em guide the pain of not sharing a language
When Adela Mede, Marta Forsberg and Nindya Nareswari met up for this interview in late January, there was relief, happiness and exhaustion in the air: it was the day after their first collaboration, a site-specific music and light piece for CTM festival at the Kuppelhalle, a dome hall in Berlin’s Silent Green.
em guide ellen arkbro: “i love making sound in a room and having people there to experience it”
The Swedish composer, musician and sound artist Ellen Arkbro is known for her very precise productions, for which she works with both Just intonation and Meantone tempering. So far she has released four albums, “For Organ And Brass” (Subtext, 2017), “Chords” (Subtext, 2019), “I Get Along Without You Very Well” (together with Johan Graden, Thrill Jockey, 2022), “Sounds While Waiting” (W.25th, 2023), in the spring 2025 her collaboration with Microtub (Robin Hayward, Martin Taxt, and Peder Simonsen) will be released: “Clouds for Three Tubas”. In the run-up to the performance by Arkbro and Microtub at this year’s CTM Festival, Ellen Arkbro and Thomas Venker chatted via Zoom.
em guide a snapshot into festivals, clubs & networks in electronic music through the independent movement for electronic scenes (times)
Festivals, and especially clubs, are in a tricky situation in recent years, and 2024 is arguably the most challenging year after COVID and since the start of the war against Ukraine. Obvious reasons are inflation and less money in the pocket of festival goers/clubbers, less obvious ones include the lack of the usual generation takeover on the dancefloor due the COVID years, and lastly, there seems to be a transition in genres and trends where festivals and clubs need to adapt to.
