Artists

POWELL

To mark the release of his much anticipated new record, We Do Recover, Powell presents an expanded audio-visual show that continues his ongoing collaboration with Swiss filmmaker Michael Amstad and Norwegian visual artist Marte Eknæs. This bold new work is his first album proper on Diagonal, and a vitalising record of recovery and/or a statement of reassurance. It opens up new ground in the artist’s bizarre continuum of synthesised sound — this time triggered by experiences of grief and addiction.

The suicide of one of his life-long friends in 2024 was a life-changing loss which eternally altered Powell’s life — and consequently, his music. A period of recovery followed, one accompanied by the assembling of this album from hours of music made between 2018 and 2025. “After my friend’s death I felt I went into a tailspin, but really, I was already in one,” he says. “I found myself unable to handle anything – my way of coping was always to run away and escape. I realised it was going to kill me, so I made some changes. It made me see the music I had been making through a different lens, one that mirrored my experience of recovery. It’s not linear, it’s often difficult, but there is beauty there if you look hard enough. I wanted it to be a message of hope, if only for myself.”

Powell has existed of late in an intensive mode of creation that utilises stochastic processes (probabilistic events) and a particular sonic palette. But where previous releases – such as the many prongs of his a ƒolder project, or the hyper-synthetic Piano Music 1—7 on Editions Mego – interrogated and developed formal processes for synthesised sound, on We Do Recover the processes are subsumed as tools for expression. What unfolds is an extended suite of minimal music that articulates and traces an intensive period of upheaval, pain, and hope; tight envelopes of sonic architecture are led astray; energies explode beyond bounds previously set. We can feel the collapse of control, and an overflowing sense of something starting anew. It is, in turn, surprising, baffling and beautiful.

Florian Hecker and Marcin Pietruszewski present ' NORMIFICATION

NORMIFICATION is a collaboration between Florian Hecker and Marcin Pietruszewski. The project, initiated in 2016 in response to a request by the graphic design studio NORM, Zurich, translates graphic design procedures and algorithmic processes into sound synthesis and composition through experimental auditory display—hence normification, rather than sonification. NORMIFICATION employs custom synthesis and signal processing techniques, including iterative cycles of re-synthesis, wavelet-based transformations, and particle-scale recomposition, all while maintaining strict procedural ties to the algorithmic logic underlying the graphic designers’ layout system.

Florian Hecker works with synthetic sound, the listening process, and the audience's auditory experience. Recent exhibitions and performances include FAVN, Terraforma EXO, Milano, 2025, and TEMPLEXTURES, Galerie Neu, Berlin, Germany, 2022. Hecker has an extensive discography, including: Resynthese FAVN (Blank Forms, New York, 2024); Syn As Text [AC] (Etat, Vienna, 2021); and Synopsis Seriation (Editions Mego, Vienna, 2021).

Marcin Pietruszewski is a composer and researcher engaged in sound synthesis and composition with computers, exploring specific formal developments in the tradition of electroacoustic music and contemporary sound art. A recent sound installation—Love Numbers—with Anthea Caddy, was premiered at the Venice Music Biennale 2023, and he also presented comissioned work at Sonic Acts, Amsterdam (2024); CTM Festival, Berlin (2021); and ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany (2018), amongst many others.

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Regis and Russell Haswell present 'Concrete Fence'

Concrete Fence — a collaboration between Regis (Karl O’Connor) and Russell Haswell — originally began as an improvised live performance at a legendary Blackest Ever Black gig at Corsica Studios, London, in 2012. The project was later formalised via New Release [1] — a critically-acclaimed release on PAN in 2013 that deployed muscular and hypnotic rhythms alongside typically textural and timbral experimentation. The project will reform specially for this event and present new work for the first time.

Russell Haswell is a restlessly forward-thinking, multi-disciplinary artist, performer and curator. With a background steeped in computer music, black metal, noise, techno and solo improvisation, his practice is renowned for broaching the extremities of visual and sonic arts. He’s performed in noted live and HDJ [hard disc jockey] actions with Aphex Twin, Gescom, Pan Sonic and Masami Akita (Merzbow), among others, and worked with Florian Hecker on Iannis Xenakis’ UPIC system in their Haswell & Hecker duo, whose Blackest Ever Black LP is widely considered a milestone of modern electronic music composition. Russell is a Diagonal Records mainstay. His first release for the label was 2014’s “37 Minute Work Out”. Since then he has delivered three additional albums and a variety of singles

Karl O’Connor (Regis) emerged from Birmingham in the early 90s as part of a wave of artists exploring intensely heavy and punishing electronic music including Surgeon, Scorn and Female. O’Connor’s music as Regis occupied an overwhelming yet euphoric middle-ground between the high-velocity assault of early Detroit minimal techno (Jeff Mills, Robert Hood) and the UK’s noise-laced and provocative industrial music lineage. O’Connor established the Downwards label in 1993, a platform for his music and that of his close contemporaries that has ever since encompassed various strains of techno, noise, post-punk and DIY electronics, presented under a strongly unified aesthetic. He was instrumental in the birth of Diagonal Records, encouraging Powell to go it alone and create his own platform for his releases. He has since delivered two remixes for Powell and the label, the first appearing on Diagonal’s debut release and the latest as part of 2024’s ‘13’ anniversary compilation.

LUPINI

Once amiably described as an 'administrator of the Liverpool music scene', and now recently introduced to a wider audience via the DJ Mag Best Radio Show weekly Tuesday NTS residency on Soup To Nuts (and a BBC Radio 1 show with Benji B), Lupini is a DJ, broadcaster, promoter and all-round music lover. As well as founding both the femme-forward esoteric techno night, ATHE, and her deep listening sound project, HEAVY TEXTURE, Lupini was station manager at Melodic Distraction Radio for five years. With one foot in the club and the other in the home HIFI, her sets drift from lilting ambient (under her HEAVY TEXTURE project), to mutant swung techno, breakbeat, electro and bass-heavy sounds (as ATHE) all the way through to dub-wise sludge, techno dancehall, new wave and postpunk in her daytime pursuits.

She rejoins the Diagonal crew after her mesmerising set in Manchester in late 2024 as part of the label’s 13th birthday celebrations.

MICROCORPS

Alexander Tucker aka MICROCORPS develops work around complex modular systems, cello, bass guitar and voice, creating tracks of heavy electronics, that meld machine rhythms with acoustic samples.

MICROCORPS aims to combine elements of techno, contemporary composition, drone and vocal manipulations to its dense and often psychedelic world.

MICROCORPS tracks are born from a balance between composition and improvisation within set parameters. At each stage audio is heavily processed and then reconfigured, setting up systems that are non-repeatable, where decisions can be premeditated and intuitive but never the same with each performance.

ATOM TRUCK

Atom Truck is the alias of Angus Keith, electronic musician and co-founder of Adaadat Records. Working at the edges of rhythm and melody, he builds percussive electronics that blur the line between club culture and DIY experimentation. Informed by lo-fi electro, techno, jungle, ambient and noise, his music shifts between structure, melody, and a healthy disregard for cohesion.

Xylitol

Xylitol is the alias of Catherine Backhouse, producer and DJ under the name DJ Bunnyhausen. She was a resident DJ at Kosmische, the now dormant Krautrock club and is a fan of jungle and hardcore. She currently co-hosts the radio show Slav To The Rhythm, which focuses on vintage central and eastern European pop and electronica and she’s also co-writing a book on Yugoslav pop culture.

'Anemones', her first album for Planet Mu, explored the connections and dissonances between krautrock, early electronic music and contemporary jungle, footwork and UK Garage rhythms, making The Quietus, Norman Records and Igloo Magazine's end of year lists for 2024. She was among DJ Magazine's emerging artists to watch and is currently working on her follow-up to Anemones, leaning further into subaquatic sonics, rhythmic propulsion and kaleidoscopic melody

RICHARD NORRIS

Richard Norris is a Record producer, songwriter, musician and DJ, known as a member of electronic group The Grid with Dave Ball (Soft Cell) international electronic music composer and veteran DJ. He has also worked as a producer and engineer with artists such as: Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Brian Ferry, Marc Almond, Pet Shop Boys and Joe Strummer.

SUNROOF

Daniel Miller and Gareth Jones’ collaboration began in1982 when Miller asked Jones to work with him on what became Depeche Mode’s Construction Time Again. After Depeche Mode had gone home for the day, the two would stay on to work on their own sessions, a practise that continues to this day. By the mid-nineties Sunroof had become a remix project, reworking the likes of Can, MGMT,To Rococo Rot, Kreidler and Goldfrapp, amongst others, In 2019, Miller and Jones were heading to a György Ligeti concert at the Barbican and beforehand the pair spent a couple of hours improvising with modular systems. Unusually, this time they decided to record the session and over a pre-concert meal, Gareth asked, “Are we actually going to make a record together before we die? ”The resulting album, Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 1(2021) was followed by Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 2(2023), and since 2021, Sunroof have been performing select live shows at venues such as Café OTO (London), the London School of Economics, the Museum of Modern Electronic Music Frankfurt, Silent Green in Berlin, Ombra Festival (Barcelona), Oslo Cathedral, Golden Pudel (Hamburg), DG Kunstraum (Munich),and IKLECTIK (London) – allowing their live performance to feed back into their recordings recordings.

SIMON FISHER TURNER

Turner released several singles in the 80’s on the él record label as the King of Luxembourg, many of them having been given airplay by BBC Radio DJ John Peel. In 1990 he released a solo album on Creation Records.

Turner recorded several film soundtracks for Derek Jarman, including Caravaggio (1986), The Last of England (1988), The Garden (1990), and Jarman's final film Blue (1993). He also composed the complete score for William Eggleston in the Real World (2005) and the David Lynch-produced film, Nadja (1994), as well as Mike Hodges' last two films, Croupier (1998) and I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (2003). Many of his soundtracks are released on CD, mainly on Mute Records, on which he issued three solo albums.

In 2002, Turner was a visiting professor at Braunschweig School of Art in Germany. In 2009, he joined Tilda Swinton on a new film essay shot in Berlin for The Invisible Frame (2009) directed by Cynthia Beatt. In the same year he produced Polly Scattergood's self-titled debut album, Polly Scattergood.

Turner completed music for sculptor, Alyson Shotz, at the Nasher Sculpture Centre, Dallas. In 2010 he composed the music for The Great White Silence, a film by Herbert Ponting. It was restored by the British Film Institute, and released on Blu-ray/DVD. The soundtrack is available from Soleilmoon Recordings.

In 2011, Turner released a triple CD, Soundtracks for Derek, on Optical Sound. It is music composed for an exhibition, "Super 8", by Jarman at the Julia Stoschek Foundation. Mute Records released an album made with the sounds supplied by Espen J. Jorgensen. Also in that year, "Music for Films you should have seen" was released by Optical Sound. This includes music for the only film Jean Genet made, Un Chant D'amour. Turner continued to make music for commercials for water, supermarkets and cancer research.

In 2012, Turner worked with Shiro Takatani, artistic director of dumb type in Kyoto, the BFI in the UK and prepared new sounds. He played concerts in Europe performing both Blue and The Great White Silence, live with the Elysian Quartet.

During 2013, Turner provided the score for The Epic of Everest, a film made in 1924 by Captain John Noel, restored by The British Film Institute and released on Blu-ray.[2] A soundtrack album released on Mute Records won him an Ivor Novello Award.

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Baba Ali

Baba Ali is the combined force of captivating vocalist
Baba Doherty and knife-edged guitarist Nik Balchin, with
drum machines and synthesizers regulating their pulse.
The duo’s prototype sound, which they call
“electropunkdisco”, blends elements of dark wave,
garage rock and electronic funk with a raw soulful energy
primed for sweaty dancefloors. Onstage, Baba Ali is both
a menacing and seductive presence, transmitting a wall of
sound that fills the room with an infectious feral groove
that makes dancing inevitable.

NIK COLK VOID

Nik Colk Void is an electronic musician and artist with a vast reputation in experimental shapeshifting and collaboration. Void’s interests lie in the unconventional encounters with her tools, both analogue and digital, as a means of expression.

Her key instruments are voice, guitar, and modular euro-rack systems engaging in a new language using extended technique and cut-up sampling through synthesis.

As a result, the blends of her compositional tracks lean towards techno, club, experimental and noise.

UK based, Void has produced eight acclaimed studio albums with her musical groups Factory Floor (Gabriel Gurnsey & Dominic Butler), Carter Tutti Void (Chris Carter & Cosey Fanni Tutti) and NPVR with the late Peter Rehberg, releasing via Mute, DFA, Blast First, Editions Mego and Industrial.

SILKAMOUR

Building on the world of brash electronic sampling, live instrumentation and sincere, abstract lyricism established on Nervous Energy and Folk - Come Back PLS feels familiar whilst upping the pace and pushing Silkarmour’s distinct sound forward. Grinding synths and vocals chops lost in reverb and delay surround Silkarmour’s direct, foreboding baritone as he ruminates on exodus in his typically speculative style: “Those drunken winter angels/They
stumble home to heaven/They take the warmth among them/Away from here”

MARK WAGNER

Mark Wagner is an artist and composer whose work centres around creative Mysticism and exploring the underlying processes of life. He will be performing a set of deconstructed electronica woven into symbolism and philosophy.

SIEL

Siel is a craftsman and performance maker whose creative practice revolves around developing new meditative performances through ambient sound bath experiences. His music is centered around the saxophone, looped and layered, channelled through reverbs, creating brass soundscapes, evoking foghorns and sirens. He uses circular breathing and arpeggios, giving a sense of eternal loop.