In 2018, Elevate will once again offer a wide range of live concerts. Patrick Wurzwallner, drummer, artist and Elevate collaborator from Graz, summed up just what awaits us.
After a successful date change and pan-European efforts towards synergy, the Styrian capital's largest underground festival is now entering its thirteenth iteration and providing the Brechtian avant party folk, as always, with a globally reflected potpourri of musical discourses - from monoliths, wallflowers, acoustics, and electronics to ecstasy and everything local and beyond. Interspersed by numerous methodical and content-related agitators and renegades with Sturm und Drang tendencies, this year's programme titles itself as nothing more than a stylistic roundhouse to the overindulgent faces of the genre police, a surgical guerrilla attack on conventions, rules and so-called laws of art, a curatorial coup d' État with a decent amount of explosive creative power - dry as a guillotine and delicious as a (vegan?) Coupe Denmark.
Royal Meat Forest
Strong, if not legendary, this year's festival will open on Wednesday in the main hall of the Orpheum with none other than JSX (Jorge Sanchez Chiong) and Austria's finest One-Man-Rhythm-Machine Koenig (quote, Otto von Schirach 2015: “You are epic ") trade blows in a furious one-on-one catchy improv massacre. There's no guessing what to expect, except that it's going to be spectacular!
Afterwards, the young Viennese live electronic duo Waelder, Moritz Nahold and Jan Preißler, will lead us out of the urban jungle into the woods. In their splendid audio-visual buildings, the duo will fuel a dialectic of the Non-Lieux (non-location) between identities, cultures, and functionality - a benevolent approach to bringing electro-acoustic sound collages into the ether of ambient, industrial and pop. Finally, indietronic legend B. Fleischmann will close things out on a consensual note. The Viennese composer, studio surgeon, producer, and prizewinner, who made his multi-faceted contribution to the local cultural scene in the form of numerous pop songs, club tracks, film scores, sound installations and theatre music since the late mid-1990s, will bring along a complete band and new album this year - you should be curious. Afterwards the DJ style icon Puschmann, always one to gloss over being banned from certain establishments, will heat up the overstimulated crowd in the foyer one more time.
Dark chambers and rapturous mausoleums
On the following Thursday, the festival's first-ever occupation of the venerable Graz Mausoleum will feature top-class international representatives of musical performance art. To start off, the Grazean duo Stereoist takes us into bass regions. Straight-up, no-frills live-electronics help drive their point across. The pace will pick in the now cozily warmed up tomb when the Bosnian-Swiss anarchist accordion virtuoso Mario Batkovic brings his border-crossing and dense mix of classical elements and extended technique making the pores drip sweat along to his polyphonic narrative escapades. P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; }As a grand closing, no one gives deeper insight into the fragility of the sounds than the renowned piano player Federico Albanes. With album titles such as "The Houseboat and the Moon" (2014), "The Blue Hour" (2016) or the recently published "By The Deep Sea" (2018) he traces the sea as an archaic yearning point. His musical hybrids often sound like echoes on the expanse of the open ocean.
Completely different, but just as radical is Thursday's line-up in the cellar of the long-term festival collaboration partner Forum Stadtpark in the form of another special edition of the in-house event series Dunkelkammer - concerts played in absolute darkness. This time, the Australian percussion genius Will Guthrie, who knows better than anyone else how to penetrate more abstract realms without the help of electronic aids, will play his instrument. A master in the simulation of virtuality - all this with only drums and a little gong! The electronic counterpart with the lights on is then provided by noise-philosopher, sound poet and mastermind Rashad Becker with an exclusive composition in 4D - yes, in 4-D!
Shred, Dance, Retro-futurism, Utopia
A totally different bag is Friday at Dom im Berg with the London-based Kamaal Williams tiro, one of the underground jazz spearheads presenting an almost danceable shredding rendezvous - groovy, smooth and unbelievably skilled. In a completely different ballpark, but with similar virtuosity and precision, the young multi-instrumentalist from Sankt Pölten native, Dorian-Concept-Protegé and Crack-Ignaz album partner Wandl, whose cloudy pop epic will probably have the audience collectively making out. The Viennese duo Schtum, consisting of the energetic musicians and composers Manuel Mayr and Robert Pockfuß, present a real-time instrumental set performing an industrial bludgeoning of bass and guitar, the result of a diligent year of studio work, on Saturday in the Dungeon. An extremely venerable closing of the festival will go down on Sunday in the Orpheum with three iconic artists. The beginning of the end is marked by the self-titled anti-style icon Ana Threat with one of her intense and highly performative solo performances. Immediately afterward: challenging and captivating beat research by drummer and improviser Greg Fox (Liturgy, Zs, Guardian Alien, Ex Eye), who understands his instrument as a physical, haptic interface for interaction with the non-place. The grand finale will be contested by the late addition of the Scandinavian legend Jimi Tenor. High-end anti-pop. Come and get it.
