Dekmantel Opening Concert

Presented by Melbourne Recital Centre & Dekmantel

Details

Laraaji, E Fishpool, Priori, and Yu Su open Dekmantel Naarm in Elisabeth Murdoch Hall.

Dekmantel is an Amsterdam-based music company that hosts global events and releases cutting-edge dance music. Dekmantel has established itself not only as a peerless electronic music festival in Europe, but also as an organisation appreciated for its deep and genuine passion for underground dance music. In March 2024, Dekmantel brings its festival to Melbourne Naarm for a four-day event.

In a mesmerising festival-opening concert, Melbourne Recital Centre welcomes four artists to Elisabeth Murdoch Hall for an expansive and celebratory evening of ambient electronic music.

New-Age icon Laraaji is a masterful navigator of music and meditation. He began playing music on the streets in the 1970s, improvising trance-inducing jams on a modified autoharp processed through various electronic effects. Brian Eno saw him playing one night in Washington Square Park and invited him to record an album for his seminal Ambient series. Laraaji went on to release a prolific series of albums for a wide variety of labels, many of which he recorded himself at home and sold as cassettes during his street performances. In recent years his profile has enjoyed a renaissance via a series of new and reissued recordings on the All Saints label, as well as worldwide performances, laughter meditation workshops and deep listening sessions.

E Fishpool is a Budawang artist based across Budawang and Walbanja Country. Their work maps processes of unlearning and (re)learning identity through sampling sound, dialect and field recordings.

Priori is an alias of Canadian musician Francis Latreille. Under the Priori Moniker, Latreille has established himself as a crucial voice in underground techno. His 2019 full-length debut On A Nimbus, released on his own NAFF imprint, was a haunting foray into the possibility/impossibility of technological utopia, where elements of dub techno, drum & bass, IDM, and tech-house curiously converged, resulting in an album at once familiar, modern, and undeniably singular.

Kaifeng-born Yu Su is a composer, DJ, and sound artist. Tapping into an expansive repertoire of ‘forth world’ ambience and left-field dance music, Yu Su’s emotion-packed compositional punches are best described as organically groovy jazz-bient expeditions between coasts.

Join us for a curated and blissful auditory experience, to open what will be an unforgettable Dekmantel weekend.

Caring for Our Community

Melbourne Recital Centre is committed to the safety of our artists, staff and patrons. A range of public health, hygiene and physical distancing measures are currently in place. Click here to learn more.