UNLEASHED is a club night that "pushes the boundaries of twilight" by highlighting free, narrative, and interdisciplinary practices, inspired by Crystallmess’ monthly NTS Radio show of the same name. UNLEASHED is centered around the idea of music as a free continuum and a remedy beyond genres.
Crystallmess
Paris-based producer, DJ, visual artist and writer Christelle Oyiri aka Crystallmess explores the capacity of popular culture to resist dominant industries and schools of thought. Her musical style transcends genres, shifting from zouk to rap, to techno and Afrotrance.
For Night Shift, Crystallmess has produced Introludo Inferno, a mixtape composed of intros, interludes, and musical interstices. Often overlooked, these sound arrangements speak volumes about an artist's vulnerability and innermost intentions.
Space Afrika
Manchester duo Space Afrika’s create music that gives an impression of moments overlapping in a mosaic of dialogues, rhythms, and textures. Their acclaimed album Honest Labour, released in 2021 on Dais Records, is a dreamlike collage of multiple sound sources,. Honest Labour is an enigmatic fusion of ambient restlessness and cosmic downtempo, a sound that is both hazy and fragmented, a cross between audio bricolage and sound design, born out of and destined for the nostalgic solitudes of a life in confinement.
Space Afrika regularly collaborates with visual artists such as Tibyan Mahawah Sanoh, namely for her film Untitled (To Describe You), a vivid study of the reality of the Black working class in the north of Great Britain, and French director Valentin Noujaïm for his film Pacific Club, which will be screened at the start of the evening.
oxhy
Based in London, oxhy writes songs about the sublime. In 2021, they released their first album, woodland dance, imagining folk songs lost in the future. Using music that oscillates between a guttural scream and a forgotten love song, oxhy conjures up a strange scene, inviting the audience to identify with it. Their concerts are an attempt to achieve the ecstatic culmination of a collective ritual. Their latest EP, giving in, was released in June on UK label xquisite releases. Crystallmess and oxhy will present a live show of abrasive, punk, and high-energy music created together.
HE4RTBROKEN - Liyo & Steff
HE4RTBROKEN is a Belgian collective that brings undeniably emotional music to the dancefloor. Launched in 2015 their events primarily take place in Brussels, and occasionally in Paris, London, and Shanghai. They explore a range of liberating musical styles, with headliners including Total Freedom, Laurel Halo, Oklou, Asmara, Tzusing, Why Be, Malibu, SKY H1, Lafawndah, Klein, Oli XL, Toxe, and Palmistry, amongst others. Since 2020, the collective also hosts a monthly programme on NTS Radio. Founders and resident DJs Liyo and Steff met when they were teenagers, and learned the art of spinning the decks together. Their narrative style is akin to the philosophy that underpins their events: emotions take precedence, seeking to create ecstatic highs, moving climaxes, and abrupt comedowns.
Valentin Noujaïm
Valentin Noujaïm is a visual artist trained in filmmaking. His work focuses on three themes: lives compressed, lives forgotten, and lives distorted. He creates marginal and strange characters in sometimes fantastical worlds. His work is based on research into formats, combining the use of DV, 16mm, digital film, and special effects.
The film Pacific Club (2023), presented during Night Shift, tells the forgotten story of a nightclub of the same name. Set up in 1979 in a basement in the Paris business district of La Défense, Pacific Club was one of the first clubs to play hip hop and R&B music, attracting young people from the suburbs whose parents had immigrated to France. The score to Pacific Club was composed by Space Afrika.
