Sunday 9 March 2025, 7.30pm
Excited to welcome back the great drummer-composer and multi-instrumentalist, Valentina Magaletti, for a three-day residency drawing on the incredible depth and variety of her creative practice, and encompassing solo sets, new collaborations, films screenings and talks.
Magaletti's versatile technique, which can incorporate anything from vibes and marimba to contact microphones and found objects, results in a style that is forever evolving. Feeling just as comfortable performing behind a delicate ceramic kit as she does hammering out motorik rhythms, her creative take on percussion has resulted in a diverse discography and many interesting collaborations.
As a drummer, Magaletti moves effortlessly between the seemingly disparate worlds of alternative and mainstream music. She has played with artists such as Jandek, Pat Thomas, Deb Googe, Malcolm Mooney, Thurston Moore, Steve Beresford, Steve Shelley, Lafawndah, Mica Levi, Sampha, Kamasi Washington, and Nicolas Jaar to name a few. In addition to collaborating with the gamelan Ensemble Nist-Nah and drummers Malcom Catto, Julian Sartorius and Charles Hayward, she has played with stalwarts of the experimental underground scene like Gnod’s Marlene Ribeiro, Wire’s Graham Lewis, and Thighpaulsandra (Coil). In 2017, Valentina participated in The Can Project, standing in for the late Jaki Liebezeit, at London’s Barbican Centre.
Magaletti’s compositional credits are just as elaborate: with Tom Relleen, she was one half of Tomaga, the critically acclaimed electronic duo; with Al Wootton, she creates irresistible claustrophobic dub as Holy Tongue; with Pino Montecalvo, under the Avvitagalli alias, Valentina improvises intricate sonic collages; alongside percussionist João Pais Filipe, as CZN, she constructs hallucinatory rhythmic worlds, which are as fragile as they are eternal.
Yama Warashi is the vision of Yoshino Shigihara, a Japanese musician and visual artist whose past projects include cult favourites Zun Zun Egui (Bella Union), of which she was a co-founder. Inspired by Japanese folk dance, free jazz and tribal African music, and heavily saturated in psychedelia, Yama Warashi’s songs are lyrically outlandish and charming, melodically addictive and mythical; the band name translates from Shigihara’s native tongue as “small childlike mountain spirit”.
“Liltingly folky and malevolently unhinged” – LOUD AND QUIET
"Mixes experimental rock with Japanese folklore to create a mesmeric sound" - CMU APPROVED
Irene Bianco is an Italian-born percussionist, free improviser and composer based in Copenhagen. Starting playing drum-kit at an early age and then trained as a classical percussionist, her music influences span from baroque and orchestral music to 90s rock and club music. Other than in solo, she is an active freelancer and a member of Damkapellet collective and Wolfskin Ensemble. Now Permanent Draft, London based all-female label run by Valentina Magaletti with Fanny Chiarello, is making this document available worldwide.
Kronblade, the Danish word for “petals”, is Irene’s debut solo album. The album includes six instrumental electroacoustic tracks recorded in a studio in Copenhagen in November 2023. Kronblade music aims to explore the spontaneous and unconventional, leaving space for unpredictability and whimsicality. Most of the sounds, rhythms and melodies have been collected and composed over the last years, during traveling around cities, in nature and in Irene’s everyday life. The tracks present layers of flexible forms and have a large use of improvisation.
YPY is a solo project by an Osaka-based musician Koshiro Hino who also plays a central role in the bands Goat and Bonanzas. The compositions he produce for the bands are marked by the frequent use of muted sounds and overtones, while actively employing the sounds that are not part of the standard chromatic scale. Its primitive feel gets often referred to the current techno scene and was credited for achieving a new original style by elaborately synthesizing experimental and dance music. Two of Goat’s albums have been released until today from the prominent experimental label HEADZ in Japan, and numerous works have been produced alongside under the moniker of YPY from his own cassette label birdFriend. His wide-ranging solo works consist a pinch of humor added on top of the musical style he has established in the bands. Today, he is acclaimed as one of the prime emerging talents in Japan, and has been appointed to support the acts of artists as Arto Lindsay, Shackleton, Cut Hands, SURGEON, and D/P/I.
