Mūzikas festivāls 'Skaņu mežs 2025'

Skaņu Mežs announces early bird tickets for 2025, and These New Puritans

After its most successful edition in 2024, Riga, Latvia’s Skaņu Mežs festival is announcing the dates for the next edition, along with the sale of early bird tickets and These New Puritans as the first confirmed act. Skaņu Mežs 2025 will happen on October 3-4 at Hanzas Perons (16A Hanzas Street) venue, and early bird tickets can be purchased for 37 EUR at www.bilesuserviss.lv. After January 31, or once the first 100 tickets are sold, their price will rise to 55 EUR.

Recap of 2024

Skaņu Mežs 2024 was the festival’s most well-attended edition so far. More importantly, it was fairly evenly attended across both central concert evenings, demonstrating the audience’s interest in taking in the event’s eclectic program as a whole.

Writing for The Wire, Peter Margasak described the festival as “arguably the most important experimental music festival in the Baltics”, echoing Geeta Dayal’s similar compliment from her review of Skaņu Mežs 2022 in the same magazine.

Daryl Worthington reviewed Skaņu Mežs for The Quietus and wrote thus: "Boldly curated [..] An extended journey through radical sound [..] Key to the event’s success is that the curators are not afraid to abruptly jump genre boundaries."

Victor Moreno reviewed Skaņu Mežs for the Spanish fashion and culture magazine Metal, and described it as “not only a destination for curious listeners but also a key fixture in the international experimental music scene.”

Finally, Linas Ramanauskas of Lithuania’s Ore.lt wrote that "Skaņu Mežs may still be one of the best festivals in the region, consistently fulfilling its mission to present relevant modern music."

These New Puritans

These New Puritans is a band from Essex, England, comprising twin brothers Jack and George Barnett, and an ever-rotating cast of collaborators. Self-taught and fiercely independent, their music defies categorisation and convention. Since 2008, they have released four studio albums, each a departure from the last.

At Skaņu Mežs, they will perform as a 4-piece band, with members switching instruments. Intended as an immersive experience with projected visuals, the concert will feature music from the band’s upcoming fifth studio album, to be released by Domino in 2025. 

The band’s 2013 album “Field of Reeds” was described by Pitchfork as “strange and beautiful”, with Laura Snapes noting that the band has earned the trust of its audience despite –- or because of – each next album being vastly different from the previous one. The same website compared “Inside the Rose”, These New Puritans’ most recent album so far, as a place where “sound communicates more than speech, serenity is sinister, and obscurity is less like a solid wall than an abstract door to possibility”.

Activities for 2025

Skaņu Mežs will announce further acts in the first months of 2025. In addition to the central concert evenings of October 3 and 4, the festival will also feature a free-entry opening event and a discourse program. 

The first confirmed supporters are the State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, Riga municipality and “Valmiermuiža”. 

Skaņu Mežs is part of the SHAPE+ platform for innovative music and interdisciplinary art and sound art project “tekhnē”, both supported by the European Union and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia. SHAPE+ is also supported by Pro Helvetia.

More info: www.skanumezs.lv

Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftvICVWLBKY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAeq397XB9Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH4zDJXybmk