Live Report From Hertz Festival

First Day Of The Festival

Novi Sad

The first artist to whom we expected was the Novi Sad … While we all have our eyes turned on stage, the lights went out completely and an audio stream of water was heard. Most of us thought it was the introduction to the artist to appear on stage. In vain, throughout the period during which the Novi Sad was performing his work there was total darkness and eerie noises coming from the speakers. Drones, and residues from the industrial era were heard, creating a veil of mystery about an artist which ultimately did not ever seen any.

Fennesz

The headliner of the evening was known for his remixes he has done to Isis and a collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto. This time, the lights were sufficient to see the Fennesz and listen to the sound produced during the set. Modest and polite, went on stage and began experimenting by creating sounds with a laptop by editing audio frequencies. During the set, he was scrathing his guitar or with various ways  as to distord the whole sountrack of that night. The roaring sound of the samples and the skill of Fennesz on the fingerboard of the guitar reminded me of several experiments of the first album of Tangerine Dream. The atmosphere was quite futuristic when Fennesz began experimenting with acid samples, but in that time the artist’s set ended, leaving us somewhat disappointed by the short duration of the set.

Second Day Of The Festival

Thepersonwhodidthis

The Greek artist who opened the second day of the festival,  appeared in public with a device that looked like a tablet pc that was glued onto a wooden arched case. Every time he was moving the device and depending on the keys that pressied on the pc,  the device produced different sounds of  very high or very low frequencies. At the same time had a microphone in front of which, when accepted as an incoming voice, fluctuates, or distort the sound volume. The philosophy of Thepersonwhodidthis was more concerned with how the body interacts with technology than with the musicality of the sound.

Eliane Radigue

Before the performance of the last artist, we were advised to not make noise cause Eliane is performing her work in low volume and low frequencies. Really, during the set people were silent cause the sounds that we heared were very low and hardly we could feel the vibe of this performance. The artist wasn’t on stage but her work was in the atmosphere through the drones and distorted frequencies. After the show was over, Eliane apperead from the back of the audience and the continuing applauses ended the second day of the festival.