Youniss & Merca Bae Live + Nosedrip & OKO DJ

Youniss & Merca Bae Live

This performance is the result of an artistic residency commissioned within the framework of TMLAB, a European cooperation project that supports and promotes emerging artists and curators from underrepresented communities, fostering new narratives and ways of working in contemporary music.

It represents the premiere of the piece by Belgian artist Youniss and Salamanca-based producer and DJ Merca Bae, conceived on the creative premise of exchange and experimentation.

Youniss Ahamad is a multidisciplinary artist who operates like a quantum particle, constantly defying classification. His live sets at festivals like Rewire have earned him the reputation of an incendiary figure, mixing post-punk, hip-hop and noise to create super-intense performances. His trajectory in the Belgian underground has been deeply shaped by his ancestral roots in Côte d’Ivoire and Iraq, combined with his experience growing up in the suburbs of Antwerp as a black person with an Arab name.

Merca Bae has forged a career marked by his constant bridging of club languages with Latin American and Caribbean rhythmic pulses. This approach has turned him into a landmark figure of dance music that aspires to pop, with productions that have accompanied artists such as Bad Gyal, Nathy Peluso, Six Sex and Isabella Lovestory. For this performance, the two artists activate a shared territory, giving rise to a brand-new piece forged out of the process and friction.

Nosedrip & OKO DJ

Nosedrip and OKO DJ are “flat-out, two of the most eccentric selectors working today Micha” writes Michael McKinney in his column Slam on the CDJ for Passion of the Weiss. Residents at NTS Radio—the London-based global radio music platform committed to creative freedom—the two team up to open a nighttime programme that could go in practically any direction.

Behind the alias Nosedrip is Ziggy Devriendt, Belgian DJ and curator, key figure of the European underground and founder of the STROOM label. His practice is characterised by meticulous and emotional curating that moves between the dark sounds of new wave, forgotten synthpop and 90s trance, generating a sense of “contemporary nostalgia” through his rereading of the past. With a long residency at NTS, Nosedrip is known for creating sonic narratives with a unique voice.

OKO DJ, the alias of Marine Tordjemann, is a French DJ, producer and radio presenter based in Athens. A member of the Brothers From Different Mothers collective and label, she heads up LYL Radio and is the creator of the series Pu$$y Nightmare, a project that promotes artists who identify with German acronym FLINTAQ (Women, Lesbians, Intersex, Non-Binary, Trans, Agender and Queer persons). Her free-spirited, flowing sets combine experimental electronic, industrial sounds and 80s references. She has released works such as Dans Le Lune and As Above, So Below, and has performed at festivals like Dekmantel (Amsterdam), Unsound (Krakow) and Tresor (Berlin), pillars of the electronic music scene.

Together, they have played the closing sets at iconic festivals like Sustain-Release and Solstice.