UH FEST 2024

The 2019 edition of UH Fest will take place between 29th September and 6th October at several venues and spaces across Budapest, highlighting again the effort to cross-pollinate and connect the local and international scenes. Over the course of a week visitors will be able to experience various strands of adventurous music without stylistic boundaries: live performances, music happenings, workshops and talks. Early bird passes for the festival are already available.

The festival will welcome American composer Lea Bertucci, whose sonic palette includes a saxophone, bass clarinet, electronics with electro-acoustic interference and distortion. Her widely acclaimed album, Methal Aether was released by NNA Tapes last year. Three years after his remarkable audiovisual show at UH Fest, Ata Ebtekar aka Sote will return to Budapest with his new conceptual performance Parallel Persia, featuring Arash Bolouri & Pouya Damadi on traditional Persian instruments, and reflecting on a Meta-Persian reality.

UH Fest 2019 will present Muqata'a, one of the key figures of Palestine's hip hop scene and the former member of the Ramallah Underground collective, which was recently featured in Boiler Room's Palestine Underground music documentary. French-Canadian performance, conceptual and video artist, composer and musician Melissa Gagné aka Cecilia will also perform at the festival, her wonderfully and intellectually sexual record Adoration came out last year on Halcyon Veil.

Three key representatives of the new local improv scene, Somló Dávid, Makkai Dániel and Porteleki Áron will present Solar The Monk at the festival, the new album of their project Dorota.

ODJ is the moniker of two leading figures of the Finnish electronic scene - Tommi Grönlund and Harri Hännikäinen of Sähkö Recordings and Keys of Life. Judging by their longstanding involvement on the underground scene and their affinity for uncompromising A&R, ODJ's selection is definitely not to be missed, nor are French noise scene spearheads Sister Iodine who have been around in last two decades, and still retain their affinity for radical forays into sound.

Defined as electronic horror music with a space twist, Icelandic synth pop artist dj. flugvél og geimskip joins the festival's line-up as well as a special Hungarian-Japanese collaboration, between legendary avantagarde-noise artist and performer Keiji Haino and local drummer extraordinaire Balázs Pándi.

UH Fest, as one of the founding members of SHAPE, the European network for innovative music and audiovisual art since 2015, will present several artists connected to this platform once again this year.

Besides the aforementioned Balázs Pándi, Brussels-based reggaeton artist Clara!; half of the EBM-inspired duo Volition Immanent, a respected producer and DJ Parrish Smith; Berlin-based sound artist Jessica Ekomane, whose quadraphonic performances seek a cathartic effect through the interplay of psychoacoustics, the perception of rhythmic structures and the interchange of noise and melody; Australian sound artist Robert Curgenven renowned for his immersive installation and performances; Brussels' psychedelic experimentator and captivating live performer Bear Bones, Lay Low; cellist Lucy Railton, whose warmly received debut, Paradise 94, came out via Modern Love in 2018; as well as the duo OD Bongo who use various drum machines, blending genres such as techno, dub, noise and industrial.

This is so far, more or less the 40 percent of the line-up, further festival announcements will be made during the summer, and the full programme will be announced in the first days of September. For more information you can visit the website or follow the festival’s FB-event. Early bird passes are available here.