As the year comes back into bloom, Rewire opens space in The Hague for music that challenges convention and invites new ways of listening. The 2026 edition continues this tradition, bringing together artists whose work stretches across borders and disciplines. While the festival’s scope is international, some of the most compelling ideas emerge just beyond the Dutch border, where the Flemish experimental scene continues to evolve in striking and unexpected directions.
In partnership with de Brakke Grond, with additional support from STUK and VierNulVier, Rewire 2026 presents a selection of Flemish artists whose practices are rooted in curiosity, attentiveness, and transformation. Through intimate electronic composition, expansive ensemble work, and radical reimaginings of acoustic instruments, Natasha Pirard, Joachim Badenhorst’s Youran, and Suzan Peeters exemplify the diversity and vitality of contemporary Flemish sound. Their work reflects a scene defined not by genre, but by openness, depth, and a shared commitment to exploration.
Natasha Pirard
The compositions of Belgian experimental electronic musician Natasha Pirard unfurl patiently like sprouts from soil. In 2024 she made the four-cassette release Dream Cycles, whose slow-shifting sound worlds formed the basis for her recent album Fernande, Cécile (2025) – made in dedication to her mother and late grandmother. The album thematically explores matrilineal memory, family transformation, and the fragility of recollection.
Sonically, Pirard's work for analogue synthesis, tape loops, acoustic instrumentation, and voice takes everyday sonic details and envelopes them in blankets of lush ambience. From hymnal reverberations that evoke Liz Harris's Grouper, to worming sonic milieus that echoes the fragile yet powerful soundtrack work of Mica Levi, Pirard's experiments in texture and melody arrive like a loving gift. Just as wisdom, care, and secrets are passed across generations, an intimate and touching sense of softness passes through Pirard's inimitable compositions.
Joachim Badenhorst’s Youran
Youran is the latest project led by clarinetist and saxophonist Joachim Badenhorst. He brings together an idiosyncratic group of performers and musicians, with Tsubasa Hori on taiko and koto, Simon Jermyn on bass and guitar, Alistair Payne on trumpet, Nabou Claerhout on trombone, Rutger Zuydervelt on electronics, Liz Kosack on synthesisers, and Badenhorst on reeds and vocals.
The project takes its name from the old Japanese word for "cradle," so it is fitting that a calming, lulling sense of dreamy imagination flows through the group's music. Their metamorphic form of jazz pulls from spiritual jazz predecessors and contemporaneous experimenters to envision a genre-traversing sound that is difficult to pin down: it moves across jazz, ambient, and indie motifs with curiosity and confidence. Their eponymous debut album fuses studio work with recordings from the medieval Laurenskerk, Rotterdam – forming a glimmering whole made from intriguing and distinct parts.
Suzan Peeters
Suzan Peeters is a Brussels-based accordionist, composer, and improviser who uses the accordion in ways previously unimagined – taking its gestural and pneumonic, breathy characteristics and infusing this age-old folk instrument with new cybernetic, noisy potential. In her search for new timbres and sonic textures within the instrument, she pushes its acoustic spectrum to its limits in a careful yet energetic interplay between her body and the body of the accordion. Her latest album, Cassotto (2025), on the Belgian label blickwinkel, is a gleaming example of this: it contains droning abstraction, minimalistic noise, and motorik staccato stabs which are nearly indiscernible as accordion play, as well as warm compositional moments which gleam with cinematic charge and character. While recordings start to tell the story, it's in Peeters's live performances where the true imagination and creativity of her work comes into full focus – witness the ways she fuses tradition and newness at Rewire 2026.
The presentation of these works was made possible thanks to the support of Flemish Arts Centre de Brakke Grond, STUK, and VierNulVier.
Natasha Pirard, Joachim Badenhorst's Youran, and Suzan Peeters will be performing at Rewire 2026. Book tickets via rewirefestival.nl/tickets.
