PØNG consists of two musicians who come from very different musical backgrounds.
One has been performing as a DJ and live act at techno parties in Europe, America and Australia since the 1990s. In 1994, he co-founded base-industries, one of the first German free techno sound systems. He has also produced music for theatre and dance productions and for music festivals.
The other one is a trained saxophonist and composer of new music. He is a well-known musician in free improvisation and free jazz since many years. Since working as a freelance musician, he has collaborated countless times with renowned artists from various artistic fields and has received various commissions in different countries.
The result of this collaboration is captivating, danceable and sometimes unclassifiable music. A melodic layer builds up on the basis of basses and beats, which partly follows clear lines and partly flies away, freely improvised.
The centrepiece of the live act, an oversized analogue synthesiser, takes centre stage and is a mystery that is sometimes difficult to fathom with its flashing lights and seemingly tangled cables.
Multi-award winning experimental pop auteur, Sasha Perera aka Perera Elsewhere is a producer,musician, songwriter and DJ who has garnered critical acclaim from Pitchfork, NPR, BBC,FADER, Vogue, KCRW and many more.Her use of technology to create and to experiment with her voice, lyrics, trumpet, percussive beats,bass frequencies, sound design and existential ideas all led to what fans and press initially coinedthe ‘Doom-Folk’ sound of the Perera Elsewhere project. She found a home on Los Angeles basedlabel Friends of Friends where she has released 3 albums that have seen her sonic imprintgraciously evolve and evoke a hybrid of comparisons from Mica Levi to Dean Blunt, Jon Hassell orMassive Attack.Journeys have punctuated Perera Elsewhere’s life perspective and career, taking her from London’svibrant club scene to Berlin’s bass experimentalist underground and forming her shapeshiftingapproach to music. Elsewhere, but always rooted, Perera has found herself at home in musicallydiverse arenas–from live shows & DJ sets at institutions such as Berghain, Guggenheim, HamburgPhilharmonic, Sonar Festival and Boiler Room.Her music has been licensed for Ava Du Vernay’s ‘Queen Sugar’ series, by Oscar winning directorPaolo Sorrentino for his ‘Loro’ film and recently by Apple for the promotional launch of their fasterthan ever M2 chip.A true multi-hyphenate, Perera’s open and autodidact technique is also highlighted by a long list ofside releases, collaborations as well as bespoke compositions for moving image, theatre and audio-visual installations for leading global institutions such as Bass Museum Miami (2022 and ZKM inKarlsruhe (2024). She produced 4 songs for German icon Nina Hagen’s recent album (2023) andwon ‘Best Act ’at the VIA awards 2022, the only independent award for musical innovation inGermany. Perera also won Sony Music Germany’s ‘Female Producer Award’ in 2024.Perera’s published works have led to invitations by renowned institutions such as Ableton, NativeInstruments, Yale or Berlin’s University of Arts and the award- winning Errrormusic programme toshare her creative knowledge via studio sessions, workshops, teaching, and mentoring. Sasha hasalso worked with the British Council and Goethe Institute as an artist and co-curator or mentor onmusic projects and music-tech education initiatives across Asia and Africa . She recently composedthe sound for a Kampnagel dance/ theatre production titled’ Reparation Nation.’ Perera Elsewhere is clearly at home in many places.