In the year of the so-called return to normality, everything seems normal, except it is not. After emerging from the nightmare, panic and paranoia of two years of lockdowns, restrictions, vaccines and whatnot, the European music scene is back in full effect: concerts and festivals are again part of the new normality, as if COVID never happened, except it happened, but something still feels not right yet.

LEV festival premiered in Madrid in 2019, an opulent showcase with 3 stages of shows, installations and the Vortex program. The programme started in the evening and reached the early hours of the night. This edition was somehow downsized from 2019 to three or four concerts per day, installations, and the Vortex program, still an advance from 2020 and 2021, where the festival offering was severely reduced by COVID. A comeback to the earlier form will enormously enhance the experience and impact on audiences.

The tightly packed and varied program was sound, the virtual, the physical and their relationships through performative technology by means of contemporary cultural thought. This was the medium through which the festival challenged our feelings of the present and our conceptions of collective immersion. These acts overall were sprinkled with representations of melancholy and control. A silenced echo between the shows was felt. Density prevailed. Does the current military zeitgeist have anything to do with it? Maybe, but feeling and immersing together as a collective during three days made it all that lighter. The collective ritual offered an optimistic momentum of thrusting forward.

Η συνέχεια εδώ.