PRINS THOMAS / NO

Space disco guru Prins Thomas is invited to play on the first day at The Bridge Festival. Prins Thomas first poked his head up in dance circles in 2003, joining forces with Lindstrøm to bring a new kind of vibe to disco circles, one that was as in love with instrumental rock and noodly seventies jazz as with dusty old disco gems. “I like to mix up the styles. The old with the new, the minimal cuts with the Balearic beauties and my own classics on top of it, in order not to get bored". Rokolectiv brings you the man who created, together with his Norwegian peers, the climax of the on-going fascination with retro futurism and space disco.

MIRA CALIX / UK

If you go down the forest today you’re sure in for a big surprise! You have all the chances to come across a lovely girl hunched down amongst the trees, fiddling with gear, smoking, cracking, twisting and recording sounds in the fine summer day. The Bridge Festival takes Warp artist Mira Calix out of the wilderness and brings her in for an organic “laptronica” built using knackered bits of wood, noises of insects and songs of birds.

CHICA AND THE FOLDER / CL / DE

Chica and the Folder might be the last Romantics in Berlin; together they spun and condensed it all in an electronica fairytale: taking a trip to the Bavarian Alps, climbing mountains, sitting on their peaks, whispering tales in each other’s ears, bread and butter in one hand, a mike in the other, this German-Chilean duo is always looking for a secret that’s worth telling a story. And each time the story’s being told, a new track comes to life. Or a record. Or a live set...

CANDIE HANK / DE

Patric Catani began to produce music in the early nineties in a proto-gabba outfit called E de Cologne, kicked off breakcore with partner Gina d'Orio as EC80R and is responsible for most of the beats of the internationally acclaimed hand puppet frenzy project, Puppermastaz. Yet, he is still at his best if seen on stage as Candie Hank, for his excellent mixture of humor, madness and noisy polka beats.

SILLYCONDUCTOR / RO

Sillyconductor’s recent live performance at the Rokolectiv festival fueled a mother-symphony from 2 second samples and mini-symphonies creating a far larger one, a completely acoustic endeavor with massive orchestras fighting against each other, flooding the audio output with textures that would deafen Beethoven himself. The Bridge Festival calls Sillyconductor and his 2 instrument players back on stage to hit the tympanis and mimic the ubiquitous 808 bass drum, emulate arpeggiators through brass sections and replay their piquant syncopated sampled orchestras.

MINUS & ION / RO
Kraut nostalgia meets Nintendo

Minus is Daniel Stanciu, a 21 year-old Constanta-born computer science student. He’s been making tracks for a few years, trying to focus on the emotional aspect of music rather than on its technical side. Style ranges from 8-bit and old school-electro to dub, downtempo and ambient music with vague references to math, fuzzy childhood memories and old video games. Minus has recently released an EP on the Romanian netlabel Arhiva7 and is currently working on two more. He performed live at TMBase (Timisoara), Rokolectiv (Bucharest), Wilsonic (Bratislava), Today’s Art (The Hague) and Numusic (Norway).

Daniel Stanciu has recently joined up the Romanian bass and keyboard player Ion Dumitrescu for a live show that blissfully confronts Nintendo cheap tunes to kraut nostalgia.

TOM WILSON / UK / RO

Tom Wilson is a DJ, producer and journalist who relocated to Romania in 2002. He has written for The Observer, The Independent and Dazed and Confused, works as an editor for Omagiu magazine and pens a number of monthly columns. He releases music on Dreamboat Records and his debut LP will come out later in 2008, under the name “These Are Not The Best of Times”. Tom is a fan of early minimalism, collects English folk revival records, secretly downloads happy hardcore mix tapes and is quite scared of dogs. Oh, and not to forget, he spins some of the best “academic” disco records!

ALIEN PIMP / RO

There are a lot of things we could tell you about Alien Pimp, but Joe Muggs has a lot nicer way to put it in Mixmag: “…Romania’s first dubstep release contains some impressively tidy productions. (...) Alien Pimp’s ‘Robots & Cellos’ has a gnarlier, junglist-sounding bassline and cellos playing a distinctly Eastern European-sounding melody line. It’s crunchy, high-tech stuff, and a reminder that Romania isn’t all headscarves and horse-carts.”

http://www.myspace.com/alienpimp 

PISTAMASHINA / BG

No one knows who exactly Pistamashina are. The speculations flood the fans with streams of information, but despite the diverse theories, the information about them remains vague. As a whole, the theories and rumors gravitate around few possible versions:
1. Pistamashina is a band of extraterrestrial undercover agents at unknown civilization.
2. Pistamashina is an experiment of a secret international organization, supported by the governments of the most developed industrial countries in the World.
3. Pistamashina is actually a group of robots-androids, created in secret underground laboratory at the heart of Europe (under the territory of Switzerland and part of France).
Rumours keep on multiplying, as well as their tracks. The truth might or might not be revealed at The Bridge Festival.

http://www.myspace.com/25dp

COSMIQ MICROBIQ / RO

Cosmiq Microbiq is Cosmin Tapu, the organizer of Bucharest’s own electronic music festival, Rokolectiv. Since 2007, Cosmin was invited for gigs at Today’s Art Festival, Autobahn Stokholm, Autocenter, Club 103 Berlin etc. He started DJing together Camil at Bucharest underground parties, playing an eclectic selection of tracks, from Detroit techno to Chicago or clicky house.

CAMIL / RO

Camil Dumitrescu is a well known fashion photographer and DJ based in Bucharest. Camil’s DJ sets are unpredictable and vary from Detroit techno and Chicago house to 60’s psychadelya, rock’n’roll, early electro-pop, space disco and even country music.

SKVJS / RO

SKVJS is a Romanian based cultural project which involves visual elements programmed under a few artistic laws. Born almost four years ago, SKVJS has performed on most of the Romanian dance, but also non dance events.
SKVJS stands up for originality, creativity and impulsiveness. Its principles are related mostly to the musical background, considering that visual artists are bounded to stay close to the music they get in contact with.
The project was born from different cultural influences, starting with electronic music, continuing with art design and ending up with urban cultures (graffiti, abstract drawing, skateboarding, etc.). All these influences are strongly reflected in SKVJS’s performances.
SKVJS’s universe is made up from distorted images of different day by day realities, passions for urban elements, snapshots from personal facts and various musical approaches at a large scale. The project will always aspire for a deep extension of the main idea of music through the visual elements.

VALI CHINCISAN / RO

http://www.myspace.com/valichincisan

PHILL NIBLOCK / USA

Phill NIBLOCK is an intermedia artist using music, film, photography, video and computers. He makes thick, loud drones of music, filled with microtones of instrumental timbres which generate many other tones in the performance space. Simultaneously, he presents films / videos which look at the movement of people working, or computer driven black and white abstract images floating through time.

www.phillniblock.com

KATHERINE LIBEROVSKAYA / CA

Katherine LIBEROVSKAYA is a video and media artist based in Montreal, Canada, and New York City. She has been working predominantly in experimental video since the late eighties. Over the years, she has produced many single-channel videos, video installation works and video performances which have been presented at a wide variety of artistic venues and events around the world. As of recent years her work - in single-channel and installation video as well as performance - mainly revolves around collaborations with new music composers/sound artists, notably NIBLOCK.

HENNING LUNDKVIST / SWE

Henning Lundkvist is primarily working with sound and text, and has presented his works in many museums and galleries in Sweden and abroad. His collaborations with play writer and theatre director Christina Ouzounidis have been critically acclaimed in many of Sweden's national newspapers, and his first major work on CD, "The End of A System of Things", was released by the label komplott in november 2007. He is co-founder of Radiowy, an mp3-platform for new Swedish hörspiel, radio drama and sound works, and is curating a series of sound and text works at Teatr Weimar, Malmö. Henning Lundkvist is living in Berlin (Germany) and Malmö (Sweden).

http://www.inaktiv.net

JULIEN OTTAVI – APO33 / FR

A mediactivist, artist-researcher, musician and anarchitect, an active member of Apo33, Julien Ottavi is involved in research and creative work, combining sound art, new technologies and construction of electronic devices.

http://www.noiser.org

TÔ / FR

Artist-composer and self-taught musician, Thomas TILLY (aka TÔ) uses the microphone as his main instrument of work. In 2001 he creates TÔ, a solo project of concrete music focusing on environmental sounds and found-objects manipulations.

http://thomas.tilly.free.fr/

WPMG

WPMG is Philip Griffiths, a MU artist on residency on the Danube boat. In his live performance, Phil works with sounds of everyday life and resonances of spaces.

LE PLACARD HEADPHONE FESTIVAL

At the Canetti House in Ruse, Le Placard, a 10 hours headphone festival conceived by Erik Minkinnen and the Buro duo in Paris, is programmed on the 19th of July. The festival is a particular way of diffusing live performances via headphones, thus immersing the audience in a state of concentration. The attendance is free: any artist who wishes to perform can subscribe for a live or DJ set, plug the personal gear and perform. To the present day, about a hundred of Le Placard festivals have taken place, connecting various cities.

If you wish to play at Le Placard, please subscribe to the list on www.leplacard.org.

HALBOT – SOUND INSTALLATION

In the basement of the Canetti House, Halbot, a sound installation by the French group APO33, will be on view, displaying a local network of recording/broadcast devices linked to different remote spaces.

SOUND DROP CITYSONICS - AUDIOWALKS IN RUSE

Developed in the last 3 years by Collectif Mu, Sound Drop will be organized during this summer as a series on itineraries in all the cities where the European Sound Delta boats stop, on the Danube and Rhine. At The Bridge Festival, two audio-walks will be held both in Ruse. The Sound Drop audio-walks invite the public to rediscover the cityscapes by following key points on a previously designed map of the city and listen to sounds that transform the perception of spaces and introduce fiction into reality.

PRACTICAL INFO:

TRANSPORT


Rokolectiv organizes bus transportation from Bucharest to Ruse on Friday 18th of July
and from Ruse to Bucharest on Sunday 20th of July.

Tickets: 20 ron / one way.

Please call +40726515897 / +40743730413 for reservations. The reservation of your seat must be done until 15th of July, at latest.

Public transport Bucharest-Ruse-Bucharest/ daily , info: +40246.213.32

ACCOMODATION

Riga Hotel
22, Pridunavski blvd.
7000 Rousse, Bulgaria
office@hotel-riga.com
hotelriga@abv.bg
www.hotel-riga.com
Tel: +359 82 82 20 42; +359 82 82 48 53
Fax: +359 82 82 48 70
Prices in BGN / Breakfast Included
Single Rooms: Standard 48 BGN / Standard+Aircond 60 BGN / Standard Plus 98 BGN
Double Rooms: Standard 78 BGN / Standard+Aircond 88 BGN / Standard Plus 130 BGN
Parking Facilities, Underground Parking

Anna Palace Hotel
4 Knyazheska St
7000 Rousse, Bulgaria
tel. +359 82 825 005
fax +359 82 825 522
hotel@annapalace.com
www.annapalace.com
Prices in EUR: Single Rooms: 55 EUR; Double Rooms: 70 EUR
Breakfast Included
Parking Facilities

Cosmopolitan Hotel
1-3 Dobri Nemirov St
7000 Rousse, Bulgaria
tel: +359 82 80 50 50
fax: +359 82 80 50 57
mobile: +359 884 200 888
http://cosmopolitanhotelbg.com/
Prices in BGN:
Single Rooms: 80 BGN / 100 BGN / 120 BGN
Double Rooms: 150 BGN
Suites: 250 BGN
Underground Parking Facilities (20 BGN per night per car)

Danube Plaza Hotel
5 Svoboda square
7000 Rousse, Bulgaria
hotel@danubeplaza.com
www.danubeplaza.com
Tel: +359 82 822 950
Prices in BGN:
Single Rooms: Standard 80 BGN, Lux 130 BGN
Double Rooms: Standard 102 BGN, Lux 200 BGN
Breakfast Included
Parking Facilities

Hotel Splendid
51 Alexandrovska St
7000 Rousse, Bulgaria
splendid@rousse.bg
www.splendid.rousse.bg
Tel: +359 82 825 970; +359 82 825 972, fax: +359 82 825973
Prices in BGN:
Single Rooms: 52 BGN
Double Rooms: 62 BGN
Apartments: 68/85/75/95 BGN
Breakfast in addition: 3 EUR
Parking Facilities

CURRENCY


1 EURO = approx.1.9557 BGN