Friday 12 June 2026, 7.30pm
Akazib Records celebrate their first birthday with live sets from the Cuban-Iranian ensemble Ariwo and two new collaborations by Saint Abdullah & Pouya Ehsaei, Alya Alsultani & Cerpintxt
Akazib is an independent record label conjuring left-field music from the concrete phantasmagoric. Based in London and transmitting across universes, Akazib Records was founded in 2025 and has released two records so far: People of the Wind (2025) and From Lips To The Moon (2026).
Marking Ariwo’s 10th anniversary, they will perform favourite works from across their catalogue alongside new material currently being developed for an album due next.
A new zine documenting Akazib’s first year emerging from the concrete phantasmagoric will also be launched at the event.
Ariwo is a Cuban-Iranian ensemble exploring the intersection of electronic and ancestral music. The band brings together Iranian electronic composer Pouya Ehsaei, Latin Grammy-winning percussion virtuoso Hammadi Valdes, and trumpeter Sam Warner. They have performed at Montreux Jazz Festival, WOMAD, Fusion, the Barbican, Dimensions, and many more.
Saint Abdullah’s practice is rooted in sonic storytelling, blending geo-politics, religion, and social behavior.
POUYA EHSAEI is a live electronic musician, composer and sound designer working on the intersections of experimental electronic music, live improv and dub techno, characterised by influences from industrial music, breakbeat, jazz, noise, and Iranian folk and classical music. He is co-founder of From the Lips to the Moon, the band-leader of Cuban-Iranian ensemble Ariwo and co-founder of Parasang where he led long-form improvisations in a clubbing context. His latest album People of the Wind is out on Akazib Records (2025).
www.pouyaehsaei.com
Alya Al-Sultani is a dramatic soprano, improvising vocalist and opera-maker from Basrah, Iraq. Her work is focused on the themes of liberation and love. Her current work includes a trio with Pat Thomas and Khabat Abas (Manara) and with Robert Mitchell and Maggie Nicols, a duo with Maggie Nicols and an underground electronic / opera duo with GRANDMIXXER. She is working on a new opera with Jennifer Farmer, In The Teeth of the Wind, due to be debuted in 2026. She continues to be a student in the life-long study of maqam and Arabic music and has released albums of Iraqi folk songs and interpretations of Arabic poetry by living and past poets.
Her most recent releases include improvised solo opera suites "Three Ages of Woman/Mother", "Self Lost / Self Found" and "Return/Exile" and a protest album with Maggie Nicols "Free, Free". Her most recent release is "Immersion" with Robert Mitchell and Maggie Nicols and upcoming in September is Manara's debut album, both out on the UK label Discus.
Alaa Yousry is an Egyptian electroacoustic sound artist and neuroscientist performing under the alias Cerpintxt. Her work is concerned with generating an invented language of a particular strain of softness through phonetic entropy and augmented instrumentation. Working with cut-ups and dialectics to decimate language and linear constructs of temporality in an entropic process of lingual erosion into protoconversation. The textural counterparts of her sound include wind instruments, broken turntablism, augmented cello, reel-to-reels, tape recorders, granular and modular synthesis. Her recent album Refugees of the Symbolic Network is an archaeoacoustic study on the convolution reverb of the King's Chamber of the Giza Pyramid, deconstructing the work of poets Izz al-Din Manasirah & Sargon Boulus.
Cerpintxt has performed at the ICA, Cafe Oto, Electric Brixton, IKLECTIK, Radiophrenia, Göteborg Art Sounds, Field Maneuvers, Experiment Intrinsic, Another Sky, Electrowerkz and more. She's a resident artist at Radio Alhara, Mutant Radio, and Radio Syg.ma. She curates the London-based event ‘Boundary Condition’ investigating parallels between darkjazz, hauntology, and music concrete as nostalgia-centric sonic practices.
