Week-End Fest

Seefeel / Conny Frischauf / The Twit 1, II, Three / Tara Clerkin Trio / E.P.I.Q. vs. YAYA Crew

Over the past 13 years, the Cologne weekend festival has repeatedly provided all visitors with unforgettable experiences. International artists of all stripes have performed at the boutique festival, which has become known for its lovingly curated program and the projects initiated especially for the event. Renowned artists such as The Sun Ra Arkestra, Arthur Verocai, Joyce Moreno, Nu Genea, Gilberto Gil, Mulatu Astatke, Caterina Barbieri, Suzanne Ciani and Laurel Halo have performed at the festival, and the list of other luminaries who have taken part is too long to list here.

Week-End Fest's forward-thinking program has always been good for surprises, and this year promises to be no exception. The festival takes place from October 31 to November 2 at the Stadtgarten in Cologne and is another date you should mark in your calendar immediately.

In the ’90s, Seefeel evolved through shoegaze and post-rock to create their own unsettling brand of ambient dub. Breaking a 13-year hiatus, they’re still finding new magic in old tricks.
Mark Clifford, Sarah Peacock started in the early 1990s and first delivered the aquatic shoegaze rave classic Quique (1993) followed by the minerally syrup Succour (1995) and the chemical fumes of (Ch-Vox) (1996) and then, finally, the returned with the brilliant and parched sediment of 2011’s Seefeel, so bright you had to squint at it. By that point, their grooves were more dust than dub. The timeless now of their long, lovely songs had faded into unstable memories, and then acts of remembering, via fascinating reissues in packages that felt like terminal excavations.
Everything Squared, Seefeel’s mini-album of new recordings is such an unexpected joy. It’s not just that Clifford has figured out a route back to the old ways, although, blissfully, he has; nor simply that there’s still an audience for such endeavors. The pleasure of this half hour lies in its optimism—its faith that so much can be made of so little, still.
– Pitchfork

There is a long tradition of Austrians taking on and quickly dominating music trends that were originally (bold quotation marks) German: this was true for Neue (Deutsche) Welle just as it was for the indie pop and rock revival of recent years. The Viennese artist and musician Conny Frischauf has proven the rule again, on her second album “Kenne Keine Töne” (released on Bureau B) for example: cosmic music is better off in the hands of Austrians. With great joy in experimentation, the sounds dance out of Frischauf’s synthesisers in a way they haven’t done since Cluster. With just the right measure of endearing dialect and the occasional blast of horn it quickly becomes its own genre: welcome to Alpine avant-garde.

After years spent behind his MPCs, Tim Purnell aka Twit One has final left his studio—Mr Wun’s Dojo—to tread the boards of the world’s stage. The Cologne producer and DJ—who has shaped the German hip-hop scene for over 15 years with his beats and instrumentals, putting the “cool” back into boom bap—has called on reinforcements to help him: Maxime von Koblinski is a classically trained vibraphonist, Niklas Schneider is Cologne’s drummer of choice. The world premiere of this project will take place at Week-End Fest and—as the maestro himself says—should free his “beats from the corset of the machine.”

When the Tara Clerkin Trio played at Jaki in February 2024, the hardened music nerds in attendance couldn’t quite believe their ears. Who was to know that this band, which had already proven its exuberant talent on record (“Weeding,” “World in Delay” etc.), could reach new heights on stage. Pat Benjamin, Sunny Joe Paradisos and bandleader Tara Clerkin spin a tight web of references, in which a finely chiseled jazz, instrumental hip-hop, dub, gentle bedroom pop and loop-station folk becomes caught up and then rearranges itself. With so much delight in innovation and experimentation of British genesis, you could be forgiven for thinking (and not without good reason) of Broadcast and Tirzah, but the Tara Clerkin Trio is, above all, outrageously under heard!

Cologne meets Wuppertal. After taking last year’s Week-End Fest into the early hours of Sunday morning in style, a repeat invitation for Cologne-based DJ crew E.P.I.Q. was never in doubt. This year Sedaction, Sharlipseon, Savsannah, piush, Nikity, C:mone, Anna Cainelli & AMSL can look forward to extra support, as they will be joined by a FLINTA* collective from far-off Wuppertal. For years the Yaya Crew has stood for party fun without boundaries: expect party classics new and old, hip house free of fear and sounds to dance the night away. Gîn Bali and friends promise to make this an absolutely fabulous party.