Scene
The Institute for Experimental Sound, KSET’s program that presents marginal and experimental forms of music to the public, has revealed the lineup for the eighth edition of ZEZ Festival, taking place from October 1st to 4th. Due to the temporary unavailability of the base for KSET’s program activities, the festival this year once again keeps its traveling and collaborative character, with the program unfolding across four different locations.
The festival opens on Wednesday, October 1st, at Grof Melin, which will host a darker and transformed interior, serving as a space for spiritual transformation through the music of Penelope Trappes and Masma Dream World. Penelope’s trio will use meditative landscapes of gothic ambient pop to bring the repressive nature of memory and dreams to the surface, while Masma Dream World will take that process to a ceremonial peak, with avant-drone invocations leading the audience to a sense of musical purification.
After a cathartic dive into the world’s hidden depths, the festival continues on Thursday, October 2nd, at Kontejner, where the contrast of digital and analog, multiplicity and unity, will shape the evening. The program begins with Martha Skye Murphy, an art-pop and avant-folk songwriter whose electroacoustic textures create an immersive backdrop for her intimate yet powerful voice. She is followed by the collective Živa Voda, who fully realize their interpretative affinities through the deconstruction and reconstruction of the cult album Angel’s Breath by Milan Mladenović and Mitar Subotić Suba. In doing so, they bring the duo’s unique artistic voice closer to the audience, both literally and figuratively, paying tribute to their expression through thoughtful musicianship and the improvisation of a new generation.
The second half of the festival, over the weekend, shifts from the sensitive and introspective to louder and more unrestrained expressions. On Friday, October 3rd, Club Dva Osam becomes the base for a noise night – a three-act drama and a nightmare for anyone without earplugs. The night will echo with Hexenbrutal, an industrial noise duo from Prekmurje with explosions of doom and sludge; Granpa Abela, a giant of the free-noise scene whose raw expression includes controlling frequencies of broken glass connected to pedals and amplifiers; and Bride, a pastoral noise musician whose compositions maneuver between controlled feedback and sharp post-industrial landscapes.
The final day of the festival explores diverse facets of electronic music in the chronically digital age. On Saturday, October 4th, the program at AKC Attack will be divided into concert and club segments, giving the closing celebration a diverse and chaotic form that becomes the perfect ending to the festival journey. The concert part features Julek Ploski, who paradoxically fuses epic, maximalist rave collages with introspective melodies; Evanora:Unlimited, an amorphous multimedia project at the crossroads of electro-industrial and synth punk; and Container, whose raw industrial techno pushes boundaries with distorted beats that challenge even the hardest listeners.
The club program is taken over by msn gf and gabi98 of Ljubljana’s collective Nimaš Izbire, in a back-to-back set that delivers an eclectic cross-section of the contemporary underground. Their selection, full of sudden turns and laced with internet irony, ranges from sincere sentiment to pop bangers from a less cynical era. The evening closes with Bansha of the 42Hz collective, whose sets span drum’n’bass to industrial techno.
Festival and day tickets are available via KSET’s ticketing service.
