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On April 17, CTM presents a monolithic lineup at Festsaal Kreuzberg, headlined by the ferocious trio SUMAC in collaboration with poet-musician Moor Mother, with support from Finnish krautrock experimentalists Pharaoh Overlord. This marks a fresh chapter in SUMAC's boundary-pushing journey, as they unite their intricate, heavy soundscapes with Moor Mother's uncompromising voice and radical poetics, bringing their new collaborative album The Film live on stage, released via Thrill Jockey on April 25. Known for colossal compositions built on toxic slump-dump sludge, hardcore, and improvisational noise, the trio of Aaron Turner (ISIS, Old Man Gloom), Brian Cook (Botch, Russian Circles), and Nick Yacyshyn (Baptists) waggle their sonic extremities with a leer even as they wield them as tools for transformation.
Moor Mother's piercing critiques of systemic injustice and deeply rooted explorations of history's unresolved legacies form a soul-wrenching mixture of spoken word, soundscapes flayed bare, and radical politics. A Philadelphia native, she channels her background in photography, poetry, and activism into an aural Frankenstein—morphing seamlessly from snarl to howl to melancholic whisper, collapsing timelines through mythic storytelling and sonic collages, and confronting ancestral trauma while refusing to offer false hope of immediate liberation, instead amplifying the tension and anguish: making listeners feel the suffocating weight of historical and ongoing oppression while demanding a reckoning.
Coming together in a sprawling collaboration, The Film brings together both of their guttural distortion, industrial chaos, and lyricism into a seething sonic odyssey. SUMAC's malleable approach to heaviness forms a jagged canvas for Moor Mother's incisive, spectral voice. Traversing fractured histories and speculative futures, its raw, textured soundscape evokes the birth and destruction of worlds, voidic spirals down the drain of existence. Guitar snarls and spiraling improvisations retch as Moor Mother's defiant narratives of survival, reclamation, and resistance swirl in the entropic foam—caustic atoms gnawing at the flickering hope of liberation.
Opening the night, Pharaoh Overlord brings their ever-evolving aural experimentations. Once rooted in stoner rock, the Finnish duo, consisting of Jussi Lehtisalo (Circle, Ektro) and Tomi Leppänen (Circle, K-X-P), both long-time collaborators of Aaron Turner, has metamorphosed into a powerhouse of shimmering Italo-disco synths and industrial ear-jammage, merging psychedelic roots with hypnotic electronics. Their recent groovage leans into the experimental, infusing relentless thumps with expansive, glittering panoramas.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Festsaal Kreuzberg, Am Flutgraben 2 ,Berlin, Germany
Tickets
