Johanna Knutsson^SE

Knutsson’s range as a performer is centred around her ability to deliver emotionally stirring music in multiple contexts. With a catalogue of lush, explorative compositions and multi-genre spanning expertise, Knutsson’s sets are full of kinetic energy and unexpected detours that create singular, enveloping musical moments.

Raised in a small village in South Sweden on a musical diet of stoner rock and Kate Bush, Knutsson’s earliest musical outlets involved singing in the church choir and learning to play piano and electric organ. Finding herself deeply drawn to Berlin’s electronic music scene at 24, she took a year long sabbatical from her career, spending the next several months front and centre at Panorama Bar’s dance floor, studying the craft of inspirations like Tama Sumo and Steffi. Forming her original production sound alongside fellow Berliner Hans Berg, Knutsson began releasing cosmic slabs of wax that seesaw between house and techno, which put her in high demand from remixers like Minilogue and Klasse Recordings founder and future collaborator Luca Lozano, who Knutsson would go on to form her Zodiac 44 label alongside. When she’s not churning out melodic techno transmissions on her Low Power FM radio show next to Kate Miller, delivering a euphoric closing set in the morning hours of her monthly Berlin residency at ://about blank, or gleefully improvising as part of the Circle of Live collective, Knutsson’s latest passion has been a turn towards ambient sets and mixes, such as 2019’s Tollarp Transmissions, whose evocative details paint a kaleidoscopically colourful recreation of her hometown.

For her solo set at MUTEK on the outdoor stage, Knutsson will conjure integral feelings from her youth, transmitting them into a stirring live performance that captures the exuberant emotional power of memory and nostalgia, using different shapes and velocities of ambient.

Presented as part of North-West Passage, a project by Insomnia, Intonal and MUTEK, with the support of the Nordic Council and the Quebec government.