• Sort Blog:
  • All
  • event Artists
  • installations
  • Past Events
  • past workshops
  • released Artists
  • Upcoming Events

Meakusma at Open Ground

feat. Josey Rebelle, Chima Isaaro, Polido (live), Viola Klein, Vera Dvale (live), Sagat (live), Mankiyan and ML.


We are thrilled to co-organize a night at the amazing Open Ground club in Wuppertal, Germany. There will be a program in both rooms of the club, tapping into the collaborative and eclectic spirit that Meakusma always aims for. Get ready for a kind of mini version of the Meakusma Festival, with adventurous club music and experimental sounds. This night also offers us the opportunity to celebrate Viola Klein’s new Confidant 12-inch on Meakusma.
 
House music auteur Viola Klein explores the social forces inherent in house music through her beautifully contemplative and confrontational productions and DJ sets, combining experimental house from the US Midwest, West-African polyrhythms, and music in the tradition of Can. Chima Isaaro specializes in uplifting, soulful, Black dance music. Based in Lisbon, she is one of the most exciting and eclectic selectors around, playing house, techno, disco, soul, jazz, and batida. Raised in a Caribbean culture of dancers, DJs, and sound system operators, London-born-and-bred DJ Josey Rebelle seamlessly traverses genres with a fearless energy that evokes the spirit of her home city. Josey is already legendary.
 
Through visual and/or sound mechanisms, Lisbon-based Polidoseeks the evanescent threshold between recognition and alienation, assembling surreal narratives for concrete spaces. He released the acclaimed While The Iron Was Hot on the Ana label and his most recent Hearing Smoke album on Holuzam is nothing short of amazing and mesmerizing. Sagat is an electronic music producer and videographer from Brussels who moves the listener into ever-unexpected syncopations and melodic elements that tell the story of human flesh being fused with fiberoptics. From Norway, Vera Dvale is a seamstress of nocturnal synesthetics, a weaver of worlds of spatial immersion. DJ support by Mankiyan, whose spatial sets are full of depth and intuition, spanning across heady dub, rave, UK bass, and grime, and ML, who marries avant-techno with rural chants from the past, odd house emotions with detailed minimal music, psychedelic fuzz with big city jazz and beyond.
 

Confidant

Jazzy, vertiginous house music.
 
The producer and filmmaker Viola Klein makes house music that, with a trained, jazzy hand, knocks the tropes of the genre off its axis. The artist’s new three-tracker demonstrates her talent for coloring both inside and outside of the lines. Opener “Boldness” has a vertiginous swing; when paired with drunken MIDI brass, the track hits like a foggy stroll through a cruise ship corridor. “Snooze” is just as—and excuse me here—liminal. It pulls from and abstracts the house music playbook. The track’s outro interplay between cymbal sizzle and piano drizzle pulls it out of dance music entirely. Closer “Love in Life” moves with a gospel-indebted double time pump. An inspired set.
 
www.ninaprotocol.com

House auteur Viola Klein returns to meakusma with another imaginative, spiritual set that deepens familiar Midwestern grooves with lopsided off-grid rhythms and fictile synth vamps. RIYL Galcher Lustwerk, Nídia, DJ Sprinkles or Whodat.
 
Known for her wide-reaching DJ sets – where she’s as likely to drop Don Cherry or Can as she is Kyle Hall or Justus Köhncke – filmmaker, promoter, producer and writer Klein brings the same thirst for fusion and hybridity to her productions. ‘Confident’ is rooted in the jazz theory she absorbed as a youth, but those elements – snipped from the spiritual sounds of the ’70s – are buried in recognizable deep house aesthetics. On the 12-minute ‘Boldness’, she redirects the flow of sound module horns and woozy electric piano chords with rattly percussion that sounds as if it could capsize the rhythm at any moment.
 
‘Snooze’ is even smarter, with a stumbling, stifled bassline and organ stabs that sound as if they’re about to form a straighter line before Klein cuts to a muted, hissing piano solo. ‘Love in Life’ is the most traditionally functional track on the set, and even here Klein plays with our expectations, queering a rolling, propulsive beatbox cycle with skewed stabs and time-fluxing M1 improvisations. It’s jazz, just not as you know it.
 
https://boomkat.com
 

Goethe-Institut & meakusma night // CANCELLED

Line-Up:

Halle

    • 
Shed pres. The Higher (XL Recordings – GER)
    • re:ni
 (UK)
    • Phillip Jondo
 (Dekmantel – GER)
    • Sagat (Vlek, Lexi Disques – BE)
    • Thomas Defise (Les Flaneurs – BE)

 
Kesselraum

    • 
Julion De’Angelo (Sound Signature, meakusma – USA)
    • Viola Klein (Viola Klein, Workshop, meakusma – GER)
    • Senga Ferreira
 (Trading Places Records – BE)
    • Gråzon (RDV – BE)

 
Speicher

    • 
Trii Group & Hipolito (Stroom – GER)
    • Museum Of No Art (Séance Centre – GER)
    • TIBLSC
 (sferic – GER)
    • Nosedrip (Stroom – BE)
    • Islas & Alex (Kiosk Radio – BE)

 


On December 18th, the Goethe-Institut Brussels and Meakusma present a one-nighter in Eupen, featuring Shed, re:ni, Phillip Jondo, Julion De’Angelo, Viola Klein, Trii Group, Museum Of No Art, Nosedrip and many more. 
 
The collaboration between the Goethe-Institut Brussels and Meakusma dates back years and we are happy to once again jointly organise a night of both club and experimental music, much in the same vein our collaboration originally started with nights organised in Brussels and Eupen. Cancelling the Meakusma Festival two years in a row, we are thrilled to be able to set up this event and we believe we have secured a lineup of amazing talents, from both Germany, Belgium and beyond, with established names as well as relative newcomers to the scene. 
 
The Alter Schlachthof in Eupen will thus again be host to our event as, on December 18th, we will use three rooms of the venue, two with a focus on dance music and one focusing on experimental and listening music. 
 

The Halle room will welcome live performances and DJ-sets by Shed pres. The Higher, re:ni, Phillip Jondo, Sagat and Thomas Defise. 
 
Shed [DE] will be presenting his new project The Higher. For almost 20 years now, he has been one of the most vital voices in contemporary techno music, running his own Soloaction Records label and releasing instant techno classics on Ostgut Ton, 50Weapons, Monkeytown and many others. His evocative live sets have an unsurpassed raw power, merging rough dance floor skeletons with detailed melodies, harmonic structures and airy arrangements. 
 

 
re:ni’s [UK] sets join the dots between her dub influences and contemporary bass-driven techno, electro, jungle and breaks. With shows at clubs like Panorama Bar, De School, Robert Johnson and Fabric and a monthly slot on NTS Radio, she brings a distinct UK sensibility to the dance floor. She will be releasing her debut record soon. 
 

 
Phillip Jondo [DE] is a longtime resident of Salon des Amateurs in Düsseldorf and London’s NTS Radio, breaking down the essence of dancehall, R&B, jungle, rap and bass-heavy techno into challenging, yet highly impactful sets. He co-runs the Spa Recordings label and has recently shifted his focus towards the studio, crafting grimy club meditations alongside Melbourne’s DJ Plead and composer / double-bass player Maxwell Sterling.
 

 
Bass and techno producer Sagat [BE] has released on labels such as Vlek, Lexi Disques, BXL Records, Bepotel and Meakusma. His dancefloor-focused cuts show an incredible attention to detail and an openness to experimental influences. 
 

 
Les Flaneurs is a collective co-started by Thomas Defise [BE], intent on throwing parties all over Liège, Belgium. His DJ-sets take a less straightforward path, focusing on abstract groove, mood and introspection. 
 

 

The Kesselraum will be taken over by Julion De’Angelo, Viola Klein, Senga Ferreira and Gråzon. 
 
Julion De’Angelo [US] is a multi-instrumentalist, producer, and DJ based in Detroit. With experience playing in a number of different groups – from free jazz and metal, to noise and punk –  it’s this experimental sensibility and familiarity with the avant-garde that he brings to each of his musical endeavours. In all of his work, there is acute attention to the impact of vibrations on bodies, as well as the energetic relationship that can occur between musician and listener. He released a debut split-EP called “Roots That Talk” with Thomas Xu, on Sound Signature and collaborated with Viola Klein on the acclaimed We 12inch, released jointly by Meakusma, Ominira and Viola Klein. 
 

 
Viola Klein [DE] is the house music ‘auteur’ behind two beautiful and contemplative yet powerful house music records on her own Viola Klein imprint, next to releasing music on Meakusma and Workshop. Her work explores the social forces inherent in house music. Klein works as a film editor, DJ and writer. Her origins are in jazz theory which she combines with a filmmaker’s perception. She has been hailed as one of the most original voices in house music today. Her DJ-sets are eclectic celebrations of house music spirit. 
 

 
Senga Ferreira [BE] are DJ Chris Ferreira and producer ShunGu. They have joined forces for their debut LP Take The Evil Spirit Away, set to be released on October 17th on Belgian independent label Trading Places Records. Producer ShunGu has been dropping cosmic sounding beats since 2012, with an extensive back catalogue of over thirty beat tapes on bandcamp, while Chris Ferreria is one of Brussels’ most in-demand DJ’s and a resident of the city’s ground-breaking party concept C12.
 

 
Gråzon [BE] is the alter ego of DJ and producer Lukas Richter. His sound is based on groove and edge, referencing the beginnings of house music, with a backdrop of mood and ambience. He has released music on the Parisian Rdv Music label. 
 

 

The Speicher room of the Alter Schlachthof will focus on experimental and listening music, serving as a de facto chill out room. 
 
Trii Group + Hipolito [DE] test out an arrangement of micro-melodies, overtones, electro-acoustic percussion and voice with the help of trigger drum machines, fm modulation, sampler, sequencer and prepared acoustic instruments in order to detect repetitive sonic solutions that scratch upon a state of aimless focus and sensorial needs. The Belgian Stroom label has released much of their work and will release an amazing album by them again soon. 
 

 
Museum Of No Art [DE] is Mona Steinwidder, a musician and freelance artist and co-founder of several labels. As Museum Of No Art, she has released an acclaimed album on the Canadian Séance Centre label. She is also a member of the experimental pop band Me Succeeds and collaborates with producer Christian Löffler. Her music as Museum Of No Art floats in a hazy lacuna, in between realities rooted in propulsive and deep bass resonance, but also footloose, playfully deconstructing language and mixing in layers of echoing synthetic and organic tones.

 

 
TIBSLC [DE] sculpts hazily ambiguous yet meticulously detailed sounds, hypersensitive to nanoscopic movements and fleeting midnight moods. Blending subtle environmental recordings with processed digital noise and feedback, his work is distinguished by an arcing narrative quality, intimate and voyeuristic. In May 2021 he released his debut album Delusive Tongue Shifts – Situation Based Compositions on Sferic. 
 

 
Nosedrip [BE] from Belgium runs the Stroom label, has a show on NTS and is one of the prime voices in Belgian club, ambient and experimental music alike. With Stroom, he has unearthed killer archival gems from the 80s and 90s Avantgarde. As a DJ, he sets moods like no-one else, leaving audiences gasping for air. 
 

 
Islas & Alex [BE] run the morning show on Brussels-based Kiosk Radio. Focusing on cosmic harmonies and spheres, their aim is for the glory and deeper meaning of the universe.
 

 
Partner:

OB GoetheInstitut Province-de-Liege

We

Meakusma pair the rugged spirit of Viola Klein with mutual soul Julion De’Angelo for a deeply raw but stellar split .
 
Over the past three years Meakusma has been home to Viola Klein’s properly US-rooted style of bluesy, heavily soulful house, so it only makes sense they’ve also got time for the equally ruffcut and soulful burn of North Carolina’s Julion De’Angelo, who cut his teeth with a 12” for Theo Parrish’s Sound Signature in 2017, and a follow-up mix CD last year.
 
De’Angelo takes it from the front with eight minutes of the itchiest, frictional beatdown syncopation, woozy chords and oneiric choral voices in ’N’aie Pas Peur (Exchange Mix)’, next to the scuffed swivel and languorous keys of the ‘Don’t Be Scurred’ variation.
 
Viola Klein beautifully keeps up her end of the bargain in three parts, setting the scene with talking drums and velvet-draped chords in ‘We Part One’, before cutting loose on a wild 150bpm sort of psycho-jit-jazz tip lit up with sampler-punched strings and keys like Omar-S on a mad one with Howard Thomas, while ‘We Another Part’ lets the talking drums go wild against purple-hued chords in a style recalling classic Urban Tribe.
 
BAD!!!
 
https://boomkat.com/

The Word Radio

For our 9th show at Brussels-based The Word Radio we are excited to host an excellent 2 hrs mix by Cologne based Viola Klein!

 
http://theword.radio/series/meakusma/shows/meakusma-2
 

 

    Playlist:


Sounds of Blackness – The Pressure 
Music Institute 20th Anniversary – Unknown Artist 
Bola – Tigantabame 
Instinct – Just a feeling 
Moodymann – … During soundcheck 
Sorry Bamba – Sayouwé 
Detroit Experiment – Think Twice 
K15 – Be glad you create anything 
Don Cherry – The mysticism of my sound 
Hopeton Lewis – Sounds & Pressure 
Hypnotic Brass Ensemble – Morning Prayer 
Viola Klein feat. Florent Kandety – N’aie pas peur 
Actress – Senorita 
Leroy Burgess – Moment of my life 
The Godson – Analog Love 
Artuhr Russell _ Wild Combination 
Walt J – Feel what I feel 
Jeri Jeri with Doudou Ndiaye Rose – Ndeye Gueye 
Pharaoh Sanders – Love in us all 
Eddie Harris – Happy Gemini 
Viola Klein feat. Florent Kandety – Chant 
E. J. Garrison – Two sisters from Bagdad 
DOS – funk one 
Jacques Thollot – Une certaine Lumière Tourangelle 
Georgia Anne Muldrow – I.O.T.A. (Instrument Of The Ancestors)

A Passport and a Visa Stamped by the Holy Ghost

Excellent, Free Jazz infused Deep House bomb
 
https://hardwax.com

Supremely earthy, astrally inclined house, folk and soul blessed with guest vocal by Georgia Anne Muldrow. An outstanding session warmly RIYL Theo Parrish, STL, Beatrice Dillon…
 
https://boomkat.com

“Aus Gründen der Wertschätzung”
Egalitär hören und feiern: Die Kölner Produzentin und Künstlerin Viola Klein macht elektronische Tanzmusik mit ethnografischer Genauigkeit.

www.taz.de

For this release, the Meakusma label have provided an incredibly detailed biography spanning Viola Klein’s numerous credentials which we won’t list here. What we can confirm however is ‘A passport and a visa stamped by the holy ghost’ is a magical and cosmopolitan 12″ which hits several sweet spots. Florent Kandety and Georgia Anne Muldrow guest on three tracks of coldly comforting, abstracted deep house and tender Senegalese field recording – simply a must for the Theo Parrish, Tribe of Colin, and Don’t DJ fans among you. Special!
 
www.amoeba.com

Loading new posts...
No more posts