Slingshot Festival showcases electronic music from artists around the world

Ryan Lee West, an electronic musician known as Rival Consoles, creates sketches to visualize the structure of his music. His inclination to fuse visual arts and music extends to his performances, which often include live visuals manipulated to match West’s sets. 

“So there are a lot of pieces of footage that exist that we can go between," West said. "It’s very malleable in the way that you can blend many different types of things at — sorry this is a very loud sound right now."

A high-pitched beep interrupted his statement.

“This could be used in music,” he said.

Many artists like West, whose music is shaped by the world around them, performed sets at the Slingshot Festival, an annual celebration of music and electronic arts. Kai Riedl started Slingshot in Athens, Georgia before bringing it to The Fruit, an event venue in downtown Durham and the festival’s home since 2021.

From Friday through Saturday, Slingshot featured sets from about 20 artists from around the world, including Moritz Simon Geist from Dresden, Germany. Geist began making music with computers and synthesizers, but wanted to turn his craft into something more tangible. Having already began a PhD in semiconductor sciences — later stopping to pursue music full-time — he turned to robots and synthetic machines, creating an art form called robotic electronic music, he said.

In addition to fusing mechanics with his live performances, as he demonstrated at Slingshot, Geist designs musical installations and creates video content showing the ways he uses robots to bring music to life. One of Geist’s videos, titled JAZZ POPCORN ROBOT, displays a drum set played by popping corn kernels. As the kernels are heated, they pop against piezoelectric elements, sensors that trigger different parts of the drums, creating an unpredictable but unique cacophony. The reaction to these sorts of projects has been positive, Geist said. 

“People in [general], they like it very much because it has this combination of the visual aspect as well as the sound aspect merged,” he said. “So you can straight away see where the sound is coming from. This is very approachable, I think.”

While artists like Geist curated more high-energy performances, bringing the crowd to their feet, other artists such as Brendan Principato created a set that encouraged a blend of sitting and standing, something he enjoys, he said. 

Known as Saapato, Principato has always loved being in nature, and tends to carry a field recorder with him whenever he is outdoors. Through electronic manipulation, he turns his recordings of flora and fauna into soundscapes — immersive acoustic environments — that bridge the gap between humans and the rest of nature, he said.

Riedl said that funding the artist-run festival can be challenging, but giving a platform to artists like Saapato and bringing a music festival to Durham is worth the cost.

“So [the economics] can be hard, but it's also rewarding because you get to bring cool shit to a place that wouldn’t normally get cool shit,” Riedl said. 

Nick Williams, the director of BOOM Club — BOOM standing for “building our own music” — wants to make access to electronic musical instruments easier and cheaper, he said. BOOM Club kicked off the Slingshot Festival with a workshop that allowed attendees to get hands-on with synthesizers, from vintage to modern, and watch Matthew Cha, a Korean artist, operate a Buchla — a type of modular synthesizer. 

Williams found an accepting music community when he moved to Durham 20 years ago, he said. His efforts through BOOM Club seek to further foster that welcoming environment.

“I think that spirit is still here," Williams said. "Even as Durham and Chapel Hill have really changed a lot, it's still a place where you don't necessarily already have to be cool to start doing stuff. You can just come in and start doing your thing.”

After BOOM Club opened both nights of the festival, music of all kinds filled The Fruit and Club Era, a gay nightclub located in the basement of the venue. In between sets, Slingshot attendees took breaks for drinks, cigarettes and casual conversation.

"It's been so fun. I love all the decor and all the people just being super vibey and fostering a community," Destinee Jaram, a Slingshot attendee, said.

Riedl also enjoys the community at Slingshot, he said, one that forms when contrasting people come together. His mission for Slingshot is to combine creativity with accessibility — a union that involves introducing the festival and its unique artists to diverse audiences.

@will_kleiny | lifestyle@dailytarheel.com