From 18th to 21st of April, Rokolectiv Festival returns with its 14th edition and a new selection of artists that push forward genres and artistic formats in electronic music and related arts.

In the context of political upheavals and consequent private and public funding disruptions in culture, the lineup is by no means a comprehensive representation of new trends and developments. It is, rather, a symbolic celebration of a few of them, and most notably of a new approach to club culture, one where testosterone driven headliner line ups fade off and make room for more diversity and inclusivity, whether in gender balance or in artistic formats.

The festival opens with three live performances, on Thursday 18th of April, in the Apollo111 Theatre. Following a recent body transformation and an extensive recovery, Lyra Pramuk will join us for a voice empowering performance that fuses classical references, pop sensibilities, performance practices, and contemporary club culture in a futurist folk live show. Inspired equally by post-war avant-garde, Native American indigenous music, Jamaican dancehall and raw off-beat club sounds, Warsaw artist Lutto Lento will give us a sneak preview into his dark secret world of both horrors and wonders. At the crossroads where men meet machines, Volition Immanent will shock, inspire or amaze, with Parrish Smith working a range of hardware gear and Mark van de Maat adding forthright vocals in a kind of live show that was once the preserve of British mavericks like Cabaret Voltaire or Throbbing Gristle.

On Friday and Saturday, the festival moves to the more motion permissive Control Club, with a selection of acts that go from atmospherics to non-conforming techno breakouts, and from post-internet cat rap to Milano's x-ray pop turned performance art.

Composer, video and mixed-media artist Simina Oprescu will take over Front Control on Friday for a hybrid extended set. Corp platform artist Chlorys opens in Sala Berlin with an “alien flora” set originally developed for Noods radio and visually enhanced for Rokolectiv in a special collaboration with set designer & artist Adrian Ganea. Highly acclaimed Jasss will finally play Rokolectiv Festival as well, delivering a signature set that takes industrial sounds to new bass-heavy and rhythmically non-conforming heights. Hailing from North London comes Randomer, one of the most prolific producers of the past decade. His discography reads like a who’s who of modern techno, while his sets effortlessly stitch together modern bass with classic techno and esoteric 4/4 rhythms.
And then, there’s Beste Aydin: after her live show from the last 2018 edition, Rokolectiv’s new darling Nene H. is coming back to Bucharest to slay the night with her very complex DJ sets.
A classically trained pianist and a “liberated” techno breakthrough act, she effortlessly and elegantly swipes through dark club vibes, new releases, and a new job as a sound composition teacher at the Art University in Kassel. Come say hi at her special artist talk with Lutto Lento and Lucia Udvardyova, organized in collaboration with Red Bull, in the afternoon.

On Saturday night, in Front Control, Marius Georgescu plans to evoke a psychedelic synth-led hysteria on the gap between wave, industrial and electro, to hook you in whenever you want to go out. Bucharest based selector Dar Adal opens the main stage with a set that you are advised to follow carefully from the beginning to its very end, in order to perceive its notes and subtleties. And, since we were speaking of cat rap, Catnapp’s back: originally from Buenos Aires and nowadays based in Berlin, Amparo surprised us at last year’s SHAPE events with a powerful rap / R&B show, running from the simplest “girly” lyrics with a 4/4 beat to the deepest childhood memories brought back by huge, compressed pads and synths. Also for the second time at Rokolectiv, Tunisian Deena Abdelwahed will deliver a futuristic set in-between Western dance music and Arabic melodies, a genre she is reinventing with fellow friends as she goes. Coming from Lisbon where she contributes to the local scene in more than just one way, Violet will also thoughtfully express a slice of political history of dance music through her set. And, for the first time in Bucharest, Milano’s last priestess of the night Myss Keta will put up a sacrilegious show that redefines a diva’s standing by scanning Italy’s clichés and juggling with fake identities. Blending in post-internet pop, radical hyper realistic words, comedy and performance art, Myss Keta will leave you all reflecting on what is and what is not “UNA VITA IN CAPSLOCKS”.

As every year, Rokolectiv Festival is made possible with support from A.F.C.N., long-term institutional partners, and the extensive networking efforts put together by the 16 festivals and art centers involved in the SHAPE platform, co-funded by the EU through the “Creative Europe” program. At this edition, we are happy to host an extensive SHAPE partners meeting and enjoy the festival for the first time together with our long-term friends. Don’t be shy, tell them hi. You will know them by that “curator’s” look.

And a last note: while extreme rhetoric and demagogy proliferate in society, politics and, unfortunately, in culture, this festival is an invitation to keep your critical discourse alert but dip it in a good dose of old festival hedonism, in an empathic balance between the two. So to say, don’t forget to party.

Text by Cosmin Tapu

download festival Booklet