BY:LARM: Johanan(SE) + Lafawndah(Iran) + Gaika(UK) + Danny L. Harle(UK) + Skinny Days

Kl.19.00 – JOHANAN (SE)

Johanan is a Swedish producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who burst onto the scene with the majestic and anthemic song “Go on (Let it Go)”, a song that instantly demands your attention. He is perhaps the latest wunderkind to emerge from the Scandinavian pop mecca and rumours has it that his live performance is everything but dissapointing.

Kl.20.00 – LAFAWNDAH (IRAN)

Globetrotting singer/producer Yasmine Dubois has only been making music as Lafawndah for a short time, but already she’s causing ripples worldwide with her futuristic take on globaltronica. After packing in her jobs as a gallery curator in Mexico City and New York, the half-Iranian, half-Egyptian musician moved back to Paris to concentrate on honing her “ritual club music,” influenced by Nina Simone, Grace Jones, Missy Elliot, Kate Bush, traditional Middle Eastern singers, dancehall queens and the Night Slugs label’s modernist take on grime and bass. For her debut self-titled EP Lafawndah flew to Guadeloupe to work with Portuguese producer Garagem Banda, Emily King, and zouk veteran Jean Claude Bichara.
Like her acclaimed 2014 debut EP, the recording of Tan began on an island with the same minimal studio set-up. This time, with collaborators Nick Weiss and Tamer Fahri, it was Fire Island off the South Shore of New York rather than the Caribbean island. Soon enough proceedings hopped to the totemic island of Manhattan, where she embodied the role of executive producer by folding the like-minded ADR and L-Vis 1990 into her process to help realize a warped vision of esoteric industrial rhythms fused to an aggressive palate of nomadic atmospherics.

Kl. 21.00 – GAIKA (UK)

Hear about London right now, and it probably sounds a bit bleak; the mass closure of much-loved venues, house prices that only the rich can afford, rising racial tensions and increasingly no help for the down-trodden. However, scratch away its surface, and the deep, dark, anonymous city remains brimming with fearless art, just as it always has done – a testament to what can bleed from a gaping wound.

Enter Gaika: the unsigned underground artist making music fresh from Brixton, where he was born and raised. With a warped, electronic blend of grime, dance hall, garage, hip hop and R&B, Gaika takes the sonic textures of the streets and crafts them into brand new, glistening shapes. “I like the idea of putting these organic sounds into a weird, mechanical space,” he tells me, and in his debut mixtapeMachine you can feel it – the hyper-real sound of South London being transformed into something alien-like and digital, and in turn, utterly unique.

Kl. 22.00 – DANNY L HARLE (UK)

One afternoon two years ago, Danny L Harle composed a song to play in his DJ set; a huge fan of 1990s dance tracks such as Haddaway’s What Is Love and Corona’s Rhythm Is A Dancer, he wanted a song of his own to play alongside them. The result was Broken Flowers: both a paean to the past, and the sound of something modern.

Now Broken Flowers is reappearing, lightly polished, to head up Harle’s new EP, a statement of intent from the London-born 25-year old composer and producer.

The new EP is one of the first full releases under the PC Music label deal recently struck with Columbia Records. Harle has long been affiliated to the label and works regularly with his friend Alex ‘A. G.’ Cook, PC Music’s founder.

With its electronic sheen and avant-pop sensibilities, Broken Flowers is certainly a feather in PC Music’s cap. But the EP is also progress for a distinctly individual artist. “Pop music in itself is super-crazy,” says Harle.”It’s on the brink of insanity. And what I have always been hoping to do is just push it that little bit further, to complete insanity.”

The EP is a first step in that direction. Broken Flowers is followed by Forever, which Harle considers its rival in melody and impact; then comes Without You, a more complex construction, less up-tempo. The final track is Awake For Hours, a heady rework of Broken Flowers.

For Harle, Pop is the genre which “makes so much sense” in this day and age, more than any other he has worked in. It’s been a meandering journey up to this conclusion. His first musical instrument was the slap bass: this set him on a path taking in funk jams, eventually playing on dinner cruises; then getting into experimental jazz; before embarking on a degree in music at Goldsmiths.

Kl.23.00 – SKINNY DAYS (NO)

Skinny Days have over 5 million streams on their first four singles, an impressive accomplishment considering the band is still less than one year old. Debut singles “Alright Right Now” and “We Got Something” introduced Dag Holtan-Hartwig and Halvor Fostad’s schizophrenic musical stylings to the world via Spotify. Both tracks immediately went to #1 on Spotify Viral charts in Norway and Denmark, in large part to the blend of melodic, soulful vocal melodies that are unexpectedly interrupted by EDM-inspired drops that seemingly come out of nowhere.

Most recent singles “If I Was A Sailor” and “In A Good Way” showcase the duo’s talent for writing and producing simple, catchy, pop songs, which have been supported by P3 and MP3 radio in Norway.

Skinny Days began playing live in early 2016, supporting Gabrielle at a sold-out Rockefeller in Oslo before playing a handful of headline shows in Norway. With a live band featuring the duo’s vocals and multi-instrumentalist skills, they are quickly developing a reputation as genuine, live artists.

Skinny Days most recent single “In A Good Way” was released on January 22 by Warner Music.