Beyond the Performance: Finding Freedom and the "Live" at Detect Classic Festival
At a time when live music can feel increasingly polished and predictable, Berlin’s Detect Classic Festival has carved out a reputation as a sanctuary for the experimental and the authentic.
This year’s theme, “the meaning of live,” was not just a slogan but a lived experience for both artists and attendees. Through conversations with two performing acts, a compelling picture emerges of a festival that offers a rare commodity in today’s music landscape: true creative freedom.
O/Y: The Rhythm of Unboxed Artistry
For Berlin-based electronic artist O/Y, whose rhythm-driven sound is anchored in a strong drumming background, Detect offered a liberating space to break free from genre constraints.
“I definitely felt like I could break free here, because the crowd gives you that feeling,” he explained. “People scream and shout… they’re just really excited for special shit. They’re not judgmental. The more out there, the better.”
This sentiment hits at the heart of a modern artist's dilemma: the balance between creative identity and commercial viability. O/Y articulates this struggle with clarity: “It’s such a fine line to walk as an artist – to keep a sense of identity and still be bookable. I make a living off that, but I still want to be completely free in what I do. And that balance is very hard.”
For him, Detect Classic is a vital antidote to the pressure to conform that defines many other stages. It’s a place where an artist can be both bookable and completely themselves. When asked about the meaning of “live,” O/Y offered a potent critique of the current state of performance. He sees the push for authentic live creation as a form of resistance against the “advertisable performance.”
“Many stages are built to be photogenic, Instagrammable,” he noted. “There’s so much pressure on artists to perform perfectly.” His solution is to demand intimacy, often telling promoters: “I want the stage in the middle of the crowd.” This setup fosters a relationship, allowing the audience to understand the creative act itself, rather than just consuming a distant, polished product. For O/Y, “live” means engagement and shared creation, not just performance.
Ekheo: A Collective Journey into the Unknown
The Berlin-based collective Ekheo embodies the festival’s spirit of exploration. The duo of Aude Langlois and Belinda Sykora, who explore the human and artificial voice, were joined by visual artist Rodger Brown, whose installations transform the performance space.
Their creative process is inherently fluid. “Our specialty is that we can adapt very quickly to different spaces,” said Aude, highlighting their reliance on improvisation. This creates a unique, shared journey each night. “The idea is that we have a journey together, but the audience also has their own journey and it becomes a shared experience,” Belinda added.
Their performance centers on their “digital child,” Leewa, a voice morphed from their own and given speech through AI. This creates a fascinating, unpredictable dialogue between human and machine. “It’s unpredictable, we adapt to the machine as much as it adapts to us,” Belinda said.
Rodger’s visuals deepen this ambiguity. “Sometimes you don’t know if you’re looking at a projection, a shadow, or a person. That uncertainty is part of the experience.” For them, this blurring of lines—human/digital, natural/artificial—is where the magic happens, tapping into what Aude calls the inherent “spookiness” of recorded and artificial voices.
For Ekheo, the meaning of “live” is deeply tied to presence and adaptability:
Belinda finds it in “being vulnerable and truly in the moment.”
Aude defines it as “awareness… being present and understanding the environment.”
Rodger views it as “problem-solving in real time. It’s about reacting, adapting, and staying present.”
This philosophy was fully supported by the Detect environment. The group unanimously praised the festival’s unique atmosphere. “Everything feels like a playground,” Aude said, thrilled by the offer to play for three hours if they wished—an unheard-of freedom elsewhere. This technical and creative support, Belinda noted, was “a relief,” allowing them to fully immerse themselves in the risk and reward of improvisation.
The Common Thread: A Playground for the Authentic
Though their sounds differ vastly, both O/Y and Ekheo found the same essential thing at Detect Classic Festival: a sacred space for artistic authenticity. It’s a venue that actively resists the pressures of commercialized performance, instead empowering artists to be vulnerable, to experiment, and to connect genuinely with an open-minded audience. Stay tuned for more!
All photos Sophia Hegewald
