Roadburn 2022 Preview by Daniel Pietersen

One of my favourite things about Roadburn, one of the things I’ve miss the most while we’ve been hunkered down through the pandemic, is how the festival constantly explores and pushes its own boundaries. This sometimes makes the event’s appeal difficult to describe to outsiders – the amount of times I’ve been asked what kind of bands are playing only to fumble my way through a ‘well, every kind’ answer is starting to get silly – but the mantra of ‘Redefining Heaviness’ is one that’s stood it in good stead with dedicated attendees, myself included. Even my must-sees of this year, acts like Emma Ruth Rundle or Lingua Ignota, are riding high on recent releases which deviate, to varying degrees, from their past work and must appreciate the chance to explore the edges of their art in a setting like Roadburn.

This year, though, we’re going one step further with a dedicated venue for more experimental and avant-garde sounds. It may seem initially counter-intuitive to have ambient or even jazz-adjacent projects playing at an event like Roadburn, but you only need to listen to records by Roadburn alumni like Sunn O))) or Kevin Martin, aka The Bug, to see how integral drones, experimentation and, yes, ambience are to heavy music. So, here’s a run-though of what you can possibly expect in the Paradox, newly-added to the Roadburn family in 2022.

First up, on Thursday, is the duo of Kristoffer Lo & Dirk Serries, two thirds of YODOK III (who we’ll hear on Friday – b lending Serries’ wailing, whale-like guitar and the looped howl of Lo’s flugelbone (a curious hybrid of flugelhorn and trombone) this set should start us of in suitably cinematic style. Next up we have Autarkh III, the ambient alter-ego of Tilburg locals Autarkh, who some of you may have caught as part of 2021’s Roadburn Redux. The trio promise to take their day job – a collision of industrial metal midway between Meshuggah and the machine crunch of Author & Punisher – and strip it down into a whirl of sound. Thursday comes to a close in Paradox with a set from ZAÄAR, whose Magická Džungl’a album reminds me of Circle covering The Orb with its weird blend of echoing instrumentation and spin-the-radio-dial effects. Those of you into Ulver’s more prog moments will find a lot to like here. I’ll certainly be enjoying a bit of transcendental bliss before heading over to be crushed into the floor by The Bug Featuring Flowdan & Logan on the Next Stage.

Friday kicks off with PoiL Ueda who try and answer that age-old question; what would Yes sound like if they had a Japanese singer? This might sound like a parody of prog excess, but Junko Ueda’s mournful voice is complemented perfectly by the instrumentation of PoiL who, crucially for a band with such an idiosyncratic singer, know when not to play as much as what to play. Red Kite follow with a more traditional jazz-rock set, which will no doubt include their cover of Alice Coltrane’s classic P’Tah the El Daoud. The previously mentioned YODOK III, now with drummer Tomas Järmyr adding avalanches of percussion to the duo of Lo and Serries, are the day’s penultimate act with their strange, sinuous form of improvised soundscape. The stroke of midnight will see Rotterdam-based Albarte hitting the Paradox stage and it’s a fitting time for their angular, sinister groove. Folks who took part in 5ive’s Continuum Research Project need to get themselves to this one.

John Ghost, Saturday’s opening act, are described on their promo blurb as ‘Tangerine Dream meets Steve Reich’, which seems to be born out by their Airships Are Organisms album, and hot damn if that’s not enough to get me excited for the day’s experimental offerings. With TONUS, Dirk Serries returns as band-leader to a rotating ensemble of musicians that’s ever-changing but always defined by restrained and minimalism rather than jazz’s more obvious tendency for excess. After a gap, which I’ll fill by catching the Icelandic dark wave of Kaelen Mikla in The Engine Room, the Pulled By Magnets super-group take us into the night with their gothic, urban sprawl that sounds like nothing less than Bohren Und Der Club of Gore being dragged into a rain-slicked alleyway. One of the ‘smoothest’ bands on the Paradox line-up, Belgium’s Dans Dans manage to bridge the gap between Roadburn’s more traditional desert psychedelia and the experimentation of their stage-mates. This’ll be an excellent come-down session after Ulver’s play-through of Flowers Of Evil over on the Main Stage.

All things come to an end, though, and Sunday arrives all too fast. Thankfully, we’ve got Het Concreet to look forward to. Revelling in live performance and collaboration, it’s impossible to say what this act will offer up, or even who will do the offering. Dirk Serries appears again as part of the Martina Verhoeven Quartet, supporting the eponymous pianist in her explorations of what the instrument can do when taken to its absolute extremes. That just leaves Schnellertollermeier, a Swiss trio, to bring this extended experiment to a close with their strangely elastic, guitar-heavy take on motorik rhythms which would fit right into the Finnish madness of Pharaoh Overlord and their innumerable kin. If I can still stand by then, I’ll be there.

Some of the acts on offer here might be a bit too much for Roadburners looking for a heads-down, heavy metal fix but I urge you to at least try a sample of the weird wares being presented in the Parodox. After all, the word experiment literally means ‘to try’ and, who knows, maybe this Roadburn you’ll redefine your own personal definition of heaviness.