Having already made the rounds of the KRAAKosphere as part of sisterly duos WIDT and Mentos Gulgendo, Antonina Nowacka is back to present her enchanting vocal work which she has been developing through loner voyages to caves and other locales of resonant magic. Her solemn chants undulate and melt into each other like waves of flowing lava, sculpting visionary spaces steeped in the ancestral cultures of the East and the West and grasping towards something ineffable and otherworldly.

A mysterious superspreader of dank melodrama and musty grumblings, Canada’s Barn Sour has a predilection for what he considers phoney actions, provisional disharmony, and farrier nails into tape. The roars, coughs, rustlings and detonations going on in those Manitoba sheds are strange and oftentimes baffling, most verifiable on his latest near-literal expiation Belgian Gelding released by our most favorite Penultimate Press.

The handle for New York duo Chris Hontos and Aaron Anderson since 2012ish, Beat Detectives make tunes that are as diverse as they are undefinable: cartoon music, basement dub, kraut techno, block chain beat? As if attempts to redefine genres were constantly upset by memefied entities with a penchant for head-dancing and some damn good taste. Their tunes have appeared on reputable rosters such as Not Not Fun, Moon Glyph, Goaty Tapes, and their own NYPD Records imprint.

Lukas De Clerck discovered the aulos a mere couple of years ago, but it’s increasingly starting to feel like the aulos discovered him. The merging of man and this ancestral reed has hardly seen a more impressive union in modern times, and as Bloedneus & De Snuitkever De Clerck approaches the instrument with a reverential tenacity palpable in his minimalist, sacramental compositions where extended and circular breathing techniques create layered tunes to an unearthly effect. His debut LP on this here label will be out before the year’s end!

Much like the snowy Himalayan peaks after which it takes its name, Dhavali Giri’s effects are of the meditative yet woozily exhilarating kind. The rotating members of this Lyon-born formation - which counts the heads behind bands/monikers like Bravo Tounky, And The, Maibaum, and mysterious others - use each musical meet-up as an opportunity to explore uncharted sonic avenues, improvising textures and resonances into long-form psychedelic unwindings reminiscent of the German kosmics. New heights of healing sounds, straddling multiple astral planes.

Stomping mad sounds from the booming Marsellais cavern scene: the unlikely threesome of Sale Garce, Js Donny and Nadi Füdli known as Donna Candy heard the calls for more jump-tha-fuck-upness in the scene and wasted no time in heeding. Beefy basslines, thrashing drums and squelched switch-pitched vocals make up a downtuned nu metal 3.0 without any hint of sentimentality and just the perfect amount of stoned urge energy. Right on time for a return to the pit.

“Eye-bleeding composer of intifadic and eruptive lung-outs, music-trasher, saxophone screamer and computer terrorist” are words that cannot be outworded in describing Israeli-born Swedish musician and activist Dror Feiler. His recordings and live performances are frontal assaults to the senses, a tsunami of noise coming from the intermingling of amped up saxophone and highly wired electronics mercilessly crashing over stunned listeners who can do nothing but accept the waves. Cerebral, dense and unapologetically effusive, Dror Feiler’s music is the kind to get your wits jumping out of your bodily carcass for a lucid moment in time.

May the Belgian folkways hail their new queens (and Jelle): Luster is a sextet formed in 2012 by a group of friends and music lovers from the East and West Flanders fields. Cello, ukulele, flute, harmonium and violin meet the guitar-bass-drums trifecta in a quirky crossroads where ancestral doom folk, heady post rock and Stereolab-tinged pop seamlessly meet. An organic, almost outsider vibe permeates their songs, resulting in a listening experience not un-reminiscent of Swedes past and present or the best that New Weird America had to offer. A debut LP will be added to the ever-growing, ever-psychedelic Morc Records roster.

Brooklyn’s Marcia Bassett has been an influential, nay, integral part of the international underground for the past 20 years at least. Co-founder of seminal bands Double Leopards, GHQ, Hototogisu, frequent partner in crime of Samara Lubelski and head runner of the Yew label, Marcia Bassett’s solo output pursues the always-curious, always-experiential trajectory that she’s traced thus far. Her dexterous and inventive use of everything from synthesizers to field recordings to guitar to her own handmade instruments results in droney sonic landscapes that broach planes beyond time itself. Her performance at KRAAK Festival will be accompanied by multidimensional projections by video artist Ursula Scherrer.

Detectives Hontos and Anderson are joined by Leonard King and William Statler to form the free-floating abstract ensemble they call Nuke Watch. Focused circular music emanating from tightly rehearsed generative improvisations recall the futuristic jams of Sun Araw, the choppily cinematic wanderings of a Star Searchers concept album or, as posited on a recent Instagram post, “a tiny Herbie Hancock blowing on a glass bottle”. Their releases on Moon Glyph, Commend There/RVNG and homebase NYPD Records are like radioactive incorporeal gemstones found glowing on the edge of a bustling cityscape.

Yung Paul Arámbula left his native Phoenix for Berlin’s greying prospects, keyboard in tow and words about trials, tribulations and the nothing in between swirling around. His songs are populated by inner demons, mixed feelings, home cooked scenarios, rides to nowhere and missed connections, with internal turmoils and random thoughts manifesting alongside some serious fist-pump-worthy melodies. Timeless pop tunes which are world-weary yet brimming with hope, or something like it ~ the frills may be few, but the emotive power is real.

One half of explosive insectoid rock duo Guttersnipe, Petronn Sphene’s No Wave Rave is a frenzied force of drum machine chaos, xenomorph shriekings and shards of noiseful synthwaves coming from every which way. Flashes of gabber and gloms of house undercurrents ricochet in what was accurately described by City Hands’ legendary Manuel Padding as “altered ADHD full blast personal wisdom projected straight into the soul/transcendent intellectual intensity.” Two releases be forthcoming from the self-proclaimed Damsel Causing Distress ~ sonic sorcery awaiteth!

Warsaw-based multi-instrumentalist Piotr Kurek has been steadily building a corpus of work that impresses and affects through its approach and boundless ingenuity. Tape, organ patterns and synthesized sounds of indescribable provenance give way to compositions of astounding clarity and far-reaching musical implications. His latest release on Ediçoes CN, World Speaks, is an utterly mesmerizing exercise in world building through a sophisticated arrangement of chorals and whimsical notes, all ripped from unearthly realms for our humble tunings.

Edinburgh native Sholto Dobie works with sound in a literally hands-on way: homemade organs, hurdy-gurdies, and field recordings of different calibers are just some of the contraptions used to spin delicate yet radiant compositions. A profoundly intuitive disposition runs through his musical universe, which can be desolate and melancholic as well as whimsically subversive. Recent collaborations have led him to experientialist undertakings with iconoclasts such as Lucia Nimova, Shakeeb Abu Hamdan, Antonina Nowacka (natch) and Mark Harwood, while his latest solo works Nevery and House Flood push improvisation to its most timeless and transcendental potential.