Four Catalan artists revealed for ESNS 2024 line-up in Groningen

11 December 2023, 00:00 | Written by The Line of Best Fit

(News)

(Dame Area) (Habla de Mí en Presente) (Los Sara Fontan) (La Élite) (Eurosonic Noorderslag)

Four artists leading the new Catalan music scene have been announced as the region's picks for the annual Eurosonic Noorderslag (ESNS) this January.

Dame Area, Habla de Mí en Presente, La Élite and Los Sara Fontan will showcase at the event, revealing the wide array of musical projects being bred in Catalonia right now. Their shows are the starting point of their participation in the ESNS Exchange programme, an initiative supported by the European Union that aims to facilitate the circulation and recruitment of European talent.

Since its creation in 2003, the ESNS Exchange has encouraged more than 2,000 European artists to perform at nearly 200 festivals and helps them take a leap forward in their careers.

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Across two albums and several EPs, Barcelona duo Dame Area have executed an eclectic, discerning form of contemporary industrial music. They’re known for deploying compulsive minimal synth and primal polyrhythms, as well as specially reconstructed elements of post-punk and EBM.

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Habla de Mí en Presente broke out in 2022 with their first album Vivir más, which they revealed the essence of their project: “technorumba”. The band - made up of five musicians from Catalonia, France and Germany – are mixing Berlin techno with Catalan rumba and played all the main Catalan and Spanish festivals this year.

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Synth punk group La Élite is a that was born in 2015 in Tàrrega, Catalonia, as a result of boredom and the need to spend time in a more or less “productive” way. After the first demos they dozed off for 7 years, only to bounce back with releases and their first live shows. Since then, the band has not stopped growing based on a string of strong single releases, their 2022 debut album Nuevo Punk and a very electric live show.

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In Ancient Greece, instrumental music was feared for its ability to push the listener into uncontrolled flights of fantasy. Clinging to this principle, Los Sara Fontan decided to explore the irrational, not to use words and to break with the classical forms of production and reproduction. Sara Fontán’s classical and contemporary violin and Edi Pou’s polyrhythmic energy define the identity of Los Sara Fontan. In October they released their first album, Queda Pendiente.