Intonal 2025 – Ten years of gutsy moves
By Ivna Franić, photos via www.intonal.com.
This year’s edition of Malmö’s Intonal marks the festival’s tenth anniversary. From its early days as a collaboration with Berlin’s CTM and Krakow’s famed Unsound festival, Intonal has grown into a thing completely of its own. Rather than trying to copy the successful but heavily international scene-driven formulas of other European festivals, it focused on cultivating a close relationship with the local audience – from the festival’s intimate setting to the lineup, designed to both reflect the interests of the Malmö scene and showcase its talent. Some of the reasons for this are beautifully explained in the festival manifesto in the words of none other than the great Shania Twain.
Take, for example, most of the performances labeled “world premieres”. While it has become the prerogative of many international festivals of this kind to feature as many exclusive and world premiere performances as possible, Intonal approaches this requirement with a decidedly local twist. In collaboration with the SHAPE+ platform, the festival pairs an artist from the platform’s current roster with Malmö-based artists for a residency and performance. One team, performing on Thursday, includes Irene Bianco, 55 Cancri e and Adèle Tornberg – a collaboration that Bianco told us a little about in a recent interview. The other pairs choreographer Sanna Blennow and artist Tobias Toyberg-Frandzen with the notorious “static-oil-core” band Statoil, with Intonal following its own successful experiment of throwing a noise band into one of the late prime-time spots on Friday.
Another collaborative residency project brings an artist from Malmö together with an artist from Beirut – the home base of Intonal’s partner Irtjal Festival, an experimental music festival founded in 2000. Given their respective backgrounds, we can probably expect a noisy, dancey performance from NOS and Omar Itani on Saturday, while Felisha Ledesma and Snakeskin might have us in for a more dreamy, ambient electronic set on Sunday. But hey – who knows, right?
International Highlights
A church concert on one of the first days of the festival remains a nice Intonal tradition. Taking place at the S:t Johannes Church near Inkonst, a performance by the legendary composer Charlemagne Palestine sees him playing alongside the similarly beloved Australian guitarist, Oren Ambarchi, and English multi-instrumentalist and composer, Daniel O’Sullivan. Opening the evening will be Polish vocalist, sound artist and composer Antonina Nowacka, who collaborated with the Danish ambient artist Sofie Birch on the album Languoria, and who released a mesmerizing album last year, Sylphine Soporifera.
On Friday night, the small stage kicks things off in a pretty intense way with the off-kilter experimental pop of London-based Danish artist GB, who takes on the form of a trio in his live incarnation. One of the focal points of Intonal that sets it apart from most of the experimental events and festivals that have taken place this side of the Øresund Strait over the past decade is the focus on darker corners of electronic music. The live performances of Catalan-Italian duo Dame Area, whose latest album was released last fall on darkwave staple Mannequin Records, are known for their intense, contemporary take on electronic body music. This should set the mood for that day’s after-hours club program headlined by none other than techno legends Sandwell District.
A concert at Malmö Konstmuseum offers another excursion from Inkonst on Saturday afternoon. This one is quite special: Petra Hermanova, the Czech singer and composer with a Berlin address, will perform pieces from her stunning 2023 album In Death’s Eyes, as well as a new organ composition that was developed during a residency where she worked precisely on Malmö Konstmuseum’s 16th-century pipe organ. The other vocal-centric highlight of the day is the otay:onii show at the Black Box, which is expected to be a somewhat more dramatic and visceral affair.
Saturday’s Big Stage show by one of the most prominent figures in contemporary experimental electronic music, Nik Colk Void, promises to be one of the highlights of the entire festival. One-third of the electronic post-punk band Factory Floor, Nik Colk Void is also known for her collaborations with Cosey Fanni Tutti and Chris Carter (as Carter Tutti Void), as well as with the likes of Klara Lewis and the late Peter Rehberg, who ran the legendary experimental label Editions Mego up until his untimely death in 2021. She will be followed by the no less (in)famous German experimentalist Christoph de Babalon. And down in the Black Box, the chaotic evening will be rounded off by the currently much-hyped Japanese DJ ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U.
Sunday, the final day of the festival, offers a more ethereal program, culminating in a clash of the ambient titans. Last year’s In uno spazio immenso officially marked the collaboration between Dutch-Italian composer and sound designer Aimée Portioli, aka Grand River, and Italian producer Guido Zen, who still records and performs under the pseudonym Abul Mogard (which never sounded Serbian in the first place) but has thankfully ditched the whole Eastern European working-class cosplay thing. Their show should be an epic finale to this year’s Intonal.
Intonal 2025 will take place from Wednesday, April 23 to Sunday, April 27, 2025 at Inkonst and other locations in Malmö. For full lineup and tickets, visit their website HERE.
