the field between repetitive, drone-like compositions, strong beats and free improvisation.  Mysterious organ and saxophone possessing super-duper-group Sex Swing (members of Dethscalator, Part Chimp, Mugstar) and, from Northern Ireland, manic, droning interpreters of local mythology and instrumentation Woven Skull are both crucial components of this year’s Supersonic Festival.

Circuit Des Yeux is another welcome addition, Haley Fohr’s striking, impassioned baritone is the centrepiece and guiding force, gravitating towards singers like Ma Rainey, Memphis Minnie, Etta James and Billy Holiday. Fohr’s songs tap into the stark imagery of pre-war blues, folk and jazz, as well as also being influenced in equal parts by her study of ethnomusicology.

On Sunday Richard Dawson curates an afternoon of performance, named after his infamous podcast, Delight Is Right. The programme will play host to a number of very rare live UK performances by artists handpicked by Dawson, those whom he holds dear and sites as an influence on his own songwriting.

These include Ethiopian free spirit Afework Nigussie, who plays a range of traditional stringed, woodwind and percussive instruments. Many people are familiar with the Ethiopian music of the golden seventies; Nigussie’s music both harks back to this era and innovates the ancient Azmari tradition. An artist for over fifty years Jiří Wehle is a Czech street musician from Prague who specialises in ethnic and Medieval instruments. Also performing is harp liberationist Rhodri Davies and fellow Tyne folk narrator Phil Tyler.

As it stands, the Supersonic Festival 2015 lineup is this:
Apostille / Afework Nigussie / Circuit Des Yeux / Eternal Tapestry / Flamingods / Gazelle Twin / Happy Meals / Jiří Wehle / Liima – Efterklang + Tatu Rönkkö / Liturgy / Phil Tyler / Ravioli Me Away / Rhodri Davies / Richard Dawson /  Selventer / Sex Swing / Six Organs of Admittance/ Slow Magic / The Pop Group / Tomaga! / Wildbirds and Peacedrums / Woven Skull

In addition to this, Supersonic reveal the first of the extra curricular goings on across the weekend. In partnership with Many & Varied, Supersonic are delighted to present Bees in a Tin 2015 as part of this year’s festival. Taking place during the daytime on Friday 12th June, Bees in a Tin is a gathering for people who make or are interested in unique interfaces for the world around them, featuring talks and workshops from key makers and thinkers from around the country. If you’re interested in the spaces where the arts, science, technology and games crash into one another, then this is for you.

Audience participation is a key element of what makes Supersonic so special, and this year we have two projects in particular which embody this approach. Firstly we present a new commission by Circumstance titled A Folded Path – a pedestrian speaker symphony, a soundtrack for a city, carried through the streets by a participating audience, experienced by everyone it passes. Comprising of 30 custom-built, location sensitive portable loudspeakers, each plays a different element of the music. The speakers are highly directional, so the movement of the people within the group changes the acoustic relationship between them, the audience become the orchestra.

Secondly, taking inspiration from Capsule’s artwork for the Supersonic 2015 edition, we bring the Dirty Electronics Horn & Bells Workshop. Audience members are invited to build a three-dimensional sound-object. The sound object will feature printed circuit board artwork and a DIY piezo flared horn that omits bursts of noise and generative electronic bell-like sounds.  It also comes with a rustic stick beater! Dirty Electronics have become synonymous with DIY electronic sound and a music that is born out of hand-made machines. In Dirty Electronics, process and performance are inseparably bound. The ‘performance’ begins on the workbench devising instruments and is extended onto the stage through playing and exploring these instruments.

Tickets – www.supersonicfestival.com/tickets/

Audience members are invited to build a three-dimensional sound-object. The sound object will feature printed circuit board artwork and a DIY piezo flared horn that omits bursts of noise and generative electronic bell-like sounds.  It also comes with a rustic stick beater. Dirty Electronics have become synonymous with DIY electronic sound and a music that is born out of hand-made machines. In Dirty Electronics, process and performance are inseparably bound. The ‘performance’ begins on the workbench devising instruments and is extended onto the stage through playing and exploring these instruments.
www.dirtyelectronics.org

Dirty Electronics have collaborated with many artists including Chris Carter (Throbbing Gristle) Merzbow, Pauline Oliveros, Nicholas Bullen (Napalm Death and Scorn) and Rolf Gehlhaar (original Stockhausen group), and have released a series of sold out hand-held synths on Mute Records.

Please note that this workshop will be require sign up and places are limited to just 15 – there is also an additional charge to cover the cost of the materials (£34)
For weekend ticket holders only email ‘dirty electronics’ in the title to russell[at]capsule.org.uk

Supersonic Festival are delighted to be partnering with the British Library Sound Archive to create a new commission as part of the Capsule Labs, an artist development and commissioning scheme devised to create more opportunities for commissioning experimental, cross-disciplinary art.

Stephen Cracknell, founder of The Memory Band, has worked with selected material from the Library’s archive to create a new work, Children of the Stones  is intended as a sonic adventure into the strange heart of our haunted landscape. . Mixing archival recordings, natural and industrial sounds, traditional melodies and original field recordings alongside a new acoustic score, the performance will celebrate the strange, mysterious and playful relationship we have developed with the ancient and magical landscape we inhabit. The title is taken from Jeremy Burnham and Trevor Ray’s classic children’s television series set among the standing stones of Avebury. Since the time of antiquarians John Aubrey and William Stukeley the recording and surveyance of our prehistoric landscape and monuments has had a profound effect upon the modern British mind. In poetry, art and song this landscape has been a canvas onto which we have projected the very essence of how we see ourselves and the ghosts of those who came before us. From William Blake’s visionary Jerusalem to films such as David Rudkin’s Penda’s Fen it has been the backdrop to an exploration of the inherent spirituality of our Island and through the now well-documented folk-horror genre we have used that landscape to explore what lurks in the shadows of our collective identity. We are all children of the stones

Since 2003 The Memory Band has been mapping the mutant edgelands of British Folk music, where digital machinery and acoustic music combine to make traditional music from the future.

thememoryband.com/

To accompany the commission there will be a ltd edition seven inch record on sale containing audio from the performance. These will be hand cut (by Phil Macy) in an edition of 100 with a hand finished sleeve (designed by Ben Javens) on 500 micron charcoal card (in homage to the Folkways Library Sleeves) via Static Caravan Records.

The British Library is home to the nation’s sound archive, an extraordinary collection of over 6.5 million recordings of speech, music, wildlife and the environment, from the 1880s to the present day. It has recently launched the Save our Sounds programme which is a major digitisation project to preserve the nation’s sound heritage – read more here: www.bl.uk/projects/save-our-sounds

A street musician from Prague who specialises in tradional and Medieval instruments, Jiří Wehle has had many musical incarnations in his life, but, in his words, has always followed the path of the troubadour.

Starting his musical life in the 1960’s where he played guitar in a rock and roll band, Wehle has been a prolific artist for over fifty years. After his father’s death in the 90’s, with whom he had a long-standing musical collaboration, he has gone on to play for The Estate Theatre in Prague, compose original music for Czech puppet-performer Pavel Vangeli, and take musical roles in several films.
Wehle also plays constantly in the streets, something which he continued to do throughout the Communist regime of the 1980’s and 1990’s. After this turbulent period in history, Wehle’s music became much more independent, and he also began to use Medieval instruments such as shawms, bagpipes, chalumeaus, krumhorns, cistras and hurdy-gurdy.

Sex Swing have only been in existence since mid-2014 but are already a firm favourite of  The Quietus: ‘Moulded from members of Part Chimp, Mugstar and Dethscalator, Sex Swing could be any number of things. Will they lean more towards the vibe of Dethscalator, a dark channelling of early punk, down to the outrage baiting song titles such as ‘AIDS Atlas’ and ‘World War II Hitler Youth Dagger’? Could they be more infused with Part Chimp’s reverberating, distorted, Bronxesque new-wave punk? Perhaps they’ll side more with the psychedelic, drifting journeys of Mugstar. Maybe though, it’ll be a mix of all of the above, or even something more unique and bizarre.’

What little we do know about them includes their use of organ and saxophone, so take that for what it’s worth. Given the credentials of the members’ previous bands, we’re just as excited to find out as you. They feature Stu Bell on drums and Dan Chandler on vocals, reunited after the collapse of Dethscalator. Except Dan isn’t roaring like a minotaur who’s just stepped on an upturned plug with bare feet, he’s actually singing, and he sounds a little bit like Ian Curtis. Jase Stoll (Mugstar) adds chunky guitar, while Tim Cedar (Part Chimp) plays a mean Alan Vega style organ and Colin Webster is on a giant saxophone, itchily skronking away somewhere between Fela Kuti and Colin Stetson. I mean, I don’t want to jinx it or anything but they might actually be superb…

A massive thank you to everybody who supported our Kickstarter campaign. 256 wonderful backers pledged a whopping £21,220 towards making Supersonic Festival 2015 happen. We are bowled over by all the support and enthusiasm that the campaign gathered and feel privileged to have such a smashing audience.

We’ll be putting tickets for Supersonic on sale this Tuesday at 12 noon, as well as revealing more of the line up. Also be aware that Supersonic Festival 2015 is Limited Edition with limited capacity; we sold out last year so don’t miss out.

Fri 12 June 10.30 – 17:00 Millennium Point
Curzon Street, Birmingham, West Midlands B4 7XG

Tickets £6/10 and includes lunch https://bees2015.eventbrite.co.uk
Booking info there are 20 free places available to Supersonic weekend ticket holders
https://bees2015.eventbrite.co.uk
code: superduper

Many & Varied in partnership with Supersonic are delighted to present Bees in a Tin 2015, as part of this year’s festival. Taking place during the daytime on Friday 12th June, Bees in a Tin is a gathering for people who make or are interested in unique interfaces for the world around them, featuring talks and workshops from key makers and thinkers from around the country.  If you’re interested in the spaces where the arts, science, technology, and games crash into one another: then this is for you.

Join us for an energetic day of talks, games, demos and workshops encompassing: microbiology, guided tours, research through design, impersonation of plain clothes police officers, sculptural musical controllers; …and custard. All rounded up with a keynote from the splendid Owl Project.

Key note by Owl Project

A collaborative group of artists consisting of Simon Blackmore, Antony Hall and Steve Symons. They work with wood and electronics to fuse sculpture and sound art, creating music making machines, interfaces and objects which intermix pre-steam and digital technologies. Drawing on influences such as 70’s synthesiser culture, DIY woodworking and current digital crafts, the resulting artwork is a quirky and intriguing critique of the allure and production of technology.

Bill Aitchison – The Tour of All Tours

For the last two and a half years Bill has been taking guided tours of every sort around the world and recycling them by giving his own tours of tours. These are a parasitic sort of guided tour that critically, and with a distinctive dry humour, explore the political, social and cultural subtexts of tourism.

Aste Amundsen/Apocalypse Gameshow – Computer Aided Theatre

In this playtest you are invited to take part in experiments, either as a protagonist progressing through a responsive storyline or as an audience watching and influencing the process. Exploring the ways of: processing audience information/actions during live events, writing meaningfully responsive storyworlds and cuing actors with audience data during interactive exchanges.

George Buckenham – Making videogames with squishy bits

George will be discusiing design principles learnt from making videogames that involve custom physical hardware. Games like: Punch The Custard, a game about punching a bowl of custard, Fabulous Beasts, a game about competing for resources where you make moves by stacking blocks in a tower.

Robert Curgenven – “A Young Lover’s Guide to Perceptual Pataphysics” or “How Bass Changed My Life”

Heavily phasing live sound from custom dubplates, acetates, test pressings and low-frequency oscillators are used to directly power live video projection that works on principles of colour shadows discovered by Edwin Land – the inventor of Polaroid photography and sunglasses. As much a physical exploration of architecture as it is of the audience’s bodies, both through sound and the perceptual psychology of colour and light. Comes with a warning for those susceptible to flickering lights.

Simon Farid – How To Impersonate a Plain Clothes Police Officer

We are going to commit a crime. Impersonating a police officer is against the law, even though we know they impersonate us (the public) all the time. In this workshop we’ll look to rebalance this by impersonating a plain-clothes police officer, something that cannot really be identified. Collectively examining, mimicking and enacting covert police practices will help us to better counter surveillance on ourselves and to look at notional public space in a new way.

Farmer Glitch : Farm-Yard Debris, Carboot Treasures – Petrol Can Synths…

A ‘show and tell’/performance session, showcasing a variety of hand-built/salvaged musical-instruments and sound-making devices. This will include: chip-based synthesisers housed in Kodak Brownie cameras, synths made from old paraffin/oil cans along with a rusty-broken bucket – now re-envisioned as the Atari-Punk-Bucket.

Dr Simon Park – Exploring The Invisible

In the familiar settings of our urban environments, microorganisms have established thriving and complex ecologies that are almost always overlooked. This will be a unique microbiologically informed walk and mobile workshop, which will explore the importance of this the urban microbiology, using examples found in the environment local to the Bees In A Tin event.

Swoomptheeng – Raving with Ritualised Punk Technology

A live Swoomptheeng performance showcasing their over-sized, semi-organic and brightly-coloured sculpted MIDI instruments which illustrate their influences from 80′s TV, 90′s rave and contemporary art; to folk-art, hacking and hobbyist cultures. Followed by a presentation of how the instruments work and the innovative techniques used to interface with music software such as Traktor via MIDI joysticks, Arduino and other electrical components.

Rebecca Taylor – The Rooftop Project: The Story So Far…

The Rooftop Project is an experimental project through which highly rewarding and transformational learning experiences are emerging. Opening with a lively presentation of the story so far, this session will then invite you to discuss ‘our’ awareness of doing projects such as these and pose questions such as – are we doing it for good or glory?

Duncan Speakman – The social composition of A Folded Path

A Folded Path is a pedestrian speaker symphony; a soundtrack for a city carried through the streets by a participating audience.

Comprising location sensitive portable loudspeakers – each playing a different element of the music.The GPS position of the speaker causes different sections to be played and the movement of the people within the group changes the acoustic relationship of the composition: the audience become the orchestra.

Clare Reddington

Clare, Creative Director of Watershed will be chairing a Q&A panel at Bees in a Tin.

A Folded Path – Circumstance
Fri 12 – Sat 13 June

Circumstance are bringing unique performance, A Folded Path to Birmingham as part of the Supersonic festival in partnership with BCMG. The performance invites the audience to become the city’s orchestra, creating soundscapes while walking on a choreographed journey through the streets.

A Folded Path is a pedestrian speaker symphony, a soundtrack for the city, carried through the streets by you, experienced by everyone it passes.
30 custom-built, location-sensitive portable loudspeakers create a stunning and evocative cinematic layer over the city streets, each playing a different element of the music circumstance have composed. One might be playing a voice, another a sweeping violin or glistening electronic tone.

The GPS position of the speaker causes different sections of the composition to be played, so the structure of the work resonates with the environments it passes through. The speakers are highly directional so the movement of the people within the group changes the acoustic relationship between them, the audience become the orchestra.

In small groups, you will take different routes through the city, coming together at points to create moments of harmony and resonance.

Booking info:
To book your free place email russell[at]capsule.org.uk with ‘A Folded Path’ in the title and the time slot you’d like. Each performance is for 30 participants only.

Friday: 7.45pm (SOLD OUT)
Saturday: 2.45pm and 5pm
The performance last about an hour and involves walking so please wear appropriate footwear.
The city centre location will be revealed on sign up

A Folded Path is a co-commission with BCMG
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group thrives on innovation and invention and is critically acclaimed for championing the most forward-looking music regionally, nationally and internationally.

Woven Skull began playing together in 2008 in the empty sparse Irish countryside in a house owned by two of the members and located at the foot of Sheemore (a hill where two factions of fairies clash in an annual battle). These atmospheric surroundings helped to forge their music, which has been described as ‘minimal, repetitive, distorted, ugly and beautiful in one’. The trio spent several years experimenting with combinations of instrumentation, household objects, kitchen utensils, seashells, footsteps, chimes, recordings of cats purring and frogs mating while developing a sound that after a recent set was described as ‘a Turkish Velvet Underground.’

Within the group, song writing is split equally between Aonghus on densely propulsive guitar and Natalia on distorted mandola. The riffs Natalia composes are seeped deep in the Ukrainian lullabies and superstitions that surrounded her as a child and those that Aonghus writes stem from his past musical projects, which span from harsh noise to improv. These are glued together by the endless cyclical rhythms created by Willie and inspired by the sounds of the bogs and woods that surround his home: from syncopated cattle calls to the beating wings of bats in the night to the creaking of trees as they push against each other in the wind.

Woven Skull have recorded in dark haunted woods, beside bottomless lakes, and in the attics of abandoned houses. Their upcoming LP, Lair of the Glowing Bantling, is their first studio album and captures a sound that’s more in line with their live performance than past releases, which have been a mix of lo-fi practice tapes, outdoor recordings and segments from collaborative sets.

Selvhenter, are part of the bustling and sprawling Copenhagen underground. In a controlled eruption of two drum kits and distorted trombone, violin and alto saxophone, they kick against rationalism and the homogeneity of welfare society, showing us that passion doesn’t have to be sung, but can flourish as collective instrumental cramps.

Selvhenter has been active for seven years, performing with influential outfits like the Swedish-Norwegian trio, The Thing, and Japanese drummer, Yasuhiro Yoshigaki’s Orquesta Libre.

The band has honed an uncompromising, boundless sound that blends experimental rock, improvised free jazz and punk, noise and metal. With 2014’s LP, Motions of Large Bodies, Selvhenter has taken their music to a new level, incorporating a strong funky element alongside their characteristic elements of drones, open-minded playfulness and the central polyrhythmic patterns of the two drummers. There are groovy, danceable beats, horns and violin soaring into the sky with drones and long-stretched melodies. Live, the band takes audiences on a trance-like road trip with myriad interesting and at times, surprising, detours.

Ravioli Me Away are a dangerously ambitious and delusional all girl jazzy post punk, hip funk outfit from London.

The drum patterns are rudimental and the keyboard tunes are repeated over and over, they aren’t about how complex the songs are, this is immediate and in your face. A true Riot Grrl sensibility. They use samples of David Cameron to illustrate what is wrong and where they stand. More often than not the lyrics are shouted and screamed out rather than just sung. Voices are used as instruments and sounds are slammed together to make things work.

But then, just as you are getting sucked into the weird, off kilter world of Ravioli Me Away they produce the final two songs on the album which are so at odds with the rest that it’s almost as if they thought they should do something different. ‘Euro Breakdown’ has a classic electro sound, polished and catchy. While ‘Scooby Loop’ gives you dubby bass, weird little sounds underneath and a fantastic groove.

Gazelle Twin is the creation of producer, composer and artist, Elizabeth Bernholz. From the start, Bernholz has utilised the anonymity provided by costumes, masquerade-like, to assist in her performance. ‘The original reason,’ says Benholz, ‘is that I’m quite shy and, with my face on show, I’d be inclined to be meek and apologetic.’ Rather than an exercise in vulgar emotional exhibitionism, Gazelle Twin constitutes ‘a retreat inwards’, crossing boundaries of identity and gender.

The persona created for 2014’s industrial-pop LP, Unflesh, and on display live in recent months, grew partly out of Bernholz’s response to the London riots: ‘young people are always demonised, very misunderstood, but they’re also at the peak of this intense consumerist culture. You just think, what might happen if we ply generation on generation with excess desire, unattainable desires, and just hammer it? It’s survival mode, but it’s survival for nothing. Survival for the most menial reward. You’re not running from a lion, you’re just trying to get out of the supermarket after buying some dinner.’

Gazelle Twin’s unnerving, Cronenberg-inspired craft is, according to Bernholz, ‘like a shedding of skin. It’s a tearing out of your body down to your skeleton and breaking free’. Paradoxically perhaps in the light of this, Gazelle Twin is also a unusually discreet, secretive animal in a world where new female starlets are pushed to reveal everything about their private lives, in song and interview, photograph and film. Instead, Bernholz masks the surface, taking us on a dark and depraved journey into the remote cells of her subconscious.

As Circuit des Yeux, Haley Fohr creates music that embodies the complexity of human emotions, juxtaposing tenderness and grief, ecstasy and horror, using sounds as representations of the emotional spectrum that we all experience.

Fohr’s striking, impassioned baritone is the centrepiece and guiding force of Circuit Des Yeux. Gravitating towards singers like Ma Rainey, Memphis Minnie, Etta James and Billy Holiday, her songs tap into the stark imagery of pre-war blues, folk and jazz, as well as also being influenced in equal parts by her study of ethnomusicology.

During an extensive period of touring in 2013, Fohr traveled solo: no band, no tour manager, no driver. In that solitude she learned to commune with the audience in a way that she hadn’t ever before. That connection sparked in her mind a conversation with the audience, and many of the lyrics on new album In Plain Speech convey an intimacy with the listener. Fohr also became acutely aware of disquiet, a pervasive anxiety, which permeated society in almost every city she visited. ‘I felt an uneasiness that superseded phonetic communication,’ she writes. ‘Something dim is in the air, and it is looming large.’

Circuit des Yeux “Lithonia” (Official Music Video) from Circuit des Yeux on Vimeo.

The solo musical guise of Glaswegian DIY protagonist Michael Kasparis, Apsotille was initially a creative harbour from his groups Please and The Lowest Form. With the imminent release of new album, Powerless, the project has grown into an explosive synth-punk project unafraid of both physicality and emotional leakage. Live Apostille is raw and unleashed, immersing the audience in his adrenaline surges of expression.

Fiercely independent in practice and execution, Apostille’s stated purpose is to bridge the gap between audience and performer, to connect through the fog of power structures and post-modernism and to ferment a direct pop music unconcerned with control.

Rhodri Davies plays harp, electric harp, live-electronics and builds wind, water, ice, dry ice and fire harp installations. He has released four solo albums: Trem, Over Shadows, Wound Response and An Air Swept Clean of All Distance.

His regular groups include: a duo with John Butcher, Cranc, HEN OGLEDD with Richard Dawson and Common Objects. He has performed, recorded or collaborated with the following artists: Derek Bailey, Laura Cannell, Jenny Hval, C Joynes, Kahimi Karie, Okkyung Lee, Phill Niblock, Jim O’Rourke, Bill Orcutt, Ben Patterson, Eliane Radigue, Otomo Yoshihide and John Zorn.

Phil Tyler plays Anglo-American folk music using guitar, banjo, voice and fiddle. From Newcastle upon Tyne, he has played in various folk, rock and ceilidh bands for many years. His music is steeped in a love of traditional narrative song, full-voiced sacred harp singing and sparse mountain banjo. Alongside his wife, Cath, Tyler has performed on stages as diverse as the Royal Opera House in London and a dank tower in the old city walls of Newcastle. Taking a more minimal approach to material than some, Tyler’s music penetrates to the very rawest essence of folk tradition.

Afework Nigussie is a musician and singer from Gondar in northern Ethiopia. He has a background in Azmari, the music of the wandering minstrels. The Azmari are the voices of freedom of expression in Ethiopia, improvising constantly, commenting on politics, religion and everyday life. Their style is very specific, both provocative and humorous. Nigusse has also trained at the National Theatre in Addis Ababa and, more recently, collaborated with The Ex.

Nigussie’s music celebrates the rich tradition of both secular and religious music in Ethiopia, which has resulted in a wide range of zefen (folk song). Zefen include songs to accompany iskista (dancing), fukara to celebrate the heroic deeds of warriors and musho and lekso to express sorrow at funerals. Singing forms the accompaniment of farming and comes to the fore at every pivotal moment of life. He also plays a range of traditional stringed, woodwind and percussive instruments. Many people are familiar with the Ethiopian music of the golden seventies; Nigussie’s music both harks back to this era and innovates the ancient Azmari tradition.

Rising up from the bed of the River Tyne, a voice that crumbles and soars, steeped in age-old balladry and finely-chiselled observations of the mundane, Richard Dawson is a skewed troubadour, at once charming and abrasive.

Dawson is a barrage of musical expression and personality. A shambling exterior, amidst tales of pineapples and underpants, ghosts of family members and cats, his stage presence is at once inviting and awe-inspiring. The visceral power of his voice against the lurching modality of his guitar lines conjures false memories of Tim Buckley and Richard Youngs duetting with Sir Richard Bishop and Zoot Horn Rollo. There is a rawness to the music that embodies timeworn singing traditions: the fire and pestilence gait of the Sacred Harp singings, the fractured call and response of the Gaelic Psalms, the unbridled power of Mongolian throat singers. Its power is tempered by intimacy, flecked with human emotion anchored by a sense of place. These are tales sung to ward off the misery of the everyday, to transport and transcend, one moment tender, one moment violent. Music to alter our reality.

Having spent years incubating his singular art, becoming a quiet legend on the Newcastle experimental scene before exploding across the UK and Europe in 2012, Richard is no stranger to the Supersonic stage. This year, he returns to perform as well as curate an afternoon of music by a selection of his favourite artists from the UK and across the globe, offering a very special insight into his musical fascinations.

There are only three days left for you to pledge towards our Kickstarter campaign to receive early bird priced tickets and a range of special limited edition gifts. There are only very limited spaces available for Delight is Right, Richard Dawson’s performance and curated afternoon of music on Sunday, so we suggest you get them whilst you can!

We’re very happy to reveal these beautifully designed Supersonic T shirts, available only to those who pledge on Kickstarter. The exclusive design was created by David Hand, who also runs the Lancashire & Somerset record label.