“Here for the Sound”: Rewire Festival, 9–12 April, The Hague, Netherlands, Cyclic Defrost.

My review of the 15th Rewire Festival, The Hague, 9–12 April 2026. I’ve been noticing the phenomena of “adventerous music” festivals in Europe, that bring together a wide range of artists engaged in institutional, commercial, experimental and “fringe” practices. They tend to be multi-art affairs that include film programmes, exhibitions, dance and performance art and invariably have a discourse stream featuring researchers and writers alongside artists. CTM in Berlin and Unsound in Krakow are two well known examples that I have attended and reviewed. Peers had recommended Rewire in The Hague and I was forutnate to attend its fifteenth edition, 9–12 April 2026, which felt like a sweet spot in the festival’s trajectory. Rewire occurs in early Spring and it was a sunny weekend. The festival had sold out, yet I rarely had to queue and organisers, artists and attendees were open and friendly. Read at Cyclic Defrost.

KING GONG – “The Lisu” (Discrepant 2026), Cyclic Defrost

Born in France, Laurent Jeanneau became a nomadic DIY ethno-musicologist as a young man in the 1990s. He earned a reputation for documenting music made by people of the Zomia region which stretches across the highlands of Southeast Asia and Northeast India, encompassing parts of Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, China and India. The 100 million inhabitants of this region represent numerous minority language and ethnic groups. According to James C. Scott in his renown book The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (2010), over thousands of years these groups adopted organisational, social and cultural practices to avoid being governed or dominated by surrounding empires and states. Now their culture is at risk due to the appropriation of land for plantations, dams or other “developments” and under pressure to conform to commercial sensibilities. Read at Cyclic Defrost.