Our SHAPE Platform takeover continues today (23 March) with the unveiling of new visuals, including imaginative audiovisual collaborations and immersive live performances, from five SHAPE artists.

Much like the first part of the collaboration, which saw the likes of Nazar, TTristana and Lisa Stenberg offering a line-up of DJ mixes and new, original compositions, the artists involved in the video takeover present a varied array of works that capture the essence of their sound, style and musical approach in video form.

There’s a drone-filmed performance from Riccardo La Foresta, for instance, along with an exciting link-up between KMRU and visual artist Markus Heckmann, a live set from Shapednoise and the showcase of new music from Mathilde Fernandez and Joanna Hedva. These visuals are presented by five European creative institutions: Schiev, Musikprotokoll, SONICA/MoTA, Terraforma and Unsound.

SHAPE Platform is an initiative promoting innovative music and audiovisual art. Each year, the platform selects 48 emerging European artists and musicians with a focus on innovation and experimentation. SHAPE is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.

The platform is inviting audiences to show support for Ukraine and its people by donating to the National Bank of Ukraine and Help Ukraine Center.

Mathilde Fernandez

Presented by Schiev, Brussels

Mathilde Fernandez’s music exudes theatricality. Inspired by the likes of Nina Hagen, Lene Lovich and Rita Mitsouko, Fernandez’s baroque-pop is centred around emotive vocals and brooding darkwave beats. The Belgian artist pushes the boundaries of her voice via various projects including Ascendent Vierge – a hard dance duo comprised of Fernandez and Casual Gabberz producer Paul Seul.

As part of the SHAPE Platform takeover, Fernandez shares a suitably evocative live performance of tracks Farde and Temple Sourire lifted from her 2021 album Temple Sourire.

KMRU with Markus Heckmann

Presented by Musikprotokoll, Graz

KMRU’s absorbing ambient compositions have the capacity to make time stand still. Always attuned to the sounds of his surroundings, Joseph Kamaru – aka KMRU – transforms environmental field recordings into mesmerising sound art, as evidenced on the graceful Peel or his 2021 release Logue. 

For this transcendent new audiovisual work for the SHAPE Platform takeover, KMRU has teamed up with visual artist Markus Heckmann. Speaking on the piece, entitled By Absence, the pair state: “Considering an emancipatory approach to composition, By Absence juxtaposes on one sound that goes throughout the piece with its relation to the other sounds reconfigured from the same sound.”

Continuing, they add: “This long durational piece changes subtly, although still recounting to the main sound; an antiphonal unrestrained structure that provokes a sense of stillness from noisiness of happenings to phygital [physical plus digital] worlds.”

Riccardo La Foresta

Presented by SONICA/MoTA, Ljubljana

There’s a sense of ritualism to Riccardo La Foresta’s percussive explorations. The Italian percussionist, sound artist and curator has much of his time of late to developing the Drummophone – a system that reexamines and reimagines the role of the drum. These experimentations see La Foresta using non-traditional drumming techniques to transform the instrument and create drone and ambient sounds that tap into ancestral resonances.

For the SHAPE Platform takeover, La Foresta presents a drone-filmed video performance of one such Drummophone session. The visual showcases the sonorous interaction between instrument and architectural acoustics explored in his work.

Shapednoise

Presented by Terraforma, Milan

Shapednoise’s cerebral productions draw from gnarled rap, warped club mutations and dissonant noise. The moniker of Sicilian producer Nino Pedone, as Shapednoise his work deals in the extremes of sound, as he creates unconventional and murky experimentations. Pedone’s latest album, Aesthesis, highlights this, offering an intense and foreboding fusion of metal and noise along with rave and hardcore.

For the SHAPE Platform takeover, Shapednoise shares a live performance of Overweight Sub Mutations – a subject area he previously delved into as part of our Specialist Mix series – further exploring the distinctive intersection of sound design with contemporary rap, trap, textural noise and abrasive transcendence. His set was recorded at SoundCloud’s Berlin HQ.

Johanna Hedva

Presented by Unsound, Kraków

Johanna Hedva’s multidisciplinary work harnesses a potent cosmic magic. At the core of all their output – as a writer, artist, musician and astrologer – is their voice, conveying a pure self-expression. Within their music, the Korean-American artist draws on the spiritual power of doom, with swathes of feedback-laden guitar lines and brooding drone accompanying their mystical incantations. 

As part of the SHAPE Platform takeover, Hedva presents the first live performance of their song I Carry My Ethics in a Bucket, captured at The Lab in San Francisco. The visual showcases the power of their vocals, ranging from guttural cries to operatic enunciations. 

“I Carry My Ethics in a Bucket was written in December 2021 at the end of a long, hard year that felt like a fight I lost,” says Hedva on the song. “I spent the whole time going up against institutions and the ideologies of oppression that feed them, trying to change them, trying to get them to listen to me, raising my ethics in my little fists. I would sing this song around the house, walking on the street. A lullaby.”