Europavox Festival Brussels 2023

CAMILLA SPARKSSS

Barbara Lehnhoff artistically known as Camilla Sparksss is a Swiss Canadian electro punk musician and visual artist. She was born at -30 degrees in Kenora Ontario, Canada. Yes, she had a pet bear as a child and yes her father flew a float plane.

Camilla Sparksss is best known for her captivating live performance mixing her own samples pressed on dub plates (vinyl), combined with thick synthesisers and cutting vocals.Since 2013 Camilla Sparksss has performed over 400 live shows across Europe, North Africa, Canada and the US in venues, theatres and festivals. 

Camilla Sparksss is currently preparing a new audio visual album entitled Camilla Sparksss Lullabies, scheduled for release early 2023. That combines animated picture disc vinyls, which come to life through a magic mirror and other worldly melodic bedtime stories for adults entirely composed with endless grooves, mellotron and spoken words.

ADA ODA (BE)

Italian post-punk from the Brussels underground? Ada Oda offers an energetic blend of music at the crossroads of eighties rock and Italian pop. The project was initiated in 2020 by César Laloux (The Tellers, BRNS, Italian Boyfriend) with Victoria Barracato on vocals. César’s barebone songwriting describes his impressions of love and the people around him.

His lyrics were first translated into Italian and then adapted by Victoria, the daughter of a Sicilian immigrant. On stage and in the studio, the duo is accompanied by Marc Pirard on bass (Italian Boyfriend), Alex De Bueuger on drums (Alaska Gold Rush, Gros Cœur) and Aurélien Gainetdinoff (San Malo, Yolande Bashing) on guitar. The band released its first album, “Un amore debole”, at the end of November 2022 on 62 TV records/PIAS.

USE KNIFE (BE)

Use Knife is a new musical outfit, in which Stef Heeren and Kwinten Mordijck unleash their mutual love for analog and modular electronic machinery and Saif Al-Qaissy invokes fierce Arabic percussion grooves and sermons vocal energies. Use Knife coincides Western underground music with traditional Arab music culture into a genuine melting pot of unique musical current. Their music is composed around propulsive electronic rhythms, ricocheting sequenced melodies and samples and vibrant Arabic drum rhythms. 

Use Knife is the trio’s musical vehicle to explore and express hallucinatory freethinking visions to contemporary global living. Use Knife is collaborating with Radwan Ghazi Moumneh (Jerusalem in my Heart, Hotel2Tango) for the production of their debut full album and with Youniss Ahamad for live visuals and scenography. The album will be released late 2022 in conjunction with VIERNULVIER, Ancienne Belgique, STUK, Muziekcentrum Trix, Wilde Westen and CC De Grote Post.

AOIFE NESSA FRANCES (IE)

Aoife Nessa Frances is a singer-song writer and multi- instrumentalist from Ireland whose sophomore album ‘Protector’ will be released via Partisan records on 28th October 2022. This November, Frances and her band begin an extensive tour of UK, EU and USA bringing her music in a full arrangement.  Atmospheric synths, minimal bass, shimmering guitar and clarinet are backed by contemplative tempos creating psychedelic crescendos anchored by Aoife’s deep voice.  

In spring of 2020, Frances moved out of the city for the first time in her life. After packing up her things in Dublin, she moved to rural County Clare on the west coast of Ireland, and there, amidst the stillness, she worked on the songs that would become her second album, Protector. The resulting body of work deftly juxtaposes golden hours and arguments, affection and alienation, and above all marks a crucial period of her life that was transformative and left her wiser.

ANNA ERHARD (CH)

Humour in music, it can be a delicate balance. Luckily, Anna Erhard perfectly understands how a good song can be funny, and vice versa. Yet what really makes her stand out, is that she can leave behind the hilarities to suddenly evoke some very deep emotions, with an earnestness you wouldn’t expect while listening to the rest of her music.

The Swiss-born, Berlin-based artist used to be a part of folk band Serafyn, but now creates her enjoyable brand of indie pop together with Pola Roy (formerly of Wir Sind Helden), with the duo sounding like Wet Leg and Fiona Apple had a rather subdued lovechild. Anna Erhard’s second album ‘Campsite’ is an intimate affair, as if we’re reading along in her diary. A unique look into the soul of a very creative spirit.

MARTA DEL GRANDI (IT)

 Italian singer-songwriter Marta Del Grandi has dedicated her life to studying music in all its forms. Originally a jazz singer, she traveled to China and then Nepal, where she taught at the Kathmandu Jazz Conservatory, and it was after her travels that an urge for something more was born. Del Grandi turned introspective, trying to pinpoint what her relation to music was, and how she could get creative with that.

The result is debut album ‘Until we fossilize’, an album that’s full of emotion without ever going for cheap theatricality. Seeing as her brilliant voice is sometimes accompanied by orchestral music, that wasn’t an easy feat to achieve. The accompanying music never takes the focus away from her wonderful vocal performance though, with the sound wandering around between the epic build-up of a Morricone soundtrack and the atmospheric ambient of David Lynch. It’s music that, despite its richness, creates a moment of calm in an increasingly hectic world.