Across the North Sea: Martyna Basta / Aleksandra Słyż [SOLD OUT]

Standard £18 // Solidarity £23.40 // Under 30 £7
Advance booking required 

Our Solidarity ticket price is an opportunity for audiences to support our work by purchasing a ticket at a slightly higher price (the cost of a Standard ticket plus 30%). Read more about Solidarity prices here.

Please note: this concert will accommodate a mixture of seated and standing attendees, with seating allocated on a first-come, first-served basis on the day.

Martyna Basta voice / electronics / acoustic instrumentation

Aleksandra Słyż modular synthesizer 

Recorded instruments:
Władysław Kosendiak alto saxophone
Kacper Krupa tenor saxophone
Gerard Lebik tenor saxophone
Adam Jełowicki saxhorn
Bartek Miler percussion 

With Across the North Sea, hcmf// and Poland’s Sacrum Profanum festival join forces to open a stream of ideas and music, building on the legacy of experimental music studios in the UK and Poland to create new links between modern electronic music scenes – interconnecting ‘across the North Sea’ for an inspiring exchange of programmes and artists. 

At hcmf// 2025, two of Poland’s most distinctive experimental voices share a stage, opening radically different windows into the possibilities of sound in a programme curated by Sacrum Profanum. 

Aleksandra Słyż’s monumental Beneath, breathing (2024) receives its UK Premiere in full, performed in two expansive parts – Beneath, breathing I and Beneath, breathing II. Across 40 minutes, Słyż sculpts a densely textured yet finely detailed electroacoustic drone soundscape in which time feels suspended, the warm resonance of pre-recorded acoustic instruments balanced by a sharper electronic layer. Built on a slow, pulsing rhythm, the work reflects Słyż’s interest in exploring unconventional relationships between intonation, microtonality, and harmony – the electronic layer is built using a 7-limit just intonation system, while the wind instruments sometimes move beyond this framework, creating a persistent, rumbling glissandi. Selected for their distinctive timbres, the instruments foreground this sonic phenomenon, forming a composition that balances warmth and sharpness, stillness and motion. 

Where Słyż builds vast sonic terrains, Martyna Basta turns inward. Her diaristic music moves with fragile intimacy, blending synths, guitar, zither, voice and field recordings into textures that are both lush and spectral. Critics have called her work “an ode to memory” (Pitchfork) and “a foggy, ambiguous dream” (The Quietus). Escaping classical training in her teens, she has since emerged as one of Europe’s most compelling experimental voices, her music unfolding like fragments of memory caught between sensation and impression. 

Heard side by side, Słyż and Basta’s music presents a vivid portrait of Poland’s experimental scene and a unique chance to experience its urgency, imagination, and breadth. 

Co-produced by hcmf// and Sacrum Profanum as part of the UK/Poland Season 2025; supported by Adam Mickiewicz Institute, the Polish Cultural Institute and the British Council; also supported by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Poland 

Photo: Aleksandra Słyż © Maciek Edelman // Martyna Basta © Filip Preis