Ziúr

Driven by a relentless appetite for boundless experimentation, Ziúr has been subverting expectations since she was a teenager, corkscrewing through hardcore, metal and punk before veering towards electronic music's turbulent fringes. She produces just like she DJs, gathering a wide variety of ingredients and figuring out the most intriguing, unexpected ways to simmer them into a coherent narrative that helps listeners synchronize the conflicting messages that surround them. Genre isn't a fixed point for Ziúr, but a color in a vast palette that stretches across history and borders, helping illustrate music that's powerfully subversive - a vivid crack of light in a dim, lifeless cultural landscape. It's easy to see why Pitchfork labelled her "a master storyteller" in 2019. Ziúr's musical epiphany came in 2015 when she was teaching at a girls rock camp and crossed paths with Peaches. The Canadian icon invited Ziúr to tour alongside her, tapping her for a remix of 'How You Like My Cut' shortly afterwards. An early addition to the Discwoman roster, she followed the Peaches mix with two EPs before sharpening her vision into a full-length statement on 2017's acclaimed 'U Feel Anything?', released on the UK's iconic Planet Mu label. Featuring collaborations with Aïsha Devi and Swedish pop singer Zhala, the album established Ziúr's expressive sonic signature as she balanced gritty percussion with soft, pillowy pads and vocals. And she supplemented it with the barbed call to action 'ATØ' in 2019, a record that featured Ash B and Samantha Urbani, and described by Resident Advisor as "bold, detailed and abstract." Two years later, Ziúr branched out even further, using escapist medieval imagery and an ensemble of electronic and acoustic instrumentation to elevate 'Antifate', and collaborating with Empyset's James Ginzburg on the cybernetic pop experiment 'Myxomy'. But it wasn't until 2023's breathtaking 'Eyeroll', released on Uganda's Hakuna Kulala label, that the scope of Ziúr's vision was opened up to its fullest. Working alongside friends Elvin Brandhi, Abdullah Miniawy, Iceboy Violet, Juliana Huxtable, Ledef and Ginzburg, Ziúr laid down a new musical framework that reconciled her punk roots with her passion for forward-thinking abstraction. Her most rhythmically diverse album to date, it was also her most dauntless, stirring Miniawy's Arabic incantations and Brandhi's animalistic screams into a pool of jerky electro-acoustic twangs, squeaks and pops. Unsurprisingly, Ziúr's live performances are renowned for their similarly limitless energy. She's performed across the world in some of the most prestigious venues, such as New York City's Whitney Museum, Paris's Lafayette Anticipations, Beijing's Zhao Dai, London's Somerset House and Berlin's Volksbühne. And Ziúr is a mainstay on the global festival circuit, having appeared at Unsound, Rewire, CTM, Atonal, LEV, MUTEK, Borealis, Lost, Soft Center and Hyperreality. Her sets are just as unpredictable as her productions; often seen alongside video artist Sander Houtkruijer and choreographer Kiani Del Valle, she interjects the music with humanistic asides, regularly inviting her litany of musical collaborators to share the stage. And as a DJ, Ziúr maintains her poise, virtuosically using her CDJs like instruments not just to play tracks, but to chop, loop and distort them until they bend to her will. Currently, Ziúr is working with Lebanese contemporary artist and composer Tarek Atoui on a series of projects that have included contributions from legendary percussionist Susie Ibarra and versatile multi-instrumentalist Nancy Mounir. And she's sharpening her engineering and production skills, having worked with Vietnamese collective Rắn Cạp Đuôi on their debut album 'Ngủ Ngày Ngay Ngày Tận Thế', and with Mexican-American producer Debit on her forthcoming album. Constantly evolving and eagerly surveying the world's shifting cultural topology, Ziúr's forward motion is her greatest strength.