Aether - a transcendental waveform market

Aether – a transcendental waveform market is a joint exploration of dancefloor and electronica. Where is the dividing line between musical experiment and club culture? Or is there one at all?

Aether – a transcendental waveform market is a one-day micro-festival outside (during the day) and inside (at night) Dampfzentrale Bern, including snacks, refreshments and much more.

OUTSIDE 17:00 – 22:00
Félicia Atkinson (live)
kӣr (live)
Jauss (DJ)
Gray Chalk (DJ)

INSIDE 22:00 – 05:00
Imogen (DJ)
Ina Valeska (DJ)
Piet Møbler (DJ)

It is impossible to exaggerate when describing the work of this French artist. Félicia Atkinson is a composer and visual artist who also runs Shelter Press, one of France’s most important electronica labels. Atkinson’s music is both an attentive and adventurous portrayal of contemporary sound art culture, oscillating somewhere between conceptual, psychedelic art music and excessive sound composition, for which Atkinson employs an exceptional range of instruments.

In Belgrade, kӣr, aka Bane Jovancevic, is one of the city’s most important club activists. On the one hand, he is the musical backbone of the legendary Drugstore club and, on the other hand, he shapes the local experimental scene through his live projects, both as a solo musician and in duo with Jan Nemecek. For many, he was the big discovery at the key «Digital Tsunami» Festival 2018. kӣr combines minimalistic music with an industrial wave-like touch in a very special way, which is often simply interwoven with a hint of rhythmic structures.

Rarely is someone referred to as «a DJ’s DJ» – but Imogen definitely deserves this title! In this extremely creative realm, the high art of DJing, the London resident offers a wide range of tracks nestling between dark electro, fast breakbeat and playful techno. Imogen is also busy enhancing her reputation as an independent musician through her work as a producer and presents artists such as Umwelt, Jensen Interceptor and Textasy den Äther on her radio show «Radio Radar».

The Zurich-based DJ and music lover has undergone some metamorphoses throughout his career and one can only hope that all DJs focus on their music so meticulously. As this is what Jauss achieves with such success in his project formheretillnow: the visualisation of obscure sound gems that cruise well beneath the radar. As a DJ, he stages music with an array of materials, which he somehow manages to drag from the shallows of the past and the present into the future.

DJ sets by Piet Møbler are unparalleled, just because you never really know what to expect. Since even though the foundation of his sets lies in the wave-psychedelic sound of late 80s’ proto-techno, he never fails to take us on a trip into the avant-garde of contemporary club music. It is probably thanks to this visionary attitude that his party series called «Shifted» (at Winterthur’s favourite club Kraftfeld) quickly became one of the must-go-to places in this scene.

Due to his many projects, Gray Chalk is a constantly smouldering presence in Bern’s art and music scene: be it with his brilliant radio show «Atlas» on Radio Bollwerk, through the electronica label Unvague, as one half of the live project Colliding Fields – or as the DJ and producer Gray Chalk. As the latter, he has become an uncompromising pioneer for music that normally never makes it into a run-of-the-mill record collection.

Es geht um vitale Clubvariationen, um auschweifende Schubladenfreiheit in Sachen elektronischer Tanzmusik, um die weitreichende Architektur des gewieften Dancefloors – in diesen Vertiefungen siedeln sich die Sets der Bernerin Ina Valeska an. Sie ist Teil des jungen Kollektivs Töchter*, welches inzwischen als lokales Statement angesehen werden kann. Ihre Auftritte sind ein Wechselspiel der Grauzonen von Bassweight, Breaks, Techno und allen gemeinsamen Nennern tieftönender Clubmusik.