Alter

Devon Rexi will join us for ALTER - bringing their dub laden kraut-rock! We simply can’t wait

Following two lauded EPs on cult label South of North—Tambal (2022) and Biya Ba Man
(2024)—Amsterdam-based interdimensional dub group Devon Rexi released their
much-anticipated debut album, recorded by and featuring the elusive 5 Gate Temple
devotee, musician and producer John T. Gast.

The group is formed by a core trio of Nicola Reverda (Nicolini) on drums and vocals, Nushin
Naini on bass and vocals, and Goya van der Heyden (La Rat) on samples and effects. In this
formation, they skirt and flirt around a motorik kraut-rock mentality with an indubiously
dub-laden physicality and an uncategorisable sense of experimentation.

The shifted realities of Devon Rexi’s songs arrive like quantum conjurings, as if their
frequencies are echoing from the furthest wormholes of space. As much as they create
something fantastical and yet-unheard, their priority is in understanding vulnerability and
friction, reality and fragility, mythologies and everyday resistances. They do this artfully and
honestly through an almost deceptively simple arrangement of percussion, bass, and melody.

Tickets via link in bio!

It is with great honour that we invite Alison Cotton to his year’s instalment of ALTER!

Alison Cotton has been recording for almost 30 years – in bands like Saloon, The Eighteenth Day of May and The Left Outsides – and her solo career, which started with a cassette release a decade ago, came about almost by accident. But in the ensuing years, Alison has developed a singular and affecting style according to parameters she set herself: “to work predominantly with the instruments I play and own… these parameters have grown as my music has evolved but mainly because I’ve bought new instruments. As for the sound, I really just play what comes naturally to me and it comes out in a folky way. The drone element started almost as a necessity, as I often use it as a base to play other parts over when I’m improvising. My first album was mainly just viola and vocals and, it worked well playing and singing over a viola or omnichord drone.

occupies a unique place in the current English music scene, the way that often quite experimental drones of her work meshes with the more traditional elements seeing her included with artists like Nico, John Cale and Dorothy Carter. After remarkable releases like The Portrait You Painted of Me and Engelchen, The Gods Laugh feels like the fulfilment of incredible promise.

Find your ticket via the link in our bio 🔗

It is with huge excitement that with present 9 additional artists for this years ALTER! For this batch we once again invite artists who push the boundaries of the musical landscape.

The 9 new artists are:
Alison Cotton ( )
Alle
Curbside Lambsear ( .lambsear )
Devon Rexi ( )
Muskila & Simona Abdallah ( )
Oscar Friisgaard ( )
Roxane Metayer ( )
Swanasa ( )
Yngel & Rasmus Daugbjerg ( .daug )

Nature is invited in when Roxane Metayer creates a universe through her music that borders on animal and plant mimicry, whilst Yngel & Rasmus Daugbjerg’s organic and folktale-like collaboration celebrates the magic of nature

In Alison Cotton’s droning folk music, swanasas’ meditative sound collages and Oscar Friisgaard’s sound works, the audience will be led into a space for contemplation. The same can be said of both Alle and Curbside Lambsear, who both work with diverse forms of fragility, allowing listeners to get up close and personal.

On Saturday evening, Muskila & Simona Abdallah’s Kurdish and Palestinian roots will transform rhythms from the diaspora into heavy, club-oriented soundscapes, whilst Devon Rexi’s motoric krautrock mentality, with an unmistakable dub-infused physicality and an experimental sensibility that defies categorisation – will undoubtedly get even the least danceable guest moving.

ALTER 2026 is kindly supported by:

dk

eu

It is with immense happiness that we present Tara Clerkin Trio at this years festival!

With two extraordinary mini-albums – In Spring (2021) and On The Turning Ground (2023) – making a splash on London’s formidable World of Echo label in wake of their self-titled 2020 ’s upcoming Somewhere Good LP is, in many ways, the band’s most realised work.

In running their usual gauntlet of idiosyncratic (*an overused adjective for which here there is regrettably no sufficient alternative) approaches, Clerkin & co. colour in and outside of compositional lines over the course of 40+ celebratory minutes - never wallowing, despite inherently somber subject matters of self-defeat, disease, displacement, restlessness, gentrification - allowing their arrangements and improvisations ample space and time to situate, stretch out, breathe, cross-pollinate, and ultimately take deeper hold on the listener’s imagination – all while somehow sounding more like themselves than ever before.

The hazy, unmappable skyline-mirage of droning harmonium, upright bass, peculiarly accentuated wind instruments, acoustic guitar, hushed yet literally mighty keys combine to hypnotizing effect. The band may make underlying nods to jazz, sure, but it’s not appropriation, it’s that they have the actual chops to build it out. Beneath the janky samples and oddball percussive embellishment lies actually great drumming.

Beyond the manipulated vocal witchery and woefully reflective plain-spoke moments are Tara’s subtly inspired melodies, sung with what might honestly be the glue to the whole crazy equation. A calming consistency throughout the otherwise unpredictably dynamic, boldly intuitive, uniquely British exploration of this (their own) universe in song.