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ROKOLECTIV

FESTIVAL FOR ELECTRONIC MUSIC AND RELATED ARTS

14-17 APRIL 2011// MNAC Bucharest

The 6th edition of Rokolectiv festival for electronic music and related arts is set to take place between 14th and 17th of April in Bucharest’s MNAC (Museum of Contemporary Art) with concerts, performances, installations and film screenings. This year’s music program is sure to haunt both good and bad dreams, with a schizoid line up going from pure fun-driven beats to fuzzy dark performances.

Zombie Zombie will be back to Bucharest with their new John Carpenter inspired show, as well as Jimmy Edgar, dropping his XXX downright jam tracks. Austrian trio Elektro Guzzi is called to do what they do best, playing instrumental power techno with the traditional rock arrangement of bass, guitar and drums. 

The arguably most “maximal” of the minimalists’ era, Isolée, also gets back in the spotlight following the release of his new album on DJ Koze’s Pampa label, while Canadian bred The Mole and the very young Jozif of Wolf & Lamb notoriety will assure the lush beat-driven part.  The fairytale-named Romanian producer Petre Inspirescu will also have a special appearance during this edition of the festival.

Sunday’s performances include the cult-horror set of Manchester-orbiting duo Demdike Stare, as well as the amorphous noisescapes of highly acclaimed NYC artist Daniel Lopatin, aka Oneohtrix Point Never. The festival is set to end with the utterly theatrical performance of  Max Tundra. Warmly beloved by a devoted few, but undeniably an acquired taste too esoteric for mass consumption, the crazy shows that  Ben Jacobs puts up under the moniker Max Tundra are dizzyingly dense, hyperactive, still obsessed with melody.  

This year’s edition also reveals fresh names like Spanish singer Hyperpotamus performing acapella on four microphones and a loop station pedal, as well as Bucharest’s own breakthrough Montgomery Clunk  and the European live debut of Salva, a prodigious San Francisco beat maker.

Staalplaat Soundsystem and Feedbacksociety will round up the program with their most recent installations/performances, as well as a solo exhibition by the Ars Electronica award winnerZimoun, set to open the festival on the 14th of April at MNAC.

Digi-pop-prog, deep bass, gritty loops, battered vocal hooks, infectious melodic lines and psychedelic filtering are just some of this year’s key words. Though words become redundant in our festival’s context, as most of the invited artists are trained to escape genre pigeonhole traps.