fluid form club #7
Volatile French progressive experimentalists with a velvety layer of punky Japanese epic chants
POIL UEDA
PoiL Ueda is the result of a collaboration between Junko Ueda, a vocalist and satsuma-biwa player from Japan, and PoiL, a French rock/contemporary music band. The music is based on the 13th-century Japanese epic tale "Heike-Monogatari."
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Vocalist Junko Ueda is an eminent figure of the Japanese medieval epic storytelling, whose warm and profound voice summons terrestrial energies, meeting with the organic madness of the monster PoiL, who create cosmic rock without a safety net
Buddhist chants practiced by monks to ward off evil spirits meet legends of ancient naval battles and the grievous decline of empires. Junko's stories surf freely on PoiL’s tumultuous waves pulsing with brashness and precision
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The compositions are based on traditional epic singing accompanied by the satsuma-biwa and Buddhist Shomyo chant. Through the fusion of an ancient Japanese traditional music with a hyper modern European musical formation, this project offers the opportunity to discover a unique musical universe.
An innovative performance where PoiL's unrestrained experimental rock blends with the mellow and sinuous voice, compelling narrative, and remarkable charisma of Junko Ueda.
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Radically manipulated flutes, anarchic soprano vocals and analogue electronics
WITCH 'N' MONK
Defiantly original duo Witch 'n' Monk combine Mauricio Velasierra’s radically electrified Latin American flutes, with Heidi Heidelberg’s jazz-punk guitar/bass and anarchic soprano vocals.
The music travels seamlesly from structured arrangements to wild improvisations, using a myriad of control pedals and labyrinthine signal paths to orchestrate live. The essence of their collaboration is encapsulated in the name; dark/light, feminine/masculine, punk/Romantic. Creating contrast is fundamental to their work and thus they tread upon the edges of genres. Celebrated in jazz, contemporary classical and DIY music scenes they have played prestigious venues and festivals such as the Royal Festival Hall, Berlin, London and Umea Jazz Festivals and Paris' La Cigale.
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Their latest album was released on John Zorn's legendary Tzadik Records in 2020 to critical acclaim. It was named Contemporary Album of the Month by The Guardian and received the prestigious Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik.
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"Blending Latin American flutes, electronics, complex vocal lines with a touch of Frank Zappa lyricism and a radical punk aesthetic, the duo of Heidi Heidelberg and Mauricio Velasierra crafts a dramatically bizarre vocal music from another dimension! Intertwining dark/light, feminine/masculine, composed/improvised and punk/romantic, dreamlike improvisations are sampled, manipulated and reinvented through the lens of contemporary music and pop. You have never heard anything quite like Witch ’n’ Monk!" - John Zorn
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Live visuals
TBA
TBA
fluid form club #1:
maarja nuut x witch 'n' monk
2 acts, 1 collaboration and a scent performer
MARCH 18 2023
ausland, Berlin
fluid form club #1
Fourth world folk meets ambient space jazz
MAARJA NUUT
Maarja Nuut is a singer, violinist, electronic artist, and composer whose work spans a vast range of rich musical worlds. Classically trained and an alumnus of several prestigious music schools and institutions, she’s since delved into a number of disparate genres: Hindustani classical music while studying in New Delhi, Estonian archive sounds and dance, ethnomusicological research, and, more recently, the outer limits of looping and electronic sounds. Fuelled by her instincts and curiosity, such exploration comes from an inner need, and a desire to probe each world’s musical language, techniques, and expressional qualities – elements she swirls into her own, mesmerising art.
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Restlessly creative, Nuut has always been interested in storytelling and what the past can tell us about the future; for her, myths provide connection points to the modern world and societal upheaval. Since the release of her debut record Soolo in 2013, she’s received widespread critical acclaim alongside numerous awards, and has toured the world several times over as a solo performer. Known for her compelling, often hypnotic live performances, she’s also collaborated with a number of artists such as Sun Araw, the Estonian Chamber Choir Sireen, Kristjan Järvi, Kiya Tabassian, Howie B and Hendrik Kaljujärv AKA Ruum among others. Maarja’s third solo album ‘Hinged’, released in August 2021 received widespread critical acclaim while being called one of Europe’s most innovative musical artists, always looking to dive deeper (Future Music).
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“Maarja is a sonic astronaut in search of her long-lost home planet.” - The Quietus
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“On her third solo album, she’s able to turn on a dime from gliding electronica to clattering, punky drums that threaten to fly apart into free jazz, yet somehow keep the sense that this is all part of one process – and a rather shamanic one” - MÜ Magazine
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Radically manipulated flutes, anarchic soprano vocals and analogue electronics
WITCH 'N' MONK
Defiantly original duo Witch 'n' Monk combine Mauricio Velasierra’s radically electrified Latin American flutes, with Heidi Heidelberg’s jazz-punk guitar/bass and anarchic soprano vocals.
The music travels seamlesly from structured arrangements to wild improvisations, using a myriad of control pedals and labyrinthine signal paths to orchestrate live. The essence of their collaboration is encapsulated in the name; dark/light, feminine/masculine, punk/Romantic. Creating contrast is fundamental to their work and thus they tread upon the edges of genres. Celebrated in jazz, contemporary classical and DIY music scenes they have played prestigious venues and festivals such as the Royal Festival Hall, Berlin, London and Umea Jazz Festivals and Paris' La Cigale.
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Their latest album was released on John Zorn's legendary Tzadik Records in 2020 to critical acclaim. It was named Contemporary Album of the Month by The Guardian and received the prestigious Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik.
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"Blending Latin American flutes, electronics, complex vocal lines with a touch of Frank Zappa lyricism and a radical punk aesthetic, the duo of Heidi Heidelberg and Mauricio Velasierra crafts a dramatically bizarre vocal music from another dimension! Intertwining dark/light, feminine/masculine, composed/improvised and punk/romantic, dreamlike improvisations are sampled, manipulated and reinvented through the lens of contemporary music and pop. You have never heard anything quite like Witch ’n’ Monk!" - John Zorn
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Live scent design
KLARA RAVAT
Klara Ravat is an olfactory artist based in Berlin.
By opposing the division between the realm of memory and the realm of experience, Ravat absorbs the tradition of remembrance art into daily practice. By investigating the concept of landscape in an adventurous and exploratory way, she wants to amplify the wonderment of the spectator by creating compositions or settings that generate tranquil poetic images that leave traces and balances on the edge of alienation and recognition.
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After studying qualitative trend research in Barcelona Klara moved to The Netherlands where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (ArtScience at The Royal Academy of Arts). At the same time, she started studying Psychology at the Open University of Catalonia. Klara is the co-founder and the director of the Smell Lab, a platform for olfactory art and inter-disciplinary practices that relate to scent as a medium for expression and communication, in Berlin and in an international context. The Smell Lab main mission is to co-produce, host, educate, innovate and support artistic practices that involve the sense of smell and olfaction.
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fluid form club #2:
pulled by magnets x witch 'n' monk
2 acts, 1 collaboration and a live video animator
APRIL 15 2023
ausland, Berlin
fluid form club #2
Sludge rock disguised as holyminimalism led by ECM artist Seb Rochford
PULLED BY MAGNETS
LINE UP
Drums: Seb Rochford
Bass: Ruth Goller
Sax: Kyetil Møster
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Seb Rochford is best known as leader of the post-jazz formation Polar Bear and co-founder of punk jazzers Acoustic Ladyland, as well as a founding member of Sons of Kemet and session drummer for everyone from Pete Doherty to Adele, to Brian Eno. His latest project, Pulled By Magnets, however, sounds nothing like any of the above. It's sludge rock disguised as ambient music; A grindcore album recorded in a cavernous church and layered with subtle spiritual tropes, to the point that it sounds like a piece of sacred minimalism
Running an instrument through an effects device can fundamentally change the nature of its sound. A guitar run through a distortion pedal can occupy the frequency range we associate with a string section; A flute run through an echo chamber can sound like an angelic choir. Rose Golden Doorways is full of such slap in the face trompe l'oreille, if you will. It's a trio for saxophone, bass and drums, but nothing like, say, Sonny Rollins' Way Out West. Rochford plays his drums like a classical percussionist, often deeply immersed in the mix; Neil Charles' bass guitar sounds downright orchestral; Pete Wareham's insanely distorted saxophone can sound like Jimi Hendrix exploring the outer reaches of the solar system, or someone operating a particularly spirited analog synthesizer; or occasionally like the death cries of a buffalo. There are moments when they play with the intensity of a thrash metal band but sound like Ligeti; there are loud freakouts that create a diffuse, sonic blizzard that resembles a peculiarly gothic variant of ambient music. It's a collection of sounds you've never heard before, which is quite an accomplishment.
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https://pulledbymagnets.bandcamp.com/album/rose-golden-doorways
Radically manipulated flutes, anarchic soprano vocals and analogue electronics
WITCH 'N' MONK
Defiantly original duo Witch 'n' Monk combine Mauricio Velasierra’s radically electrified Latin American flutes, with Heidi Heidelberg’s jazz-punk guitar/bass and anarchic soprano vocals.
The music travels seamlesly from structured arrangements to wild improvisations, using a myriad of control pedals and labyrinthine signal paths to orchestrate live. The essence of their collaboration is encapsulated in the name; dark/light, feminine/masculine, punk/Romantic. Creating contrast is fundamental to their work and thus they tread upon the edges of genres. Celebrated in jazz, contemporary classical and DIY music scenes they have played prestigious venues and festivals such as the Royal Festival Hall, Berlin, London and Umea Jazz Festivals and Paris' La Cigale.
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Their latest album was released on John Zorn's legendary Tzadik Records in 2020 to critical acclaim. It was named Contemporary Album of the Month by The Guardian and received the prestigious Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik.
​
"Blending Latin American flutes, electronics, complex vocal lines with a touch of Frank Zappa lyricism and a radical punk aesthetic, the duo of Heidi Heidelberg and Mauricio Velasierra crafts a dramatically bizarre vocal music from another dimension! Intertwining dark/light, feminine/masculine, composed/improvised and punk/romantic, dreamlike improvisations are sampled, manipulated and reinvented through the lens of contemporary music and pop. You have never heard anything quite like Witch ’n’ Monk!" - John Zorn
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Real-time otherworldly video animation
GOMITO
Gomito is the pseudonym of Mario Campos Castellano, an interdisciplinary artist from the Canary Islands. Gomito has been working as a painter, musician, visual artist in Berlin since 2004. His visuals are a combination of reinvented dadaist surrealism with an uncanny emotional depth and dry humor. His most relevant side projects are Nemesis Air, an airbrush painting and sculpting collaboration with Lina Nilsson, and Pizza Suicide TV, a series of art TV shows. He is also part of the artist community Sameheads in Berlin.
fluid form club #3:
pILI COÏT x witch 'n' monk
2 acts, 1 collaboration and a scent performer
MAY 6 2023
ausland, Berlin
fluid form club #3
Grungy but beautiful songs on weird rhythmic orbits, using a detuned 12-string guitar and electro-junk percussion
PILI COÏT
Pili Coït is a duo composed of Guilhem Meier (guitar/vocals but also drummer in PoiL, PinioL, le Grand Sbam, and LFant) and Jessica Martin Maresco (prepared percussions, also singer in Ez3kiel, Mercurial, Saddam Webcam)
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Their sound is always evolving while remaining faithful to the pseudo minimalism that characterises the duo; an unclassifiable percussion set, with its bass tom, oil can and its low-fi synth-drum, accompanied by a guitar with twice as many strings as it should have. The harmonic richness is multiplied tenfold, the sound of the 12-string resonating with a distant echo, Persian perhaps, seventies (why not?), but opening up the acoustic dimensions of a resolutely electric band. It is as if Jeff Buckley offered us a tea ceremony during a Portishead incantation. It's like a tête-à-tête between Nina Hagen and Nick Drake at the top of a Ferris wheel. As if Kurt Cobain had arrived by bike from China. Crazy and sexy, creative and intimate, fragile and intense... two is better
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Jessica Martin Maresco | vocals, bass tom, can, synth-drum.
Guilhem Meier | vocals, guitar.
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Radically manipulated flutes, anarchic soprano vocals and analogue electronics
WITCH 'N' MONK
Defiantly original duo Witch 'n' Monk combine Mauricio Velasierra’s radically electrified Latin American flutes, with Heidi Heidelberg’s jazz-punk guitar/bass and anarchic soprano vocals.
The music travels seamlesly from structured arrangements to wild improvisations, using a myriad of control pedals and labyrinthine signal paths to orchestrate live. The essence of their collaboration is encapsulated in the name; dark/light, feminine/masculine, punk/Romantic. Creating contrast is fundamental to their work and thus they tread upon the edges of genres. Celebrated in jazz, contemporary classical and DIY music scenes they have played prestigious venues and festivals such as the Royal Festival Hall, Berlin, London and Umea Jazz Festivals and Paris' La Cigale.
​
Their latest album was released on John Zorn's legendary Tzadik Records in 2020 to critical acclaim. It was named Contemporary Album of the Month by The Guardian and received the prestigious Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik.
​
"Blending Latin American flutes, electronics, complex vocal lines with a touch of Frank Zappa lyricism and a radical punk aesthetic, the duo of Heidi Heidelberg and Mauricio Velasierra crafts a dramatically bizarre vocal music from another dimension! Intertwining dark/light, feminine/masculine, composed/improvised and punk/romantic, dreamlike improvisations are sampled, manipulated and reinvented through the lens of contemporary music and pop. You have never heard anything quite like Witch ’n’ Monk!" - John Zorn
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Live scent design
KLARA RAVAT
Klara Ravat is an olfactory artist based in Berlin.
By opposing the division between the realm of memory and the realm of experience, Ravat absorbs the tradition of remembrance art into daily practice. By investigating the concept of landscape in an adventurous and exploratory way, she wants to amplify the wonderment of the spectator by creating compositions or settings that generate tranquil poetic images that leave traces and balances on the edge of alienation and recognition.
​
After studying qualitative trend research in Barcelona Klara moved to The Netherlands where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (ArtScience at The Royal Academy of Arts). At the same time, she started studying Psychology at the Open University of Catalonia. Klara is the co-founder and the director of the Smell Lab, a platform for olfactory art and inter-disciplinary practices that relate to scent as a medium for expression and communication, in Berlin and in an international context. The Smell Lab main mission is to co-produce, host, educate, innovate and support artistic practices that involve the sense of smell and olfaction.
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fluid form club #4:
TATSUYA YOSHIDA & KAZUHISA UCHIHASHI
x witch 'n' monk
2 acts, 1 collaboration and a live video animator
SEP 6 2023
ausland, Berlin
fluid form club #4
Indomitable drums hyperactively paired with electronic explorations and explosive melodies
TATSUYA YOSHIDA & KAZUHISA UCHIHASHI
(CHO-SOKKYO)
A widely celebrated genius of the Japanese underground Tatsuya Yoshida is at the centre of a number of projects that overflow with cascades of sounds and indomitable drums. There are often touches of electronic explorations with explosive melodies that are both compelling and ingenious. A true hero of the creative music scene Tatsuya Yoshida performs with his duo ‘Cho-Sokkyo’: a collaboration with Berlin-based Japanese guitarist Kazuhisa Uchihashi.
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Tatsuya Yoshida is the only consistent member of the renowned progressive rock duo Ruins, as well as of Koenji Hyakkei. He is also a member of the progressive rock trios Korekyojinn and Daimonji. He has been cited as "[the] indisputable master drummer of the Japanese underground".
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Kazuhisa Uchihashi is a Japanese guitarist involved in free improvisation. Uchihashi played in various rock bands and later studied jazz. He joined the band the First Edition, and formed the band Altered States. He was also a member of Otomo Yoshihide's Ground Zero. Uchihashi also plays daxophone, and in addition to his role as a free improviser,
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Radically manipulated flutes, anarchic soprano vocals and analogue electronics
WITCH 'N' MONK
Defiantly original duo Witch 'n' Monk combine Mauricio Velasierra’s radically electrified Latin American flutes, with Heidi Heidelberg’s jazz-punk guitar/bass and anarchic soprano vocals.
The music travels seamlesly from structured arrangements to wild improvisations, using a myriad of control pedals and labyrinthine signal paths to orchestrate live. The essence of their collaboration is encapsulated in the name; dark/light, feminine/masculine, punk/Romantic. Creating contrast is fundamental to their work and thus they tread upon the edges of genres. Celebrated in jazz, contemporary classical and DIY music scenes they have played prestigious venues and festivals such as the Royal Festival Hall, Berlin, London and Umea Jazz Festivals and Paris' La Cigale.
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Their latest album was released on John Zorn's legendary Tzadik Records in 2020 to critical acclaim. It was named Contemporary Album of the Month by The Guardian and received the prestigious Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik.
​
"Blending Latin American flutes, electronics, complex vocal lines with a touch of Frank Zappa lyricism and a radical punk aesthetic, the duo of Heidi Heidelberg and Mauricio Velasierra crafts a dramatically bizarre vocal music from another dimension! Intertwining dark/light, feminine/masculine, composed/improvised and punk/romantic, dreamlike improvisations are sampled, manipulated and reinvented through the lens of contemporary music and pop. You have never heard anything quite like Witch ’n’ Monk!" - John Zorn
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Real-time otherworldly video animation
GOMITO
Gomito is the pseudonym of Mario Campos Castellano, an interdisciplinary artist from the Canary Islands. Gomito has been working as a painter, musician, visual artist in Berlin since 2004. His visuals are a combination of reinvented dadaist surrealism with an uncanny emotional depth and dry humor. His most relevant side projects are Nemesis Air, an airbrush painting and sculpting collaboration with Lina Nilsson, and Pizza Suicide TV, a series of art TV shows. He is also part of the artist community Sameheads in Berlin.
Gefördert von:
fluid form club #5:
**Y** X witch 'n' monk
2 musical acts & other unexpected things
NOV 10 2023
Kantine am Berghain, Berlin
fluid form club #5
**Y** (DE)
** Y ** ("Four Star Y") is a Berlin formation that makes strong, weird, driving improvised music, with occasional excursions into psychedelia and jazz rock.
Radically manipulated flutes, anarchic soprano vocals and analogue electronics
WITCH 'N' MONK (UK/COL)
Defiantly original duo Witch 'n' Monk combine Mauricio Velasierra’s radically electrified Latin American flutes, with Heidi Heidelberg’s jazz-punk guitar/bass and anarchic soprano vocals.
The music travels seamlesly from structured arrangements to wild improvisations, using a myriad of control pedals and labyrinthine signal paths to orchestrate live. The essence of their collaboration is encapsulated in the name; dark/light, feminine/masculine, punk/Romantic. Creating contrast is fundamental to their work and thus they tread upon the edges of genres. Celebrated in jazz, contemporary classical and DIY music scenes they have played prestigious venues and festivals such as the Royal Festival Hall, Berlin, London and Umea Jazz Festivals and Paris' La Cigale.
​
Their latest album was released on John Zorn's legendary Tzadik Records in 2020 to critical acclaim. It was named Contemporary Album of the Month by The Guardian and received the prestigious Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik.
​
"Blending Latin American flutes, electronics, complex vocal lines with a touch of Frank Zappa lyricism and a radical punk aesthetic, the duo of Heidi Heidelberg and Mauricio Velasierra crafts a dramatically bizarre vocal music from another dimension! Intertwining dark/light, feminine/masculine, composed/improvised and punk/romantic, dreamlike improvisations are sampled, manipulated and reinvented through the lens of contemporary music and pop. You have never heard anything quite like Witch ’n’ Monk!" - John Zorn
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Gefördert von:
fluid form club #6
Instrument hackers and euphoric plot twisters who create the sound of a carefully planned riot.
13 YEAR CICADA
13 Year Cicada are 3 friends who all play samplers plus instruments. Philip plays drums plus sampler, Hotti plays bass plus sampler, Zooey plays keys/sings plus sampler. Their journey as a band reaches back seven years, and their jelling as human and musical collaborators promises many more to come.
All three musicians have a background in jazz which they managed to escape quite early on in their careers - not because they lack the love for the genre but because becoming a part of a less elitist and more diy scene seemed important (ok, also sometimes moshpits are just more fun than chairs). In 2017, with their frst album 'Totem Tongue' they found a beautiful home in Gandula records (Barcelona), proud to share a roster with bands as great as ZA!. They followed up with their second album '00YES' in 2019 and released a single in collaboration with Berlin underground label tomatenplatten ('Fourtrack Mind Vol. 3') in 2021. Throughout these years they got massive help in touring possibilities from both Gandula and tomatenplatten and also the wonderful family of Blaublau Records from Bern/Zurich. 13YC have so far toured Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Finland, Croatia, Italy, Czech Republic, France and have some beautiful tour plans for 2022 lined up.
13YC are constantly on the quest to minimize power dynamics, starting with their own way of working. If people could get rid of the divine right of kings, just think what we could do 13 years from now?
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Radically manipulated flutes, anarchic soprano vocals and analogue electronics
WITCH 'N' MONK
Defiantly original duo Witch 'n' Monk combine Mauricio Velasierra’s radically electrified Latin American flutes, with Heidi Heidelberg’s jazz-punk guitar/bass and anarchic soprano vocals.
The music travels seamlesly from structured arrangements to wild improvisations, using a myriad of control pedals and labyrinthine signal paths to orchestrate live. The essence of their collaboration is encapsulated in the name; dark/light, feminine/masculine, punk/Romantic. Creating contrast is fundamental to their work and thus they tread upon the edges of genres. Celebrated in jazz, contemporary classical and DIY music scenes they have played prestigious venues and festivals such as the Royal Festival Hall, Berlin, London and Umea Jazz Festivals and Paris' La Cigale.
​
Their latest album was released on John Zorn's legendary Tzadik Records in 2020 to critical acclaim. It was named Contemporary Album of the Month by The Guardian and received the prestigious Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik.
​
"Blending Latin American flutes, electronics, complex vocal lines with a touch of Frank Zappa lyricism and a radical punk aesthetic, the duo of Heidi Heidelberg and Mauricio Velasierra crafts a dramatically bizarre vocal music from another dimension! Intertwining dark/light, feminine/masculine, composed/improvised and punk/romantic, dreamlike improvisations are sampled, manipulated and reinvented through the lens of contemporary music and pop. You have never heard anything quite like Witch ’n’ Monk!" - John Zorn
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Live video art
SANJA STAR
Sanja Star's artistic practice is heavily influenced by the concept of frequencies – the building blocks of the universe according to quantum physics. By delving into the mysterious realm of these vibrations, she seeks to visually represent the hidden workings of the universe and shed light on the enigmatic laws that govern it. Through her work, she aims to encourage viewers to question their understanding of the world around them. By breaking through conventional constraints of traditional media, she hopes to ignite a sense of curiosity in her audience, inviting them to delve deeper into the complexities of our existence. Through her art she also hopes to bridge the gap between science, art and technology, showcasing the beauty and interconnectedness of these seemingly disparate fields.
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JOIN US
THE FLUID FORM CLUB has been created to gather people interested in unusual music and its interaction with new art forms. Music that escapes classification, often full of quick changes and by its nature passionately unpredictable. We're bringing together a community of curious minds. ​
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