”Underground music scene does not exist”  – he says vehemently, a bit discomforted, maybe it never has. I find it a big statement, to generalise the entire world, into one big musical scene. He used to see the world split in two. A clash of civilisation between commercial music that navigates major industry structures, and an underground experimental one, that does not. “The former is made for exploitation. The second one, as it doesn’t make money, is meant to be born from communities, as an act of space reclamation, the urge of telling specific stories, and intersecting the arts. I don’t see this happening.” I understand where he comes from though. My friend, “S.” , had moved to Milan to chase his dream of making electronic music. And now he felt lonely. A loneliness that had socio-political roots as most malaises. As the hyper-capitalist city that Milan is, with the dismantling of political communities in such big and expensive cities, with the widening of distances between political stances and the arts – music can feel very lonely. “Also, I keep going to gigs, and I never manage to get past “how are yous?” How is that possible??” The comment resonates with me. I laugh as I think about that sentence in the movie The Lobster that goes: “We dance alone. That’s why we only play electronic music.” Is it actually how it’s supposed to be?”

…

We get closer to the festival. The sides of the roads get greener. We start seeing the first campers. This LOST festival has weaved together a mix of musical experiences, spatiating from different geographies and genres. And I realise, as the days go by, that S. doubts about the electronic and alternative scenes could find interesting food for thought from the experiences of the artists that were going to be in Labyrinth of the Masone from the 5th to the 7th of July.

COMMUNITY AND REPRESENTATION

Energy builds at its core, tightening with pulsing anticipation accompanied by the led lights,  ready for release. I recognise Shyboi’s whistle. Fast pace percussions alternating to a blessed chorus, and it immediately feels like home. “Rave is ritual, rebellion, and riotous revenge”. Throbbing heartbeat, dancehall and soca, alternate to tecno, glitchy textures and fragmented melodies. Shyboi’s performances are not merely DJ sets; they are immersive, almost shamanic rituals. The sweat-drenched crowd becomes a communal entity, united by the shared experience of sound and movement. In this sacred space, boundaries blur, and the collective energy peaks in a cathartic release, echoing the cyclical nature of destruction and rebirth. Through her music, Shyboi ignites a fiery celebration of freedom, identity, and the transformative power of sound, using her music to interrogate notions of power, perceived histories and the entanglements of these topics, with her personal and familiar experience.“I’m the youngest of four and without a doubt my older sister’s various musical tastes combined with that of my parents and Jamaican sound culture in general, made an impression on me. (…) While still living in Jamaica we listened to everything from r&b, to metal to trance to dance hall to indie rock to drum’n’ bass.”

Shyboi stresses how hard it is to become a dj, playing specific genres. “Up until recently if you weren’t in EDM there was no real industry to speak of. Clubbing only recently became legal in 2017 in New York due to the tireless work of organisers to repeal the long-standing racist cabaret law which didn’t allow patrons to dance in many spaces that sold food and/or alcohol if they didn’t have a cabaret licence. This of course was incredibly hard to obtain for most venues and specifically targeted bars owned by minorities and black communities”, hence censoring specific genres of music, and communitarian expressions. For a long time if you didn’t play a certain type of house or techno you weren’t being booked to even play in the few clubs that had CDJs for the simple fact that they had a European tourist audience. Taking musical stances tailored to a minority audience does not come free of cost: I believe censorship is inevitable when doing things outside the norm (…) With any space that operates within a capitalistic framework there is always a limit to how far you can push against the edges. Their loyalty is to their shareholders and not the audience (..). With that the goal should then be to constantly shift the Overton window so the edges become much blurrier. (…) Going back, I’d do it again.”

Along these lines, BADSISTA’s experience – Brazilian DJ, producer and co-founder of feminist DJ collective Bandida – is an interesting case of what happens when such an initial glass ceiling is crushed, yet the system upholding it is not deconstructed. “Club culture has grown a lot in Sao Paulo in the past years, and we teach each other stuff, we organise to make it accessible to all, to pass on the tools, it was super important that I had other people doing that for me you know” she said in a recent interview. “I also find it weird that sometimes I’m highlighted as an icon for changing things, I’m just a tool you know”. By saying that in one sentence she destroys the concept of representation for the sake of itself. A concept that in many cultural industries stresses individuality rather than community, hence instilling the idea that there is space for only one minority representative in each scene, to be the spokesperson for too many voices.  And such energy of shaking the structures of a culture industry transpires from her unapologetic set, made for people to smile at each other while sweating. Their style is a fierce amalgamation of pulsating beats and raw, uncompromising energy, deeply rooted in the vibrant sounds of São Paulo’s working-class culture and fishing feelings from early 2000 memories, keeping the crowd in a constant state of movement and exhilaration. The joy is in full control of the set.

Community and plurality of view is pivotal in Neogeodesia’s musical practice too. French Cambodian audio visual artist born in a Thai refugee camp after his parents fled the Khmer Rouge, and grew up in the suburbs of Nancy. “Politics had a huge impact on my family, my life, my displacement”. When talking about the electronic music scene he says he feels disconnected. “When I look around these days in our so-called “scene” it scares me a little bit to see that style and fashion replaced contents such as Human Rights or Politics (..). When I started to go to shows there were a lot of things going on like information tables about different political, social topics. (…) As this feature starts disappearing from alternative music scenes, he argues that his approach has been choosing which realities to collaborate with. The militant side of music has always been important to me.” He answers to such alienation highlighting the importance of creating one’s own musical reality. Sometimes it’s simply about doing things with your friends, teaching eachother skills, amplifying the reach of one’s practice, keep the “diy-thing going”. His extended Saturday morning sonic breakfast translates such plurality of vision into a two hour kaleidoscopic set that cherishes a deep cinematic longing. His life unfolds in front of us with a dreamlike and quasi-hallucinatory intensity, as we hear  sounds broadcasted from Cambodia into his home through his parents pirated tapes and videos of Khmer pop, karaoke, monk chants and movies.

BEYOND IDENTITY POLITICS

Echoing BADSISTA’s critical thoughts on the concept of representation being a double-edged sword, are the practices of Damsel Elysium, Florence Sinclair and Zuli. Sprouting from Cairo’s underground scene, Egyptian producer and DJ, ZULI’s set as well, touches upon the theme of representation in an indirect manner, via his need of refusing any sort of pigeonholing of his musical taste.  In a country generally dominated by electro-chaabi and traditional arabic music, he opposed any commercial conception of music based on nationality, introducing elements from different genres in his mixes, and distorting and deconstructing the ones of his own, subjecting his sounds to expreme pressures  and infecting them with internet-rooted influences. In many interviews he stressed that when you’re Egyptian, they expect “oriental”, and his practice aims to destroy such understanding, collectively even. He has as a matter of fact been part of several pioneering electronic music projects in Egypt. Projects led by musicians, and musicians that were friends among each other and that wished to merely enjoy the music they liked.

Along similar critical approaches to identity is also Florence Sinclair. His music cristalises new notions of blackness, defying the racialising and categorising tendencies of the cultural industries. His performance takes place at night, completely swallowed by the darkness of the bamboo stage, immersed in a quasi-religious silence. Sinclair appears on an almost ground-level stage,  dressed completely in white.  White pants, white shirt, white skirt, and durag. The stage is small, but the feelings evoked are those of a full stadium. His movements look practised but not rehearsed. His music is filled with sonic emotionality that appeals for familiar feelings one cannot place. The set is quite vulnerable and profound, giving glimpses of the very reserved artists that usually does not disclose much of himself on the internet. As the artist behind it, the music is in a constant state of departure, yet also finds peace in such chaos.

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Damsel Elysium‘s visceral yet unearthly performance navigates along a similar spirit of research. The London based instrumentalist, composer, and visual & sound artist started their journey in the arts as a violinist, which they had to abandon due to the trauma of an injury and the suffocation caused by a musical world that is oftentimes inaccessible, as it seeks to standardise perfection and as it categorises genres in a hierarchical manner, “other non-western classical sounds as less valuable”. They say: “ When an artist like me pushes the boundaries of music it’s seen as jazz. Why is jazz not seen as black classical music? They then expand on how they came back to music: “I found and understood my practice thanks to another violinist, it was so important to me”. That’s how they then moved to the double-bass, leaving the rigid classical world, and dismantling what they knew of music. “Dissonance is part of the human experience”. “In some manner, we all crossways. Everything has already been done, and it’s just about how you choose to express it, and then it resonates with someone”. In their world, speech is insufficient, and the arts intersect, creating a haunting sonic experience, tragic and alleviating as nature itself.

UNEARTHING HIDDEN HISTORIES

It is not just club sounds that make you orient yourself around the labyrinth. The line-up was further enriched by many live performances. One of these was Ale Hop and Laura Robles’ presentation of Agua Dulce, a musical project named after the childhood beach in Perù where the two artists grew up. Robles plays a hybrid Càjon for electronic and acoustic sounds. The choice of the Càjon is not casual, and the performance sheds light on the radical history hidden behind the object. The instrument originated in the 19th century, as enslaved people used fruit boxes to create music, in order to defy the Spanish colonial restrictions on music targeted to such subjectivities. The clandestine essence of the Càjon is adapted experimentally and electronically to contemporary codes, yet its essence is preserved through the physical intensity of the performers that pays homage to its original use.

The storytelling of radical histories that have been obscured in modern times, may that be due to contemporary ubiquity or lack of storytelling from below itself, is a burning question that brings me to the next set: Judaah’s set. A set where community and plurality  are central, visibly even. During his set at the bamboo 2 stage, bodies move slowly yet harmonically with the surrounding trees, gently cradled by the dj’s old-school reggae selecta. His style honours reggae’s golden era with classic offbeat rhythms and soulful basslines while integrating roots and dub influences that reflect the genre’s spiritual depth. The artist usually enhances his sets with the warm, nostalgic sound of analog records. His performances often feature timeless tracks from reggae legends skillfully blended with early dancehall elements. The voices of the tracks cover the role of old MC’s in Caribbean soundsystems, cadenced by the metallic and vibrating sound of its reverberating strings. He plays hits that catalysed black consciousness. As Gilroy argues, within the context of post-windrush Britain, such music was policed not just for the communities involved, but also for the very experiments in “phonic materiality which emotionally carved out a new environment for such communities (Brar 2021, Gilroy 1982)”. It is above all in these dialogic rituals between DJ, the audience and the MC (when present), “that Black Britain had expressed the improvisation, spontaneity and intimacy which are key characteristics of all new world black music”.

The narration of radical histories is also part of Ojoo’s –  Belgium-based Moroccan Dj – familiar history and musical practice. Their b2b with i-sha proceeds with the same clarity of thoughts. The energy between the two DJs is incomparable. They smile at each other taking turns on the decks. There are looks of complicity. layers float like wisps of sand, delicate and ephemeral, while the bass rumbles beneath, steady and relentless. The bassline is so hot that it resonates in your chest, provoking a dizzy mixed feeling of air-lacking and breathing at the same time, as each clap and hi-hat is placed with surgical precision, driving the track forward, while leaving space for the more atmospheric elements. Censorship within the cultural and musical industries is a topic that Ojoo has a lot at heart. In January they cancelled their debut at Berghain, in support of the Lebanese DJ Arabian Panther who’s gig had been cancelled from the notorious Berlin institution of electronic music due to his support towards the palestinian cause. A stance they took without second-thinkings, unveiling the soft power that can be at the basis of one’s musical practice.

As the festival ends, the lights turn off, and the campers start deflating their temporary beds, S. and I realise that for as much general music industry dynamics may seem discomforting, as they reflect the broader dynamics of the difficult cities they navigate, each artist that we saw at LOST festival cherishes a radical practice of research that fights such overarching dynamics from within, each in their own way, as small disruptive tiles, far from each other but connected from below. We smile at each other as we leave the labyrinth that has been a home of such stories.