Sonic Mountains

Marco Papiro is kind of the old warhorse of this year’s edition of Sonic Mountains. His first album was released 20 years ago. Papiro’s analogue-electronic compositions are somewhere between sound sculpture and pop, often reminiscent of the cosmic section of Krautrock (Cluster, Klaus Schulze) and occasionally suggesting a tendency towards the origins of Industrial Music. But all this without actually being directed into the past. The sound structures, which do not shy away from romantic melodies, sometimes ambient, sometimes chugging and wobbling along, are always broken experimentally, so that a pure euphony can never be achieved. But what most clearly distinguishes Papiro’s work is his penchant for hypnotic loops that lend his music an irresistible psychedelic note. In Bern, he will perform as a duo.

Marco Papiro: Synthesizer
Marc Milohnic: Stylophone, Organelle

In the world of modular synthesizers and patch cords, Annie Aries from Bern explores, performs and composes her music, opening up sonic spaces between electronica and experimental sounds. In her works, she creates minimalist sound textures and recurring rhythmic patterns that organically weave, remove and disappear.

In addition to sound art and historical musicology, Annie has also studied popular music history and theory, where she specialised in experimental practices within pop and club culture. She is one half of the duo Aries Zaes (with composer and musician Marcel Zaes) and a member of the buzzing Volca Massaker Orchestra.

L V K K alias Luk Poncet is inspired by stonemasons not only because of the spelling of his name. Besides solidly asphalted roads, he is mainly interested in what lies by the wayside: Gravel, lumps of stone, weeds and rubbish of all kinds. His music is based on a dense and low-frequency foundation, to which abrupt impulses, particles and fragments expand crashingly into the periphery. Like a cloud of dust, this multi-layered sound sculpture is surrounded by shimmering and vibrating noises.

The music on the debut album Stromfragment is characterised by low-fi samples and field recordings that are combined, arranged and mixed to create an immersive sound experience. The whole thing takes place in a sonically industrial environment, which is reinterpreted by melodic synth sounds into a place to dance. The low tempo of the tracks, which is unusual for the genre, is given an unusually progressive drive by the steadily progressing compression.

Luz González, who lives in Bern, is a trained composer and sound artist active in many musical niches. For Sonic Mountains, she will play one of her solo electronic sets, which are a refreshing reappraisal of drone and industrial music, and in places neither shy away from brute force nor from energetically whipping rhythms.

Luz’s artistic practice includes sonic research, composition for instruments and electronics, voice performance as well as dance and theater scores.