Heralded as “one of the most exciting young composers in North America” by the Guardian and a “unique navigator of the electronic world” by NPR, Kara-Lis Coverdale is a fiercely independent voice in new music that champions omnivorous approach to sound. She creates colourful and dense arrangements that blur the line between the human and the data with a unique penchant for long-form melody, harmony, and sonic detail. Following a 2014 release of pieces for processed voice that highlight the nature of the voice in the age of data, Kara-Lis released a solo album Aftertouches (Sacred Phrases, 2015), which was named best of the year by The Quietus, The Wire, NPR and the collaborative album Sirens (Umor Rex, 2015), with LXV. She is also known for her collaborations with Tim Hecker (Virgins and Love Streams) and her production work for How To Dress Well. She has performed at prestigious institutions around the world, including the Barbican and the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris. She has been composer in residence at EMS Stockholm, and GRM Paris, and has is recipient of a “promising young artist award” by legendary Canadian composer Ann Southam.

Kara-Lis will perform with Berlin-based visual artist MARCEL WEBER aka MFO, in a collaboration to create a fractured afterlife in which the show takes place.

Marcel Weber is a visual artist who works with imagery, light and space. His performances and installations have been commissioned and featured by many highly regarded festivals, such as CTM and Transmediale (Berlin), Unsound (Krakow, Adelaide, New York), Mutek (Montreal) and have been shown at renown venues like the British Film Institute, Centre Pompidou as well as numerous institutions and events across Europe, USA and Australia. 

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith studied composition and sound engineering, initially focusing on her voice as her primary instrument, before switching to classical guitar and piano. A fateful encounter with a neighbour who lent her a Buchla 100 synthesizer, had a profound effect on her. Mesmerized by the Buchla’s, she soon began sculpting lush and exciting worlds of sound.

In her Portuguese debut, performing at semibreve Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith will perform 'EARS', her latest record and an immersive listening experience in which dizzying swirls of organic and synthesized sounds work together to create a sense of three-dimensional space and propulsion. Dense and carefully crafted, each of the songs on 'EARS' unfolds with a fluid elegance, while maintaining a spontaneous energy, and a sprightly sense of discovery. 

Quietly kicking around the New York City underground since the late­nineties, Ron Morelli started the L.I.E.S. label in 2010 as an outlet to release the music of a tight knit group of friends who were making tracks around the city.

As time has progressed, the label continues to be a highly respected institution and consistent mainstay in the weird world of off­center electronic music. Releases have come from the likes of artists as diverse as techno pioneer Adam­X, Dutch synth master Legowelt, and Black Dice's Eric Copeland.

2013 and 2014 saw Morelli step a bit further into the production realm, releasing two albums and one 12 inch for New York City's Hospital Productions imprint run by Dominick Fernow.

Continuing further in his sound exploration, Ron Morelli has been busy in the studio putting together new music for his live set following his recent appearance at Berlin Atonal. At times harkening back to the world of sparse early free form electronics, these new productions take a turn with disarming, unassuming melody and texture. Moving with a layered heaviness, a fine line is walked, tension builds and breaks, feedback rumbles, and voices appear from the underbelly of constantly morphing sonics. A conflict rises but never finds resolve, everything left open ended. With this music, a new ongoing collaboration with visual artist Florence To, titled "FALTAR" will premiere at  Semibreve.

Andy Stott made his debut for the Modern Love label in 2005 with the 'Replace EP' - a 4 track exposition of his uniquely slanted production style taking in Chi-Town and Motor City influences with an obtuse genetic code at its core.

The following year produced what is by now regarded as a landmark album 'Luxury Problems', - a record that introduced new elements; most notably the vocals of Alison Skidmore, Andy's piano teacher from back in his school days. A combination of accessible yet inherently deviant tropes and a production style which has become more individual and identifiable with the passing of time has attracted a huge amount of interest, with countless features in publications as diverse as Pitchfork, Vogue and the New York Times, as well as appearances at numerous festivals and shows including SXSW, Unsound, Mutek and PItchfork MOMA events, continuing to expose his work to an ever-growing and often bewitched audience.

Stott’s next album ‘Faith In Strangers’ was released in late 2014 and once again found the producer taking a sharp stylistic turn. The album was voted the number one album of the year for 2014 in Resident Advisor, as well as tagged ‘Best New Music’ by Pitchfork and featuring in countless year-end lists.

In Semibreve Andy Stott will perform his fourth album “Too Many Voices”. The album draws for inspiration from the fourth-world pop of Japan’s Yellow Magic Orchestra as much as it does Triton-fuelled Grime made 25 years later.

Nidia used to dance hard with her crew of girls Kaninas Squad back in Vale da Amoreira (south bank of the Tagus river, across Lisbon) but she soon imagined the crew producing their own music. She was kind of alone in her enthusiasm and it was only after her move to the Bordeaux area in 2011 that everything clicked together. She was 14. Nidia continued to pick up the vibes coming from the 'hoods around Lisbon and started her own bedroom Estúdio da Mana (Sister's studio) out of saudade of her home land and culture. "Danger", her first physical record - and quickly sold out - released on Príncipe in February of 2015, is an outstanding & powerful collection of tracks, her own fiercely distinct aesthetic voice turning up the heat on the boys at their - until now - sonic territory. Evoking Rory Gibb's articulate hermeneutics, "Her music is dazzling in all senses, a trance-inducing tangle of boxy drums, vivid swirls of synthetic melody and buzzsaw grime bass, all corralled into tracks that feel less like functional dancefloor units and more like short, sharp shocks of adrenaline."

This past year she has had a string of memorable live activity, from parties at Art Basel Art fair or BCR's 2nd Anniversary bash in Berlin to club shows in Celezte in Stockholm or Opium in Vilnius, to her striking Unsound Krakow and CTM 2016 performances. Her first LP is in the works to come out on Príncipe in 2016.

Christina Vantzou is a composer, artist and videomaker based in Brussels.

With a background in visual art, Vantzou ventured into music first as a video artist / animator / keyboardist as half of The Dead Texan.  Later she joined Sparklehorse on a European tour, (2007) and Christina credits the introduction to Mark Linkous as a catalyst for creating her first full length album of minimal ambient post-classical music.  Christina has released three albums on Kranky records.  Her work as a composer and orchestral arranger is characterized by lush layers of classical instruments, synths, vocal samples and somnambulant melodies.  As a visual artist, Vantzou works in high-speed to create slow moving visual accompaniment to her music.

In Semibreve, Christina Vantzou will perform a special set with Ensemble Harawi, a local contemporary music ensemble.

In a portuguese debut, Moritz von Oswald (Basic Channel, Maurizio, Rhythm and Sound) and Rashad Becker (Dubplates & Mastering) present their fathom project, originally commissioned by Berlin Atonal for The Long Now festival, and its first performance outside Berlin.

At the centre of the concert is the natural sound of a piano, over-exposed by playing only a single note (b) that passes through varying paths of electronic convolution, gathering all kinds of electric patina and evoking echoes, clones and caricatures of itself, ultimately acting as a sonar impulse sent out to machinery to be informed and invaded by its circuitry. The sound of the piano turns into fiction as soon as it is picked up by a microphone, yet it’s legacy is unshakeable, its character unbendable.

Tyondai Braxton is an American composer and electronic musician. He has been writing and performing music under his own name and collaboratively, under various group titles, since the mid 1990’s. His music incorporates electronic and modern orchestral elements, ranging from solo pieces to large-scale symphonic works. 

The former front man of experimental rock band Battles, Braxton has since focused on his own work, including his critically acclaimed album Central Market – which has been performed by world-renowned orchestras such as London Sinfonietta, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

He has been commissioned to write pieces for ensembles such as The Bang on a Can All Stars, Kronos Quartet, Alarm Will Sound, and Brooklyn Rider. In 2012, Braxton collaborated with legendary composer Philip Glass – performing as a duo for the festival series All Tomorrow’s Parties, as well as remixing Glass’ work for the REWORK remix album.

In 2013, Braxton premiered HIVE - a multimedia piece that is part sound installation/part live performance - at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. He has given subsequent HIVE performances at Sacrum Profanum Festival in Krakow, as part of the Nonesuch Records 50th Anniversary celebration at The Barbican in London, and at Sydney Opera House.

Tyondai Braxton will have his Portuguese debut in semibreve.

Sonic and scenic constructor, approaching within his work elements of pre-language, generative choirs, “acoustic animism”, echo, gestual percussion and the reminiscence of ceremonial music and dub.

Since 2010 he composed a series of pieces for voice, electronic and resonant space:  TEUFEL RADAR, choir and antena; KHŌROS ANIMA, choir, sub-bass, industrial space; SANCTA VISCERA TUA, gesture, light, percussion, termites and choir; SILVO UMBRA choir, light and spheric space.

He is part of FUJAKO duo, mentor of the ensemble HHY & The Macumbas, founder of SOOPA collective and co-founder of SiloRumor label. He is co-creator of the scenic pieces NYARLATHOTEP, REI TRILOGY, DEL JUNGLE MACHINE and OXIDATION MACHINE presented in venues like Serralves Museum, Accès(s) Festival and Rivoli TMP.

Played at the festivals: Sónar, Primavera Sound, Amplifest, Out.Fest, Milhões de Festa, Neopop, Tapettefest and Elevate. On tour he played at Ancienne Belgique (Brussels), Berghain Kantine (Berlin), Stubnitz (Hamburg), Filmer la Musique (Paris) and Issue Project Room (New York).

His music has been release under the labels Tzadik, Rotorelief, Ångström, SiloRumor and Wordsound.

At Semibreve Jonathan Uliel Saldanha will bring together some of his multiple sonic outputs and collaborations into an interstitial realm of resonant spaces, generative choirs, sub-bass pressure, disembodied voices, gestual percussion and reminiscences of fanfarre music; adding to the flow elements from his new release Tunnel Vision (SiloRumor), with recordings made in tunnels and cavities, mixed in a process referred as Skull–Cave–Echo. 

Heavy, mutilated strains of electronic music with influence from the sounds of Detroit, UK, Jamaica and Germany - Laurel Halo's music is a shapeshifting mess, moody and ecstatic, with flashes of rhythmic brilliance mediated by modal simplicity.  The Michigan-born and Berlin-based artist has released both instrumental and vocal-driven records on the London-based label Hyperdub, and has performed in a variety of clubs, concert halls and strange spaces worldwide.  Also an avid DJ, Laurel hosts a monthly show on Berlin Community Radio, having originally cut her teeth as a freeform DJ on the legendary WCBN-FM station in Ann Arbor, MI.  She has collaborated with John Cale, Julia Holter, David Borden, Daniel Wohl and NH'Koxyen/Terepa, and has contributed a cover of the late folk singer, Karen Dalton, on a recent Tompkins Square compilation.

Semibreve live set will be a rare appearance from Laurel Halo, in between old and new material to come out in 2017.

Quietly kicking around the New York City underground since the late­nineties, Ron Morelli started the L.I.E.S. label in 2010 as an outlet to release the music of a tight knit group of friends who were making tracks around the city.

As time has progressed, the label continues to be a highly respected institution and consistent mainstay in the weird world of off­center electronic music. Releases have come from the likes of artists as diverse as techno pioneer Adam­X, Dutch synth master Legowelt, and Black Dice's Eric Copeland.

2013 and 2014 saw Morelli step a bit further into the production realm, releasing two albums and one 12 inch for New York City's Hospital Productions imprint run by Dominick Fernow.

Ron Morelli will perform twice during his time at Semibreve, presenting a DJ set and his first ever live show. Not so far removed from his 2015 LP "A Gathering Together", the live show will be an amalgamation of Morelli's rugged deconstructed electronic soundscapes culled from the fringes. Primarily a beatless experience, this will not be dancefloor fodder, but rather an immersive sound experience with a punk attitude and tense edge evoking an uncertainty as to what sonic experience is around the next corner.

Oliver Coates is a cellist, composer and producer based in London. In the past year he has performed solo shows in China, Russia, Brazil, Egypt and Australia, and made his New York debut at Le Poisson Rouge. He was the winner of the Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artist Award 2011 and is an Artist in Residence at the Southbank Centre. He has released records on Prah Recordings and Slip, and collaborates with the London Contemporary Orchestra, Jonny Greenwood (on The Master and There Will Be Blood), Mica Levi (on Under the Skin) and the visual artist Lawrence Lek (on the award-winning video piece Unreal Estate). With Lek, he has recently presented the world premiere of a new work, QE3, at the Glasgow International festival. His new LP, Upstepping, came out on Prah in May, and he has programmed the Southbank Centre’s DEEP∞MINIMALISM festival taking place in June. In the autumn he will release a collaborative record with Mica Levi on Slip/Warp.

In Semibreve, his Portuguese debut, Oliver Coates will present a special performance, a tonal minimalist composition based on cello and electronics with an AV walkthrough rendering of the dystopian empty videogame worlds of Lawrence Lek.

Continuum is a new work by Paul Jebanasam featuring visual projections by Dutch artist Tarik Barri. Inspired by the poetics of energy and living matter’s eternal resistance against entropy, the piece explores the compositional space of synthetic audio and visual materials pushed to limits of technological possibilities.

The live performance of the work centres around custom software developed by Barri to enable improvised constructions of complex simulated environments. Traditionally the domain of high performance supercomputing, this practice applies physical models to create immersive examinations into the structure of light. Parallel to this process, Jebanasam’s compositions re- imagine the concert space as a vast architectural instrument based on the acoustic designs of church organs and driven by a bold vision for machined music.

Continuum is a Portuguese debut promoted by Semibreve.