Lunchmeat Festival 2022—Bringing the Cutting-Edge of Audio Visual Arts & Electronica

The Lunchmeat Festival continues its tradition of a week-long program every Autumn bringing top-notch cutting-edge digital artists and musicians/producers/DJs in contemporary electronic music. This includes a symposium, performances in venues around Prague, and sometimes an element of shock. 

While Lunchmeat Festival places great emphasis on local and the most promising of rising acts in the genre, they assure a consistency of top artists from around the world and across multiple generations.

A pioneer of underground electronica from the UK and at Lunchmeat for the first-time ever is Squarepusher. Squarepusher is Tom Jenkinson, an electric bass guitarist, electronic musician, producer, and a DJ. He was at the forefront of progressive electronic jazz and drum & bass since the 1990s releasing tracks on Ninja Tune and Warp Records.

These days, he has become a multimedia-one-man-act with his furious attack on bass with a mobile arsenal of electronica for a full-bore performance.   

Another veteran this year includes the return of Lee Gamble, an artist, producer, label owner and a DJ. You can expect from a DJ mix of Lee Gamble’s anything from conceptual sound art, jazz, drill, dream pop and rave classics, since he has been at the forefront of progressive electronica for decades.

Representing the younger generation of electronica progressives is Karenn, yet they are still veterans of the UK drum & bass and techno sound specializing in hard-driving and relentless 4/4 electro-beats.

However, more than only underground dance parties, Lunchmeat Festival features the freshest experimental projects in audio-visual installation with electronic musician/producers collaboration.

Highlights include Hüma Utku with “The Psychologist” (released 2022). Hüma is a Berlin-based electronic musician and sound artist working with field recordings, acoustic instruments and atmospheric ambience. She will be collaborating with Utku Onal also from Berlin for visual projections of images in cinematic body horror aesthetics, appropriate for this project which is described as a dark odyssey into the subconscious steeped in mysticism and folkore; Hüma composes her music to narrate stories recounting shared trauma.

Another Berlin-based digital artist and industrial designer is Lucas Gutierrez, from Argentina. Gutierrez has performed or exhibited his high-tech AV “trance” projections with sound at the most prestigious of electronic arts festivals and venues including Sonar in Barcelona, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Artists like this usually project visual soundwaves and sound-frequency patterns, for instance fractals.

Still more to underline the wide diversity of the programing is Lucy & Wanton Witch. Wanton Witch is a Bangkok-based producer who released her self-titled album last summer. It is a dark or menacing exploration of industrial beats; this project has been reinterpreted by Lucy, who is Luca Mortellaro and the head of the record label Stroboscopic Artefacts, which released Wanton Witch’s album. Both artists will be performing live in Prague, not as a remix, but for a “re-birth” of one into the other.

Locations for the Lunchmeat Festival include Archa Theatre, CAMP, and Ankali, while the late-night affairs are in the main venue, formerly known as the Theatre of Heroes; it is an underground space of the National Gallery’s Trade Fair Palace. And please note: ear plugs can sometimes be advisable. 

This year’s 13^th annual Lunchmeat Festival begins on Monday, September 26^th and ends in a roar sometime in the early morning of Sunday, Oct. 2^nd.

For more information see the website: Lunchmeat Festival 2022