Bloc 2012

Tomorrow sees the start of Bloc Weekend, a two-day / two-night festival of electronic music.

 

Considering the likes of Steve Reich, Gary Numan and Snoop Dogg are headlining, the festival’s digital music continuum covers a pretty broad church. As well as them, a legion of producers like Hudson Mohawke, Clark, Joy Orbison, L-Vis 1990, Bok Bok, Appleblim, Surgeon and Untold (to name a few), and showcases from Resident Advisor and Hyperdub all take place under the London City Airport flight path at the Pleasure Gardens in Docklands. And on a battleship. Bringing the SONAR model of locating a music festival in a city is no bad thing and especially when it’s in the city you live in. A few acts we are looking forward to, the full line up here:

Steve Reich and Bang on a Can Allstars

Bang on a Can was formed 25 years ago by composers Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe with a 12-hour classical music event at Exit Art gallery in SoHo, New York. Since then they have had a rotating roster of musicians and collaborated with some of the best classical musicians of the day. Steve Reich is not far off laying sole claim to that crown. According to their website they will be playing some of minimal music’s seminal pieces: Clapping Music, Piano Phase/ Video Phase, New York Counterpoint, Cello Counterpoint, Electric Counterpoint and 2×5. Read the Quietus’s interview with Reich here

Previous Frieze Music act Hype Williams are Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland. frieze was lucky enough to see them play a sunset set on the floating Danish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale last year.

Comic book-loving, skit-loving, name change-loving, mask-loving DOOM is playing!

Montreal producer Jacques Greene is the undisputed champion of the world when it comes to pitched-up garage vocal sampling.

London producer Ikonika is one of the few female acts in the lineup and can certainly hold her own with the boys thanks very much. Read Mike Powell’s dubstep roundup for frieze in May 2010 for more.

Brooklyn-based Daniel Lopatin aka Oneohtrix Point Never has been raved about by Pitchfork for a while now. Philip Sherbourne described OPN’s 2010 album Returnal as ‘drenched in retro-futurist melancholy, conjuring a nightclub of the near future as it might have been imagined by some straight-to-VHS movie from the early 1980s.’

Actress is Darren Cunningham and his album RIP earlier this year was really good. He has another Ghettoville reportedly out in July.