Bozar Night: bring on the night

How about imagining you are in the city’s hippest disco, your ears massaged by some adventurous sound sculptures – while you are surrounded by the products of the imaginations of visionary artists such as Antoine Watteau, Neo Rauch, and Francis Bacon. If that sounds appealing, get yourself to the Bozar Night on Tuesday. AGENDA had a look at what is on offer.


Infectious effects
• Letherette

Letherette is the latest sensation on the British label Ninja Tune. After a number of promising EPs and remixes for Bibio and Machinedrum (also on the Bozar line-up this weekend), among others, the young Wolverhampton duo recently released their first album. Bozar is presenting their first performance in Belgium. On the single “D&T”, released in advance, the synths, groovy guitars, and chopped-up vocals – the pair’s highly infectious stock-in-trade – roll exuberantly around your ears. Daft Punk is never far away – either literally or metaphorically, as Letherette came into being when boyhood friends Rich Roberts and Andy Harber realised that it would be a better idea to work together than to soldier on separately. After all, they shared the same taste and style and a boundless passion for samplers, synths, and effects. Live, they juggle with laptops, digital MIDI-controllers, and a mixing table from behind which they play their numbers live, remix, and constantly rework. “We take existing numbers as our starting point, strip them to the bare limbs, and then improvise ways of fitting them out with a new outfit by adding all sorts of effects on the spot.”


Sampling as a fine art
• Lapalux

The man behind the alias Lapalux is a nervous chillwaver otherwise known as Stuart Howard. Lianne La Havas, Crystal Fighters, Bonobo, and AlunaGeorge have all been through his remixing table. Dubstep heroes Diplo and SBTRKT have long been fans of the Essex producer, who cleverly and sensually interweaves elements of pop with distorted synths and found sounds. But his most ardent supporter of all is Flying Lotus, who got him to sign for his Brainfeeder label, which recently brought out Nostalchic, a debut album whose soul samples and restrained vocals create a hypnotic effect. Diplo has been heard to say that Lapalux sounds like the James Blake of the strip club. Others describe his work as “sampling as a fine art”.

Brussels talent
• Vlek

(© Yaniv De Ridder)

The young Brussels dance label Vlek will be represented by Cupp Cave and Squeaky Lobster (photo), two of its most promising signings. Cupp Cave’s layered proto-house could be heard recently in the London dance temple Fabric. The twisted hip hop of Squeaky Lobster – which brought out a new EP, Killing Eleven, at the start of the year – is worth checking out too. Romain Tardy of the highly regarded AntiVJ label came up with visuals that made their delicate material sound more cinematic and ethereal than ever.


Wild and eclectic
• D/R/U/G/S

Behind that befuddled pseudonym lurks a 25-year-old DJ and producer by the name of Callum Wright, who is one of the most radical standard-bearers of the British DIY-electro school. Club music, furious club music at times, but not without scraps of psychedelia, rock, rave, and grime – and even a shot or two of minimal techno, ambient, house, and industrial. Eclectic, wild, and rebellious – but check out Wright’s version of Lana Del Rey’s “Blue Jeans” and you will rise that his mosaic of synths and styles, which often, in live performance, degenerates into a frantic rave party, can also sound warm and passionate. His first full album should be in the shops before the summer.


An unusual duo
• JETS

(© Lizzy Eve)

To headline the weekend, Bozar chose the unusual alliance formed by the US producers Jimmy Edgar and Machinedrum. Edgar, now 30, grew up in the Detroit rave scene; for years he has been delighting the world with ingenious electronica that has been infused with jazz, funk, and R&B. Travis Stewart, also now 30, brought out his first album under the pseudonym of Machinedrum at the age of 19. In recent years he has formed a whole series of artistic alliances, with Azealia Banks among others, and has moved from his home base of Eden, North Carolina, to Brooklyn, New York, and later to Kreuzberg, Berlin, where he lives these days. Some electronic tinkering in a New York studio, followed by a shared residency at the Berghain club in Berlin, led to the two producers bringing out their first release as a duo on the German label Leisure System. J(immy) E(dgar) T(ravis) S(tewart) combines Edgar’s soulful electronic tapestries with Machinedrum’s rawer syncopated rhythms. The two see their untitled EP, released last year, as just the first move in an ongoing collaboration. “That will go well beyond just bringing out another EP,” Stewart recently explained. “We are also thinking about films and installations.” Their gig at the Bozar Night will give further impetus to that ambition.


A delicate experiment
• Holy Other

Over the last few months, the influential label Tri Angle Records has given us both infectious fare for the dance floor (AlunaGeorge) and dark, complex, cinematic experiments (The Haxan Cloak). But the British label’s standard-bearer is still, of course, Holy Other, the pseudonym of a producer from Manchester who, with a unique palette of resonance and noise, combines subdued melancholy with gently tingling electronica. In contrast to what is increasingly inflicted on our ears at major festivals, he takes up genres such as dubstep and R&B first and foremost for their emotional force and their sensual and alienating potential. On last year’s album Held, keeping his distance from vulgar euphoria, Holy Other opted more than ever for vulnerability and mystery. And it paid off. He was invited to be support act for the US end of Amon Tobin’s impressive ISAM tour and played an opening set at MoMa PS1, the New York Valhalla for experimental art, where Thom Yorke’s Atoms For Peace were behind the turntables. Bozar should be a perfect setting for this producer’s brushstrokes in sound.

BOZAR NIGHT • JETS (Jimmy Edgar + Machinedrum), Holy Other, D/R/U/G/S, Letherette, Old Apparatus, Lapalux, Cupp Cave, Squeaky Lobster, DJ Sofa, Aguila + expos Antoine Watteau, Neo Rauch, Changing States, 30/4, 20 > 3.00, €10/13, BOZAR, rue Ravensteinstraat 23, Brussel/Bruxelles, 02-507.82.00, www.bozar.be