Awesome Tapes From Africa live at Gaswerk Music Days 2025

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Awesome Tapes From Africa live at Gaswerk Music Days 2025


Since 2006, Brian Shimkovitz’s Awesome Tapes From Africa blog has been shedding light on obscure and captivating sounds from across the continent. As a DJ, he brings the blog to life through 2–3 hour sets blending folkloric pop, left-field dancefloor gems, and hip-hop bangers. From clubs to festivals to DIY spaces, Awesome Tapes DJ sets celebrate the music and musicians whose cassettes Shimkovitz has collected over the years. In 2011, ATFA evolved into a critically acclaimed label, re-releasing records by African artists such as Ata Kak, Dur-Dur Band, Hailu Mergia, and Penny Penny. His DJ sets—performed on twin tape decks—explore deep, regional sounds with an analogue-anchored agility unlike anything else.

Driven by an obsessive love for forgotten tapes and hidden gems, Shimkovitz has spent years crate-digging across Africa and recently opened a small listening and record space in Berlin - an intimate extension of the ATFA universe.

Listen to his Resident Advisor podcast set

https://awesometapes.com/
https://www.gaswerk-music-days.de/ 




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Saturday, 12.07.2025

Afrosonic Lineage - in collaboration with Nyege Nyege Festival


The first festival date highlights artists from the Nyege Nyege sphere alongside other African and local voices. Whether drawing from ancestral traditions or exploring Afrofuturistic frequencies, dusting off archival tapes or reimagining sounds from Africa and its diasporas, each artist leaves a distinct mark on the arc connecting African pasts and futures.



Arsenal Mikebe

HHY & The Kampala Unit 

Ibaaku

Sonic Interventions

Awesome Tapes From Africa



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Gaswerk Music Days (12.07. - 19.07.) is the summer music festival organized by Gaswerksiedlung Berlin and taking place in its lush gardens, BLOCK1 event space, and creative studios. The event unites experimental electronics, African sounds, jazz, noise, avant-pop, kraut, improvisation and dance music under its “Radical Live Music” flag, binding and crossing genres in a program with over 20 acts on 2 stages.

Overcoming the classic fractures among genres, our program is devoted to live music, challenging sound, improvisation and discovery. We foster those who take risks and push the boundaries, we establish grounds of exchange whilst cultivating diversity, embodying a proud alternative to a mainstream-dominated music ecosystem.