Nadah El Shazly (EG) • Sisso & Maiko (TZ) • Sense Fracture

Nadah El Shazly is a producer, vocalist and sound artist from Cairo, Egypt. Her music combines expressive 19th century musical concepts from her homeland with contemporary, borderless forays into electronic and improvisational idioms. She has toured the world extensively, featuring at festivals including Le Guess Who?, REWIRE, Irtijal, and FIMAV, among many others. Her debut album, Ahwar, landed at #12 on The Wire’s ‘Best Albums of 2017’. Beyond her own music, El Shazly is an inspired collaborator, working closely with like-minded Egyptian musicians Maurice Louca and Sam Shalabi (Land of Kush). R El Shazly has also spent time on-screen, starring in the feature length film About Her (2020) and appearing in the Netflix original series Love, Life & Everything In Between (2022).

Sisso & Maiko's productions epitomize Singeli’s hyperlocal scenius, distilling the vitality and struggle of life of the fringes of the Swahili-speaking world’s most populous city, into a unique music which seems to reflect the idea of keeping a cool head in frenetic situations. Between their ratchet rhythms and pitched-up melodies there’s a sublime, unresolved tension at play, where the music feels to accelerate so fast that dancers are gliding, sustaining a breathlessly “up” effect. Born in the sprawling working class neighborhoods of Tandale and Manzese, Singeli’s signature sound consists of fast paced frantic loops interlocking with each other, with influences from Zanzibar's Tarab music all the way to South African afro-house coupled with mc’s who often spit satirical lyrics about the challenges facing Tanzania’s youth, from police corruption to the complications of dating girls when you are broke.

Hailing from Milan, Italy, F. Birsa Alessandri AKA Sense Fracture is both a disruptive and constructive force. A DJ, music producer, labelhead and promoter, they started doing music with the intent to question established norms, provoke and overturn. Their work traverses the most radical fringes of rave culture and experimental electronics, injecting them with bits of digitised heavy metal, harsh sound design, spaced-out pop and weird Mediterranea. A mixture that gave their DJ sets a reputation for intensity and unpredictability.