Rewire 2025 – Echoes of experimentation and sonic alchemy in The Hague

Between 3 and 6 April, the festival for exploratory music proudly presented its 14th and most extensive edition to date, with over 200 events spread across more than 25 venues throughout The Hague (The Netherlands). In a world full of pre-packaged entertainment, Rewire Festival offers an uncompromising sanctuary for artistic complexity, experimentation, and encounter. Its extensive context programme—alongside world premieres, commissioned performances, unique collaborations, live concerts, club nights, film screenings, and exhibitions—ensures that every corner of the city resonates with curiosity and sound.

For the second time, I ventured into the world of Rewire Festival, which was noticeably more crowded than my first visit. Long lines formed outside many performances, with venues reaching capacity—a testament to the festival’s growing popularity. While this success is encouraging, it signals a turning point; I hope Rewire can preserve its intimate, experimental essence despite its expanding audience.

As before, I dove in with minimal preparation, encountering mostly unfamiliar names in the lineup. This embodies Rewire’s exploratory spirit, though the packed schedule made experiencing everything impossible. What follows is not a comprehensive account but my personal journey through the festival’s sonic landscapes.

Colin Stetson: A Breathtaking Beginning

My Rewire journey began Friday with Colin Stetson, whose first Dutch performance in six years proved why he’s one of contemporary music’s most innovative saxophonists. Performing material from his latest album The Love It Took to Leave You, Stetson’s seemingly impossible technique—creating continuous, layered soundscapes through circular breathing with no overdubs—filled the venue with sounds that appeared to emanate from multiple musicians rather than a single saxophonist. Witnessing this virtuosic performance set a high bar for the weekend ahead.

Organ Music and Acoustic Transcendence

Organ music emerged as a highlight this year. Kali Malone’s Saturday evening performance at the Grote Kerk was nothing short of masterful. In the packed church, attendees sat in reverent silence, many with eyes closed, transported elsewhere by her compositions. After a long festival day, this brought a moment of sublime reflection. As I scrolled through news reports about the ongoing genocide in Gaza just before the performance, I was very aware of the privilege and freedom we all enjoyed in that space. Rewire creates a haven where one can close their eyes and simply “be.”
Malone, performing music from her latest album All Life Long, was joined by vocal ensemble Macadam, a brass ensemble, and SUNNO)))’s Stephen O’Malley. Her patient, focused compositions built on evolving harmonic cycles drew out deep emotional resonances within the church’s hallowed space.

This organ theme continued with Anna von Hausswolff‘s performance, where she premiered a brand-new live show featuring her organ-driven compositions backed by a seven-piece ensemble, including two drummers. The Gothenburg-born artist’s innovative work sits at the intersection of tradition and experimentation, pushing musical boundaries in captivating ways.

Where Malone’s approach felt meditative and ceremonial, von Hausswolff brought a more dynamic energy, demonstrating the remarkable versatility of this ancient instrument when placed in the hands of forward-thinking composers.

Visual Immersion and Interdisciplinary Crossovers

Visual elements were abundant throughout the festival. Light effects and designs enhanced many performances, transforming them into immersive experiences—though this trendy term hardly does justice to Rewire’s multidimensional approach.

The most enriching moments came from disciplinary crossovers, like Billy Bultheel’s A Short History of Decay and the Maison the Faux presentation at Das Leben am Haverkamp.

Bultheel’s performance invited part of the audience to sit among musicians on stage while others surrounded a towering, resonant monolithic instrument. Drawing from Emil M. Cioran’s 1949 existentialist treatise of the same name, the piece critiques the glorification of ideology, empire, and permanence, suggesting instead the inevitability—and perhaps the necessity—of decay. Three monologues, co-written with writer and curator Edwin Nasr, punctuated the performance, voicing global concerns around power, identity, and collapse. In this interplay of spiritual remnants and contemporary unrest, Bultheel offered not answers, but multimedial confrontation.

On the performative side, Das Leben am Haverkamp and MAISON the FAUX delivered GLAMPUSS—a pagan-inspired mise-en-scène that questioned capitalist rituals and reclaimed symbolic narratives. MAISON the FAUX collaborated with DJ YoungWoman and performer Arno Verbruggen to make this installation come to life during the Rewire festival.

In the remarkable collaboration The Bone Algorithm by Amos Ben-Tal / OFFprojects, Gosse de Kort, and Salvador Breed, three dancers moved within a spatial instrument composed of wires and pendulums, their choreography generating and reacting to sound in real-time. It was a profound dialogue between body and machine, intuition and data, offering an experience that felt simultaneously ancient and futuristic.

Recurring themes and contemporary concerns

Themes of decoloniality, climate change, and technology’s global impact recurred throughout the festival. One striking example was The Drum and The Bird, a multi-sensory performance by Forensis and Bill Kouligas that investigated German colonialism in Namibia. The piece combined generative environmental audio, oral testimonies, and visual modelling to highlight voices erased by colonialism, examining the relationship between lost ecologies and colonial exploitation.

Gagi Petrovic and Modelo62 premiered Pay to Destroy, an “activistic concert” where audience behaviour influenced the musical output. Participants acted as “agents of pollution,” whose interactions irreversibly altered musical patterns—either polluting the composition for comfort or sacrificing comfort to heal it. The work even stored audience choices, affecting future performances and reflecting on generational responsibility.

Sunday discoveries & Laurie Anderson’s masterclass

Sunday night brought unexpected revelations. Determined not to miss Laurie Anderson, I was also curious about Lyra Pramuk, who proved to be a magnificent discovery. Her performance featured striking visuals by Lucy Beech that perfectly complemented her music. It was moving to witness an artist like Pramuk display such courage in authentic self-expression. Pramuk’s performance showcased her unique approach, using her voice as the central instrument, manipulated through electronic processes. Her futuristic folk music fused classical vocal techniques with contemporary club sensibilities and experimental pop elements.

Finally seeing Laurie Anderson live—a first for me—exceeded all expectations. She began with pointed political commentary: “Nice to be in the free Netherlands, I am from the former United States of America.” Her voice? I could listen endlessly, as well as her text treatment. The performance blended lecture, anti-Trumpian elements, dystopian visions, AI reflections, and humor into something transcendent.

Anderson’s skill in transitioning between music, spoken word, visual essay, and audience engagement was remarkable. Particularly impressive was her projection of words that symbolically dismantled the Trump administration—more effective than viral social media content. At 77, Anderson moved with the lightness of a bird and the playful spirit of a child, radiating the wisdom of someone who has lived multiple lives. Despite the rapid unfolding of dystopian realities around us, I glimpsed hope in her presence—she embodies the kind of person I aspire to be.

Anderson’s performance with composer and electro-acoustic violinist Martha Mooke provided a beautiful, rich conclusion to my Rewire experience. After three days of exploration and discovery, her work elevated personal experience to a meta-view of our world. Not just because she cleverly showed Earth and performed a duet with our planet, but because she transported us to space, allowing us to view the world through her artistic lens.

The festival can feel proud—and grateful—for her presence. After three days of wandering and discovery, Laurie Anderson gave us not just perspective, but levity. She made us laugh, reflect, and rise to our feet with a short tai chi exercise.

And There Was More…

Rewire’s programming extended far beyond what any single attendee could experience, creating a rich tapestry of sound, vision, and performance throughout The Hague. aya‘s collaboration with visual artist MFO was an unexpected delight—not typically my preferred genre, but her audiovisual showcase of forthcoming album hexed! traversed drill, jungle, deconstructed club, and techno with remarkable fluidity. Her cut-up vocal sampling, abstract synth melodies, and tectonic bass bursts created a fever-dream atmosphere both disorienting and thrilling.

Avant-garde legend Alvin Curran presented the rarely performed Canti Illuminati for choir, synthesizer, and tape—a haunting tribute to the human voice that resonated with elegant gravitas. Meanwhile, Arooj Aftab‘s Night Reign merged smoky jazz and lush instrumentation with her ethereal vocals, creating a singular sound that melds South Asian traditions with contemporary drift and longing.

The multidisciplinary artist Colin Self unveiled Gasp!—a theatrical work blending music, puppetry, and trans-dimensional storytelling that was part ritual, part operatic dream, embodying Self’s expansive and deeply queer practice. Panda Bear returned with material from Sinister Grift, a sun-bleached psych-pop journey that felt both nostalgic and fresh, while Nala Sinephro‘s mystical jazz explored joy, grief, and rebirth through her masterful combination of synthesizer and harp, emphasizing intention over complexity and allowing entire galaxies to expand within her compositions.

The festival’s sonic diversity continued with Milan W.‘s gentle, cinematic compositions drawing from experimental folk and ambient wave, glowing with tonal warmth and introspective mystery. John Glacier offered poetry in motion—her fragmented lyricism hovering over ambient R&B textures as she rapped, whispered, and drifted through layers of memory with hypnotic effect.

For those seeking more beat-oriented experiences, Hassan Abou Alam delivered a pulsating live set showcasing inventive productions spanning industrial, techno, and club music with sub-bass that kept bodies moving. Hip-hop duo Angry Blackmen brought ferocious bars and industrialized beats to The Hague, their all-caps style and bit-crushed production adding chaotic energy to the festival’s diverse soundscape.

The London-based collective NYX offered futuristic choir compositions at Grote Kerk, blending extended vocal techniques with electronic production to create music that seeks to transform pain into collective empowerment. And the interdisciplinary highlight CORTEX by Kianí Del Valle Performance Group, music producer Tayhana, and visual artists Hamill Industries explored consciousness and codified memories through choreography, sound, and visuals across four acts representing the brain’s approach to death.

This barely scratches the surface of what Rewire 2025 offered. From experimental electronics to avant-garde choreography, from meditative organ music to furious club beats, the festival created a temporary ecosystem where artistic exploration thrived in all its forms.

Reflecting on Rewire 2025, I can only conclude that it was, once again, a special experience—a festival that continues to push boundaries while creating meaningful connections between sound, space, and consciousness. Rewire does not hand you a conclusion. It leaves you with an echo, a question, a possibility.

Save the date: Rewire 2026 is scheduled for April 9 – 12

IG. @rewirefestival
www.rewirefestival.nl

Report by Branko Popovic