Tomoyuki Aoki has been the vocalist and guitarist of Japan’s leading psychedelic band UP-TIGHT for more than 20 years, releasing albums that mix destructive guitar noise with delicate folk ballads.He has also been active as a solo artist, touring Europe in 2023, He is part of a tidal wave of Japanese underground music that stretches from Les Rallizes Denudes and Keiji Haino to Acid Mothers.

Harutaka Mochizuki is a multi-instrumentalist, mostly known for his saxophone improvisations recalling the same lonely satellites. He is not only a soloist. He is also actively collaborating with many musicians such as Tomokawa Kazuki(legendary Japanese folk musicians), Hideaki Kondo (EXIAS) and Michel Henritzi (France). Mochizuki was also touring Europe in 2023 as a solo artist.

Ravenna Escaleira is an artist from Porto, now based in Lisbon, after time spent in Brazil, Spain and Italy, in a process of self discovery that reflects itself in her music. With a body of work encompassing music, poetry and visual arts. After her idiosyncratic and direct experiments with electronics under the RVN alias, which left a legacy of performances and digital releases that would go from raw noise to almost ambient textures, she has been developing her own language on the saxophone, piano, and bass guitar after years playing in the streets. A lived experience that is reenacted through a deep lyricism, close to the most aching ballad, designed by the acoustic space it inhabits

In 2015 Bill Orcutt had the privilege of headlining a The Orm show at the ZDB. Some hours earlier, when questioned by a third party on “what do you play”, Tiago Silva and Filipe Felizardo could have replied “electric guitar”, but they opted for “noise” – which justifies the quip that slipped from Orcutt in that moment: “I am beyond noise.” Uncomfortable smiles, one moment, gonna grab another beer, be right back.
There’s no punchline. If The Orm is a band, it is a tragedy: it kills the father, kills the grandfather, only in order to emulate them in name of the failure that is to not know how to play less than very loud; it gives itself to corniness and takes itself so seriously that the only question it intends to formulate is: “To go beyond what?” Of improvised music’s vices and its pretence, non-idiomatic purity? Of expression? Of refusal? Formally and ethically, The Orm does not go – it sinks.