Line-UP HOBBYKELLER FESTIVAL #3

Able Noise (Den Haag)

Image: foisvois

Baritone guitar and drum duo Able Noise experiments the physicality of music performance through voice, tape and unconventional methods of playing their instruments. They craft a minimal, immersive performance that blends free improvisation and elemental rock. Their recorded work relies less on their respective instruments, and more on an assemblage of field recordings, heavily processed instrumentation, and exploratory mixing techniques. Their output is primarily focused on live concerts, letting their music be shaped by the acoustic and aesthetic properties of the space, and the dynamics formed between themselves and their audience.

bandcamp
https://ablenoise.bandcamp.com/album/high-tide

facebook
https://www.facebook.com/this.is.able.noise/

instagram
https://www.instagram.com/ablenoise/
@ablenoise

press
Wire Charts 2025 18-26 [pdf]
Able Noise Artikel Wire March 2025 [pdf]

youtube
Able Noise Live [youtube]

tags
#experimental #tapemanipulation #post-rock #thehague #athens #ablenoise

Kou (Lille)

KOU – A project by Apolline Schöser (half of Nina Harker) & Thomas Coquelet.

Rewires your brain for the better

Apolline & Thomas have been performing since 2022 under the KOU guise with 24 electronic harmoniums. Producing dense layers of tones & overtones. On their debut album KOU steers in another direction. The harmonium appears occasionally, but more prominent are delicate guitar pluckings, distant vocal effects, synths, flutes, piano strokes, a touch of musical magic and Apolline’s jazz not jazz vocals.

About their first album:
As soon as the needle drops it’s clear we are jump-cutting straight to the other side of the mirror. Cats purr, a woman sings as if asleep, drum machines stutter and warp and Alvin Lucier is not ’sitting in a room that is not different to the one you are not in now’. If you’re already confused, join the club. But, it’s the good kind of confused, a bewildering experience akin to the first time hearing the Faust Tapes or watching Inland Empire. Wait though, as pigeons coo and the tape machine clunk-clicks a gorgeous weirdo version of Roger’s and Hart’s Blue Moon emerges to let you know this isn’t just dada splurge, there’s a genius pop sensibility at work here too. Side two takes us further into the murk with mournful detuned brass, stoned Joan La Barbara-esque vocalese and a droning Farfisa hymn, before ending with another too-tempting snatch of DIY pop. Some of the references are recognisable. All kinds of 70s/80s European art prog – think early Battiato, Pierot Lunaire’s Gudrun, Lucia Bosè and Gregorio Paniagua’s Io Pomodoro etc etc. There’s a strong whiff of 90s us goof-off surrealism too- Bongwater, Siltbreeze, Royal Trux’s Twin infinitives, the damaged folkier side of Alastair Galbraith, Half-Japanese, early Beck even all feel relevant.

Like an oddball group of friends you might meet by chance and end up weirding-out with for days, the minds behind this deliciously odd music allow you to stay for a while in their strange subcultural world. You might not want to live here forever but a short trip, while it lasts, rewires your brain for the better.

website
https://koumusik.wordpress.com/

bandcamp
https://aguirrerecords.bandcamp.com/album/kou

youtube
https://youtu.be/IM6Wir3eId4

article (french)
https://musique-journal.fr/2024/09/06/quelques-pistes-pour-une-nouvelle-ceca-ou-communaute-europeenne-de-la-chanson-et-de-lamour/

tags
#experimental #kou #ninaharker #avantgarde #electronic #folk #freejazz #Lille

Milkweed (UK)

Photo credits: Poppy Warring

Milkweed describe their sound as slacker-trad, which is both true and somehow insufficient. For three years Milkweed have refined a formula – taking existing source material (a folklore journal, a book on Welsh myths, another on bronze age human remains and most recently Thomas Kinsella’s masterfully stark translation of the Táin Bó Cúailnge), cutting up the words and feeding them through a woodchipper of lo-fi production and experimental folk music.

On the face of it their musical concerns are transatlantic – they follow the rich creative line that runs between British traditional music and the songs and tunes of the eastern United States. In reality their scope is global, and rooted in deep time, with influences from prehistory bleeding into a troubled and troubling modern era. As a result their music doesn’t sit easily anywhere, but ricochets between bewitching folk music and disconcerting hauntological experimentation.

Milkweed’s anonymity isn’t affected, R. from Milkweed insists. “We don’t wear masks, you can come to a show and say hi. We’re not gonna be weird. But in terms of me trying to sound interesting? I’m not a very interesting person.”

bandcamp
https://milkweedfolk.bandcamp.com/album/remsc-la-2
https://milkweedfolk.bandcamp.com/album/folklore-1979-2
https://milkweedfolk.bandcamp.com/album/the-mound-people

instagram
https://www.instagram.com/mlkwd_
@mlkwd_

press
The Matter And The Sense: An Interview With Milkweed [The Quietus 05.02.2024]
https://thequietus.com/interviews/milkweed-interview-folklore-1979/
New Weird Britain: Remscéla Review [The Quietus 30.04.2025]
https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/new-weird-britain/new-weird-britain-in-review-for-april-by-noel-gardner/

tags
#experimental #experimentalfolk #folk #alternativefolk #britishfolk #fieldrecordings #tapemusic #UnitedKingdom #weirdfolk #hauntology #slackertrad #lofifolk #experimentalhiphop

Photo Credit: Poppy Waring

Das Festival wird gefördert durch das Kulturamt der Stadt Köln