Thursday 17 August 2023, 7.30pm
Excellent double-bill from Ramsgate's Contra Pop Festival, featuring unclassifiable Spanish duo, Los Sara Fontán, and French-Iranian polymath, Hassan K.
Militancy, ideals and particular and personal ways of thinking have become a rare sight in the world of music, where bands, festivals and brands seem determined to turn music into a clone factory with nothing that differentiates projects from one to the next.
When Los Sara Fontan started playing around 2017, they decided to do it without recording any albums. Never. An anti-industry “quixotesque” move that nevertheless has allowed them to play and surprise hundreds of spectators during their shows (close to 200) throughout Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Finland, England or Portugal. Nobody knew what to expect and the surprise effect amplified what came from the stage: an experimental duo, with just a violin, a keyboard and a drum kit, with an arsenal of pedals and effects and resources that take them from contemporaneity to electronics, from the atmospheric to the unbridled in just a few seconds. Their music is born and dies on stage and that volatility turns each show into a kind of unrepeatable liturgy that remains only in the memory of those who are lucky enough enjoy it.
Their proposal has not only inhabited small, alternative rock venues or carefully programmed festivals (OOAM in Switzerland, Norpas in Finland, Eufònic or AMFest), but has quickly grown and expanded its energies into the world of performing arts. Their project 4132314 together with Tarta Relena and Cocanha won the Ciutat de Barcelona Award in 2022: they shared the stage with BlancaLlum Vidal, a prestigious Catalan poet, in her “La Princesa sou Vós” (2022): with the dancer Sónia Gómez (2023) and other projects with Amorante (SO). Their sound designs for “Los Detectives” (Antic Teatre, 2022) or soundtracks such as “Magaluf Ghost Town” (Toronto Film Festival, 2021) have also been very well received at home and beyond.
"Like the geniuses Mike Patton and co., Hassan K blends folklore and new technologies, West and East, surf music and bellydance, swing and metal... Improbable? Impeccable." – Magic RPM
Above all, Hassan K. is more than 12 years of international performances (EU, US, Japan, North Africa, Turkey, Indonesia ...), concerts in halls, festivals, clubs, galleries, third places ... with a D.I.Y approach and always outside social networks, in coherence with my research subjects in interaction design and sociology of digital media.
Hassan K. is a French-Iranian one-man band with ambitious electro, surf, rock, metal and oriental compositions (without samples, composed with clicks and electric Iranian setar, with love).
It is above all a unique live experience, energetic, stirred by an insatiable passion for the scene, and a unique digital lutherie which allows to be close to the public. Unclassifiable, but all terrain and all audience.
