Thursday, July 28th to Sunday, July 31st in the Castello Volante of Corigliano d’Otranto, With the claim #ShapeTheFuture, the sixteenth edition of the SEI Festival, conceived, produced and promoted by Coolclub proposed a dense program of concerts, meetings, screenings and other moments of discussion. Among guests Arab Strap, Black Midi, Dengue Dengue Dengue, Ditonellapiaga, Mombao, Nickodemus, Ceri and other national and international guests who performed in the atrium, terraces and moat of the ancient fortress.
The festival kicked off Thursday, July 28th on the Terrace of “Nuvole – Cibi, storie, culture,” the Castle’s workshop of taste and spirits, with the presentation of the book “In the labyrinth. Thom Yorke. Stories, myth and music” by Luca Castelli (Sperling & Kupfer) and in the Sala Cavallerizza with the first screening curated by Seeyousound Lecce with B-movie: Lust & sound in the West Berlin 1979-1989. The line-up for the 16th edition was opened by the live performance of Giorgio Tuma with the Koko Tutu Mama group with tracks from his EP dedicated to bossanova and Brazilian music being released by Elefant records, and the solo project of Koko, singer, bassist and songwriter of Be Forest, in which she experiments with sound and new lyrical approaches. On the Main Stage, set up in the Moat, the first evening featured the Turkish psychedelia of Lalalar and the inimitable blend of Arab Strap. On stage the Scottish duo, composed by Moffat and Malcolm Middleton, performed songs from the album “As Days Get Dark,” among others.
On Friday, July 29th the second evening started on the Terrace of “Nuvole – Cibi, Storie, culture” with the meeting“Puglia da scoprire, i luoghi dello spettacolo fra musica e politiche culturali,” continuing with the screening by Seeyousound Lecce, in the Sala Cavallerizza of Betty Davis: They say I’m different by Philip Cox and with the immersive listening of “From Ecstasy to Trance” a sensory journey curated by Flower of Sound. The atrium featured young Bari-based Lazzaretto, and the Tuscan duo Aquarama. In the Moat, space was given to live performances by 72-Hour post fight and Black Midi, a London-based trio consisting of Geordie Greep (guitar, lead vocals), Cameron Picton (bass, vocals) and Morgan Simpson (drums) who, with saxophonist Kaidi Akinnibi and keyboardist Seth Evans, performed songs from the “Cavalcade” recording project. The evening ended in the atrium with Planet Opal, an electronic music project formed by Giorgio Assi (producer, synthesizers and vocals) and Leonardo De Franceschi (drums and percussion).
On Saturday, July 30th the evening opened on the Terrace of Nuvole with the presentation of the book “Possible music. From the cylinder to the auto-tune, history of the relationship between popular music and technology” by Dino Mignogna (Arcana). In the Sala Cavallerizza, a preview was made of the documentary that rescounts the experience of Feelm – From primitives to the future directed by Davide Faggiano and produced by Coolclub in the programming Puglia Sounds Producers 2022 (POC Puglia 2007/2013 – Action “Development of cultural activities and entertainment). From June 20th to 25th, the Castello Volante hosted, in fact, the second edition of the artistic residency dedicated to the relationship between contemporary music and early cinema. Directed by Ginevra Nervi, the work was dedicated to Elettra Raggio, a diva and pioneer of silent cinema, with the soundtrack of the feature film “La morte che assolve” by Carlo Alberto Lolli (1918). The third day of the festival hosted at the center of the Atrium the Mombao, a project based on percussion, voices and electronics, very powerful and original, somewhere between a ritual, a performance and a rock concert. Double live in the Moat with the trio Mundial, which recovers old stories and nursery rhymes using a sound characterized by sampling the sounds of the Apulian landscape, edited and transformed into rhythmic patterns, and Dengue Dengue Dengue, a Peruvian tropical bass duo that mixes psychedelic cumbia and dub, salsa and footwork, tribal and techno. Grand finale in the atrium with selections by New York DJ and producer Nickodemus and the sounds of the Tropical party feat. Dubin and Federico Primiceri.
Finally, onSunday, July 31st, the last evening has opened in the Sala Cavallerizza with a screening of the documentary Jagged – Alanis Morisette by Alison Klayman, edited by Seeyousound Lecce. While the immersive listening by Flower of Sound concluded on the terraces, live performances by Adastra kicked off in the atrium. In the Moat the performer LaHasna took the stage, a Milanese woman of Moroccan origin with sounds that recall the Arab world, and Ditonellapiaga, one of the revelations of the last Sanremo Festival paired with Donatella Rettore, who with her debut album “Camouflage” excited public and critics, winning the prestigious Targa Tenco as best debut. Immediately after in consoles between the Atrium and Cavallerizza, space was given to Rome In Reverse, a trio that proposed a mix of dance, techno, dub and trip hop, and Ceri, one of the most innovative and influential producers on the Italian scene (Salmo, Coez, Calcutta, Franco 126, Frah Quintale and Crookers), “the demiurge of Italian street pop, with beats that combine hip hop, songwriting tradition and dancefloor branded house.”
Also this year, the SEI proposed someOFFdates. On Monday, August 15th, at the Tagghiate Urban Factory in Lecce Ferragosto hcas been celebrated with the multiform project PopX , a completely renewed and impactful show that retraced historical and new songs extracted from its now 15-year career, and bnkr44, a Tuscan band that mixes hip hop, pop and electronic elements. Instead, Parco Gondar of Gallipoli hosted two evenings with the concert of Venerus, a rising star of singer-songwriting who, exactly one year after the very successful “Magica Musica tour,” is back to perform his new show “Estasi degli Angeli”, the DJ set by Mace, one of the most important producers of new Italian music (August 8th) and the performance of Psicologi, exponents of the “post-millennials” generation, who tell the complexity of the world around them with truth and compositional intelligence(August 20th).
Conceived, produced and promoted by Coolclub, under the artistic direction of Cesare Liaci, one of the most important festivals in the musical agenda of all of southern Italy, which in recent years got the recognition from Fus – tFondo Unico per lo spettacolo of Mibac, is realized in collaboration with Dice.fm, Vini Garofano and numerous public and private entities. Since 2006 SEI – Sud Est indipendente Festival has brought to Salento the most interesting sounds of Italian and international music, offering the public a wide and varied overview of music from punk to singer-songwriter, rock to ska, folk to upbeat rhythms, electronic to the new Italian scene. In the various Salento locations that hosted the festival in the first 15 editions hosted international artists such as Kings of Convenience, Lee Ranaldo, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Cat Power, Suzanne Vega, Peter Hook & The Light, Skatalites, Joan as Police Woman, Finn Andrews, Patrick Watson, J.P. Bimeni & The Black Belts, Giant Sand, Hollie Cook, Gogol Bordello, Mad Professor, Bombino, Russell Leetch (Editors), the Italians Baustelle, Calcutta, Franco126, Mannarino, Avion Travel, Negrita, Lo Stato Sociale, Calibro 35, Brunori Sas, Be Forest, Diaframma, Any Other, Lorenzo Kruger, Venerus, Ariete, Francesco Bianconi, Cristina Donà, Cristiano Godano, Paolo Benvegnù, Roberto Angelini, Bud Spencer Blues Explosion, Coma_Cose, Galeffi, Eugenio In Via di Gioia, Andrea Poggio, Siberia, Canova, Colombre, Giorgio Poi, Bugo, Daniele Silvestri, Cosmo, Verdena, Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti, Vallanzaska, Teatro degli Orrori, One Dimensional Man, La Municipàl and many others from Puglia, Italy and the rest of the world.