Heith, METATERME (Elvin Brandhi + Emiddio Vasquez), Ansuman Biswas, Karina Sletten (DJ)

False Locust presents four artists all in their own ways exploring relations between the analogue and the digital, the organic and the synthetic.

Heith's music exists where organic and digital elements clash, merge, and transform. His songwriting evokes both reminiscence and curiosity, creating sonic spaces that feel both familiar and alien. After his 2022 opus X, wheel, he released Escape Lounge (PAN), charts unmarked musical territory—one that draws from the experimental pop of '90s trip-hop, the introspective songwriting of 2000s indie-folk, and the lush, dreamlike haze of Mediterranean psychedelia. The album draws inspiration from contemporary digital spirituality and interpretations of experience that cross over from cultural niches into the mainstream, including internet-based conspiracy theories and psychological operations, crafting a post-informational folklore while exploring new territories in personal songwriting. On May 5th, Heith will release Duori, a "5th world music" collaboration with Indonesia musician Tarawangsawelas, via Stroom. Since founding his label Haunter Records in 2013, Heith has played a key role in Milan's music scene, also becoming part of the curatorial team at the legendary Macao space, and collaborating with artists such as Puce Mary, Visio, and Kareem Lotfy.

Elvin Brandhi and Emiddio Vasquez come together as METATERME, a sound experience-based research and practise, redefining the sacred in the tempo of the NOW. They met through a series of uncanny coincidences in Lebanon, Kurdistan, Brazil via Finland, thus demonstrating the physicality of connectivity. In their quasi-nomadic practise of creative displacement, they deterritorialise circuits of interference, intersections of influence, and cultural awareness. They strongly believe in the importance of making space for nightmares, conditions for the space to dream, unfreezing the limbs of resilience. At the Cyprus Pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 2024, they held an exorcism performance in collaboration with Poncili Creacion. In this dark, warm space, they explored sensory extremes of a sauna through sound and transformation in the performative costume shifts of the Poncili brothers. This inspired them to elaborate on “curse reverse”: group healing through intimacy, empathy, and catharsis, creating an environment where all are safe to attend to the extremes of our psychological composition: extremes which are being triggered ever more as war, media consumption, and normalisation of terror governments engulf our screen-bred youth.

Ansuman Biswas has an international practice encompassing music, film, live art, installation, writing and theatre. His work as a musician spans many genres, including free improvisation, pop, jazz, and classical musics from around the world. He has worked as a composer at the National Theatre and the Royal Opera House, and has been commissioned by the Sonic Arts Network, the National Theatre, the Royal Ballet, the English National Opera, and Shakespeare’s Globe. He has worked as a percussionist alongside Courtney Pine, Evan Parker, Butch Morris, John Renbourn, Jerry Dammers, The Specials, Robert Cray, Fun-Da-Mental, Asian Dub Foundation, Talvin Singh, Nitin Sawhney, Bjork, Cornershop, London Philharmonic, and many others. Underpinning this diversity is his core discipline of Vipassana, which has informed his commitment to the primacy of listening, and the fluidity of identity.

Karina Sletten, making her UK debut, is an artist from the Norwegian West coast. Her DJ sets express her associations with other artists on the bill, showcasing pathways and interests that intertwine a plethora of genres and timelines. Her work spans sound art, performance, installation, and relational public practices. She explores sound, space, text, environment and perception in innovative ways.