Pop Sounds Pop Stories

Neue Sounds aus dem Berliner Pop-Underground

Berlin, 8 March – From 12-14 May, Berlin School of Sound is back with its festival for new emerging artists from the Berlin pop underground, bringing an all female and queer cast to Kunsthaus Acud. The line-up of Pop Sounds Pop Stories focuses on the crossover between rap, poetry and story-telling and interdisciplinary collaborations with contemporary dance. Worldbeat Hip-hop, Eastern and Afro-Cuban influenced rhythms, Electro-poetry EDM, Hip-hop Soul/Jazz-rap, Cyber-futuristic Electro-Pop, Punk/Rock, DeutschRap, and more. Part of the three day festival are also a field-recording workshop, a label market, a radio program and a discussion panel. The festival is supported by Musicboard Berlin.
Curated by Berlin School of Sound’s artistic director and composer Jeremy Woodruff and Berlin-based artist and composer Alexandra Ivanova, this festival is synergizing the blooming, thrilling kind of energy you can only find in the drive of upcoming artists of the underground community who are destined to land onto the scene as the new local stars of Berlin pop and poetry they deserve to be.
The festival starts on 12 May with a performance by Alexandra Ivanova Trio who will present a deep-dive into jazzed-up live rap in the leadup to their debut single release in May which combines Eastern and Cuban influences. On 13 May Brazilian storyteller Frau Fisch will perform a selection of electro poetry for dancing. German punk queen and battle rapper Liser will be the closing act on Sunday, 14 May with feminist bangers combining rap, punk, pop and electronics.
The festival includes a workshop by Carla J. Maier (13 May), based on the poetical sound devices and sonic practices used by Asian Dub Foundation, M.I.A., Nathan “Flutebox” Lee and other protagonists of pop. She introduces methods of creative poetic sonic appropriation such as sampling and transcultural collage/subversion employed successfully in hybrid pop by these musicians, and workshops strategies for narrative and countercultural theme creation at the threshold of sound and lyrics.
The Festival will also feature the recording of a radio program for Colaboradio (88.4FM) with the collaboration of the festival’s artists, and a panel (14 May) with artists and faculty members of the Berlin School of Sound to discuss where, when and how pop music, poetry and sound art meet, and what possibilities exist to be explored between them.
The festival also includes a small marketplace that will be open on all three days and where the artists, labels and media partners can promote their creations, and drinks court.