UH FEST 2024

Presenting free music and connecting local and transnational scenes since 2000 (and doing it in a week-long format yearly since 2014) in Budapest, UH Fest is back one more time in the Autumn before taking a break in 2025. This year's edition is set to take place across seven venues in Budapest between the 7th and 13th of October. Festival passes and all individual tickets are available here.

October will bring Death Songs, a new project by Stine Janvin and Morten Joh, a voice-driven, ancient, microtonal electronic music in which gloomy synth chords meet religious folk songs; Bristol/Marseille-based musician, pre-apocalyptic sound poet and visual artist pulling influence from musique concrète, spoken word, abstract beat tapes, climate activism and rhythmic noise, they are Biped, performing at the festival with a drummer; Ghent-based wanderer and primitive/hypnotic folk guitarist Venediktos Tempelboom with a new release coming up on our beloved Kraak label; Stas Shärifullá aka Hmot, artist and researcher, computer musician and quray player with Bashqort roots, now based in Basel, working with sound and politics of decoloniality. Hungarian interdisciplinary artist Vály Sándor – active since the 80's, back then as part of the Budapest post-industrial underground, leaving Hungary in 1990 – will present Hadész, his last work with long-time collaborator Kalóczkai Attila who passed away earlier this month.

UH Fest will present special collaborative projects: Maja S.K. Ratkje and Stian Westerhus bring Die Elektrische Oper on voice and electronics, an adventure sonically and dynamically quite opposite to the acoustic chamber work they did together previously; Alexander Iezzi, Billy Bultheel and Ivan Cheng will perform “33”, which explores the fusion of machine gun techno, experimental pop, bone-chilling industrial, and baroque voices; challengers of the boundaries of metal and noise, the duo of Chip King and Lee Buford aka The Body teamed up with Felicia Chen aka Dis Fig, and released a record together earlier this year, Orchards of a Futile Heaven: they will present it at the festival.

Percussionist and sound artist Riccardo La Foresta and James Ginzburg (Emptyset) bring “Six and Forty-Six”, a conceptual piece on Drummophone (an array of bass drums sounded by compressed air, which produce complex acoustic drones) and a custom string instrument designed by Ginzburg (a bass monochord and zither hybrid), released also this year on Subtext. And some more electroacoustics, this time with oscillators and bagpipes, rhythmic noises and hurdy-gurdy swirl: this is Lise Barkas and Yann Leguay, aka Acétylène.

We'll have the duo of Danish trombonist Maria Bertel (Selvhenter, Ymers Pizza, GEK), and French guitarist Nina Garcia (Mariachi, Mamiedaragon) with their two instruments distorted and extremely played; Garcia also brings her other collaborational project Autoreverse, which sees her teamed up with Arnaud Rivière (co-founder and co-closer this year of Sonic Protest festival) on prepared electronics.

UH Fest's collaboration, as co-founder, with SHAPE+* also continues and marks its tenth year in 2024. As part of this joint venture, we carry on our residency programme too, which brings together European and local artists for trio collaborations. On the closing event of UH Fest 2024 sound artist and experimental musician Khrystyna Kirik from Kyiv, Ukraine will team up with local artists Előd Máté Janky aka Alley Catss and Péter Teller, they will present Sonic Climates; on the opening event Berlin-based performance artist and musician Kinga Ötvös will be joined by Krisztina Sipos and pain.simpl, both of them from Hungarian-speaking community of Romania, similarly to Ötvös, but based in Budapest, and connected to performance art, theatre and sound.

In the frame of the Shape+ programme, we invite Dali Muru & The Polyphonic Swarm, traversing poetics, primordial minimal electronics and post dub hypnosis; noise rock trio Donna Candy from Marseilles and Brussels; JacqNoise, the founder of Berlin Noise Festival, on modular electronics; Nic Krog, with his distinct and volatile mixture of bass-heavy club music and sound art intertwined with spoken word; Slovakian sound artist Lénok mutating digital sonic design with vocal fragments; Sòn du Maquís aka Maquis Son Sistèm merging sound system culture with psychedelia and hardware hypnosis; and multi-faceted French artist Eugène Blove, connecting the dots between brooding abstraction, electronic aggression and modern pop.

Naturally, the biggest community represented within the mostly international programme of UH Fest is the local one. Recently relocated from Berlin to Budapest, Natalie Szende is an electro-acoustic composer, musicologist, her hauntological dreamscapes reach back into the past and interact with the contemporary context. The "irregular event series" of Noise'n'Roses was grown around Lucia Udvardyova and Rozi Mákó – two of them will present a special line-up for the occasion of a special Noise'n'Roses Ensemble live performance at UH Fest featuring Andy Vazul, Isadora Chadeaux and Nemes Z. Márió. Visual artist and self-made electronic musician Ryu Mare will perform his unique free form cyberspace library digitalia.

Psychedelic and pulsating jazz and electronics from Nándor Hevesi, Ádám Jávorka, Árpád Kiss and Zsolt Varga – this is El Kanász. Total improvisation from Budapest’s free music scene: this is Less Is More 4, originally the trio of Oliver Mayne (vibraphone), Zsolt Sárvári Kovács (drums) and Ernő Hock (double bass), now a quartet with the arrival of Bálint Bolcsó on electronics. UH Fest will host the first club concert of another special free music quartet: they are Csicskakoporsó, with Anna Makay aka MA'AM (voice, electronics), Marci Bíró (drums), Lajos Nádházi aka AIWA (electronics) and Ádám Czitrom (guitar). Marci Bíró – part of this years’ SHAPE+ roster too – brings one more of his bands: Protoplasma is a four-piece prog-noise-grind-no-wave madness including some of the key members of the Kripta community: Bálint Biczók, Ferzi Juhász, Raymond Kiss.

And more acts: electronics, Hungarian spoken word and visuals from Szabina Péter and Kristóf Bodnár, this is dj goodbye from Debrecen; modest mastermind and menthor of the Pécs electronic music community Balázs Kovács as Eszelős meszelős presents near-natural themes realized by synthetic, physically modeled instruments and algorithmic midi-effects, with countless human and machine errors; Cy4ntist (aka Fanni Csernovszky) freshly out from high school will bring her unpredictable electronics and live performance to UH Fest, joined by HiHelga from the young American post witch house internet noise community; a dj set from Max Sinclar, a key figure of the contemporary darkened and acidic club music scene of Budapest, the founder and curator of Dalmata Daniel Records, member of the BRVTAL collective; and a set from dj fazsy, founding member of Bláz, a collective run by four gay women aiming to serve Budapest’s gay community. Further more: Jan Loup, a dj from the Toulouse underground with hybrid and percussive bass music, industrial step and mutating sonic collages; DJ Brittle, a "chopped and screwed turntablism" set from the founder of Bliss Archive and Avon Terror Corps-related Jackson Veil Panther from Bristol.

UH fest will also present the live debut of Psudoku, the futuristic space prog grindcore quartet from the Stavanger underground, so far the studio project of Steinar Kittilsen (Parlamentarisk Sodomi, Brutal Blues). Using voice, feedback, and live processing, New York-based Cantonese Australian artist Charmaine Lee will perform at the opening event of the festival, as well as Venezuelan experimental musician Carlos Giffoni, now based in Los Angeles, founder of No Fun Production, with a new record out on Ideological Organ this spring. De Mond is a brainchild of Brussels based duo Stijn Wybouw on vocals, tape loops, percussion triggered synths and Arno De Bock on drums and samples. Austrian sound artist Daniel Haas aka Sturmherta exploring hybrid-modular live sets will present RESi on the closing event. Mexican born, Vienna based electro-acoustic composer and improviser Angélica Castelló, post-classical, post-industrial, post-withcraft: she will perform on the special sound system of the recently opened N space. And Robert Curgenven, while not being present personally, will still present Pavilion Field Budapest, a suspended acoustic architecture, triggered by GPS and accessed via a smartphone, headphones and an app in the heart of the 8th district of Budapest.

The music line-up of UH Fest 2024 is now complete, and soon all the website information will be as well. We keep you updated on our socials, see you on the second week of October in Budapest!

Festival passes are available as well as pre-sales for all individual events. More info here.

*SHAPE+ is a European platform for innovative music and interdisciplinary art co-funded by the European Union and Pro Helvetia. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.