Aho Ssan & Sevi Iko Dømochevsky present Rhizomes + Grand River presents All Above

Aimée Portioli is a Berlin-based Dutch-Italian composer and sound designer who records and performs as Grand River. Portioli makes experimental electronic music with rich emotional colours. Her work, influenced by minimalism and ambient music, is atmospheric yet rhythmically complex, incorporating a wide range of contemporary compositional and production techniques. The name Grand River evokes nature, scale, and movement, all key forces in Portioli’s work. Her third album All Above is released in 2023 once again on Editions Mego among one of the last releases of the label. The All Above live show is a moving and immersive experience specifically created for the new tour. When hearing the pieces of Grand River's latest release on stage, we are immersed in an emotional experience, the vision of a sentiment, where we can witness the composer bowing to what she is dedicated and devoted to. The performance offers an enhanced listening experience compared to the album, as it features reprises that are specifically composed for the live show. Grand River draws unexpected and experimental paths in her live performances and lets everything run smoothly through high impacting melodies. Light and visual stage design is created and performed live by Marco Ciceri, Grand River's long time collaborator. Between light and darkness, light projections, smoke and mirrors on moving engines reflecting beams of light, the show is an intangible setting for contemplation and immersion, inviting the spectator to let go.

"Grand River, Aimée Portioli's most orchestral album to date is filled with unexpected beauty at every turn. Portioli’s music occupies its own space in today’s electronic landscape” – Resident Advisor

Paris based composer Aho Ssan, the artist moniker of Niamké Désiré, presents his new full-length 'Rhizomes' on the Other People label following his debut LP 'Simulacrum' (2020) and collaborative record 'Limen' (2022) with fellow musician Kmru. 'Rhizomes' draws inspiration from a concept coined and developed between Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri. The idea of an ever evolving structural model, constantly in motion and spreading out in all directions at once. It has no beginning and no end, but always remains in a middle, through which it grows and overflows.
"The root thought is the one that kills everything around itself while the rhizome is the root that stretches out to meet other roots," Désiré explains considering the works of French writer Édouard Glissant who addresses questions of identity, crossbreeding of cultures and its evolution. Rhizomes AV draws on the concept of roots reaching out to connect with other roots. They are constantly in motion, expanding in all directions. They possess no definite beginning or end but perpetually reside in the middle, where it grows and overflows. This piece adapts this concept to explore the influence of sound materials on creation, the appropriation of a sound object, and the collaborative nature of a composition that responds to modernity. Aho Ssan creates musical rhizomes by employing a variety of sonic elements and collaborating with artists like Angel Bat Dawid, Nicolas Jaar, Moor Mother, and clipping. Sevi Iko Dømochevsky creates the audiovisual aspect through a hybrid exploration of languages and emotional responses to the piece, that play a crucial role in immersing the listener in an organic, mutating universe. Dømochevsky has worked with Arca, Grimes & Black Midi.

“This is the sound of music’s future: collaborative, cross-cultural and genre-fluid. Rhizomes spins like a whirlwind, constantly moving and morphing, and it has no fixed form. - A Closer Listen