Berlin-Budapest Express: Marina Herlop (ES) and Sirom (SLO)

The Berlin-Budapest Express will pull up for the second time at the House of Music in September, with artists and forward-looking music from Berlin, Budapest and other European cities with cross-genre performers presenting innovative music. On Friday 15 September, Catalan artpop star Marina Herlop and Slovenian avant-folk trio Širom, whose 2022 album really put them on the map, are performing on the opening day of the autumn event. Stepping up to play on Saturday 16 September are the spacey, electronic-ambient, minimalist American performing artist-singer-clarinettist Holland Andrews, and London-based experimental techno producer-DJ-songwriter Beatrice Dillon. Both days will close with free open-air concerts: on Friday the improvisational psychedelic group Huba és Vazul csodálatos utazásai / Huba and Vazul's Marvellous Journeys aretaking to the stage; while on Saturday a group of Moldovan musicians, Kalagor, are playing. The Berlin-Budapest Express weekend is organised by the House of Music Hungary in cooperation with the Berlin-based cultural organisation Digital in Berlin with the aim of connecting two culturally vibrant European capitals and creating a forum for cross-genre exchanges and innovative musical activities.

Marina Herlop
On her early albums (Nanook – 2016, Babasha – 2018), Marina Herlop, the Catalan pianist-songwriter-producer, was a performer who flirted with modern classical tendencies, sang in unusual registers, and only occasionally added effects and other instruments to add spice to her predominantly piano songs. On her 2022 album Pripyat, however, her talent finally burst through very distinctly and with a sound that was radically different from that of her predecessors. On her hypnotic third album, which assumes a vibrant, polymorphic form, she channels the posthuman habitat and form of the eponymous city of the title into her music. Herlop's sophisticated yet alien vocal acrobatics are actually inspired by the Carnatic music of southern India, yet the songs have an electronic, glitchy, artpop sound. Decimated and rebuilt structures, layer over layer, an invented language, nevertheless revealing through the power of song the shape-shifting form of everyday life in our era. It will be a joy to watch an artist create who has only recently discovered her voice – because Marina’s extended versions of her songs are born on stage.

Širom
It is lucky for Širom that Slovenia is home to Chris Eckman (The Walkabouts, Dirtmusic), head of Glitterbeat, one of the most prominent global music labels today. And Glitterbeat is lucky that the head of the label lives in the same country as one of its most important bands, Širom. This Slovenian trio sets out from folk music basics with acoustic folk instruments, but working with traditional songs rather than world music, their imagined folk music explores the possibilities inherent in those fundamentals, boldly building something new from them. This is deeply rooted in polyphonic sound, folk psychedelia, and improvisation alongside classical elements.

In 2016, their first album caught Eckman's attention, and from the moment they were released on Glitterbeat onwards they have been steadily delivering their stunning and beautifully constructed free folk. However, their 2022 LP, The Liquified Throne of Simplicity, was received with even more enthusiasm than previously, to become one of last year’s hit albums on the global music scene. With unbridled musical inventiveness and dexterity, the repertoire of Iztok Koren, Samo Kutin and Ana Kravanja includes more than a dozen instruments and at least as many distinct musical forms that could be seen as the inspiration behind the ensemble's character – the source of their highly original, homogeneous style. A down-to-earth yet mystical minimalism. Sheer serendipity that now we can catch them live in Budapest.