“Here for the Sound”: Rewire Festival, 9–12 April, The Hague, Netherlands, Cyclic Defrost.

My review of the 15th Rewire Festival, The Hague, 9–12 April 2026. 

I’ve been noticing the phenomena of “adventerous music” festivals in Europe, that bring together a wide range of artists engaged in institutional, commercial, experimental and “fringe” practices. They tend to be multi-art affairs that include film programmes, exhibitions, dance and performance art and invariably have a discourse stream featuring researchers and writers alongside artists. CTM in Berlin and Unsound in Krakow are two well known examples that I have attended and reviewed. Peers had recommended Rewire in The Hague and I was forutnate to attend its fifteenth edition, 9–12 April 2026, which felt like a sweet spot in the festival’s trajectory. Rewire occurs in early Spring and it was a sunny weekend. The festival had sold out, yet I rarely had to queue and organisers, artists and attendees were open and friendly.  

Read at Cyclic Defrost.

KING GONG – “The Lisu” (Discrepant 2026), Cyclic Defrost

Born in France, Laurent Jeanneau became a nomadic DIY ethno-musicologist as a young man in the 1990s. He earned a reputation for documenting music made by people of the Zomia region which stretches across the highlands of Southeast Asia and Northeast India, encompassing parts of Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, China and India. The 100 million inhabitants of this region represent numerous minority language and ethnic groups. According to James C. Scott in his renown book The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (2010), over thousands of years these groups adopted organisational, social and cultural practices to avoid being governed or dominated by surrounding empires and states. Now their culture is at risk due to the appropriation of land for plantations, dams or other “developments” and under pressure to conform to commercial sensibilities.  

Read at Cyclic Defrost.

"Gaza Biennale", Springerin

My review of the Gaza Biennale, Berlin Pavilion published in Springerin. So far only in print, and in German! Contact me if you want to read it in English.

“Simo Cell & Abdullah Miniawy – 'Dying Is The Internet‘ (Dekmantel UFO)”, Cyclic Defrost.

My preview of Simo Cell & Abdullah Miniawy’s album  Dying Is The Internet, released 12 March 2026 as part of Dekmantel’s UFO series.  

Dying Is the Internet is the second collaborative release from two prodigious talents shaping experimental club culture in Europe. Released as part of the Dutch festival Dekmantel’s UFO series, that showcases “ranky darkwave funk and industrial textures, jagged body music”, it is a considerable evolution of Simo Cell & Abdullah Miniawy’s 2020 release Kill Me Or Negotiate (Brothers From Different Mothers). 

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In the press kit Cell discloses that “dying is the internet” is a mantra about “how the internet lost its soul” as it became “less about sharing ideas and more about surviving in a digital business ecosystem.” While Miniawy describes the album as “a playful prophecy about the triggers of a new global revolution.” While I do not understand Miniawy’s Arabic lyrics, I gather it touches on themes of digital fatigue and dissolution with club culture and brings to my mind notions of doomscrolling, short attention spans and information overwhelm. 

Read at Cyclic Defrost.

 

“Post-National Flows: Colomboscope’s ‘Rhythm Alliances’”, Berlin Art Link

Arka Kinari performance Port City, Colomboscope, 23 January 2026. Foto: Hibatul Hakim

Colomboscope, a multi-arts festival in Sri Lanka’s capital, presented its ninth edition, “Rhythm Alliances,” at the end of January, and a Berlin–Colombo axis was evident throughout. Festival Advisor and co-ordinator and former Berliner, Jan de Saram, has been a driving force behind Colomboscope since its inception in 2013, while Artistic Director Natasha Ginwala joined in 2019. A curator-at-large, Ginwala recently relocated to Colombo from Berlin, where she was based for over a decade, notably as an associate curator for Gropius Bau (2018–2024). Guest curator Hajra Haider Karrar works at SAVVY Contemporary and several participating artists are based in Berlin, including Basma al-Sharif, houaïda, KMRU and Sasha Perera. 

“Rhythm Alliances” assembled 50 artists and collectives, musicians, choreographers, filmmakers and cultural organizers in a free-to-attend “communal score of creation, resistance and alliance-building.” Sri Lanka has become a gathering ground for South Asian artists as citizens of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal can enter and meet, a difficult feat in these rival countries. While conflict still stirs in Sri Lanka, where minority ethnic groups and marginalized communities have long struggled for recognition, justice and equality, ‘Rhythm Alliances’ proposed to counter “normal” divisive and fractured state relations. As artist Seher Shah commented, alliances are tentative, fragile and precarious. Arguably, Colomboscope applied the soft power of cultural diplomacy to hold open a space for encounter, discussion, negotiation and collaboration. 

Read at Berlin Art Link.

“Unravelling Le Guess Who?, Utrecht 6–9 November 2025”, Cyclic Defrost

Le Guess Who? Festival 2025. Foto: Tim van Veen

 

Now into it’s 19th year, Le Guess Who? (LGW?) is a major international music and arts festival occuring annually in Utrecht, a metropolitan hub of the Netherlands with a picturesque walled city at its core.

From the outset, surveying the festival program was mind boggling. With too many artists to count performing over twenty venues and programmed across overlapping streams—when planning my visit I was already flummoxed! A founding premise of LGW? is that each night features a mystery concert from an unannounced artist, so I planned to at least attend these. Another feature of the festival is that it invites artists to curate a stream. This year’s guest curators were visual artist and musician Lonnie Holley; jazz drummer and scholar Asher Gamedze; percussionist and composer Valentina Magaletti; performance and multimedia artist Tianzhuo Chen; musician, broadcaster and community organiser Amirtha Kidambi; DJ and curator Edna Martinez; dance music producer gyrofield and experimental club music producer and performer Zíur. The festival also invited three “Community Curators” to devise its U? stream that foregrounds local artists, spaces an issues: Aslıhan, Luna van der Laan and Al-Shaheen Falcon. Needless to say, it was impossible to cover the whole festival and while preparing to submit this review some weeks after the festival, I was still combing through the program, listening and learning about artists I missed.

 Read the review at Cyclic Defrost. 

Imaginal Soundtracking 3: The Wound Where The Light Enters (Phantom Limb), Cyclic Defrost

 

Imaginal Soundtracking 3: The Wound Where The Light Enters (Phantom Limb, 2025)

Somayeh is a writer, photographer and film director based in London. She is part of a new generation of Iranian filmmakers blending the poetic sensibilities of Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi with “surreal Western influences” citing directors Jonathan Glazer, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Joachim Trier.

Read the review at Cyclic Defrost.