My review of the 2013 Punkt Festival, today at All About Jazz.
After last year's sidestep with Brian Eno - who may have seemed like a good choice as curator but was anything but, completely placing the festival's primary philosophy on (live remix) on the back burner - Punkt was back, and at a new venue: Kick, Kristiansand, Norway's longstanding club, which the festival has used in past year's when it ran the pre-Punkt Elope night, for young up-and-coming artists.
Taking what was (or so it seemed) an intrinsically two-room festival - one for main stage shows, one for the live remixes that immediately followed - meant some adjustments to be made. But over the course of three days, with a roster including some of cream of Norwegian music (Jan Bang, Erik Honoré, Arve Henriksen, Eivind Aarset, Sidsel Endresen, Nils Petter Molvaer, Bugge Wesseltoft, Maja Ratkje and others) and some international premiers of no small significance (David Sylvian's new The Kilowatt Hour electronic project with Stephan Mathieu and Christian Fennesz), it was a year to celebrate.
Punkt is back. Read why in this review.