SOUND IS MEMORY
Kurt Buttigieg is an experimental musician and sound artist from the Mediterranean island of Malta, who experiments with the boundaries of time, memory, and cultural preservation.
His music is an immersive narrative built through repurposed vinyl, hand-spooled tapes, slowed-down microcassettes, amplified objects, laptop and inside-out hard drives, with everyday objects transformed into sound conduits. He studied at the University of Barcelona (M.A. in Sound Art), released albums and performed under different monikers, most recently as Setakien and Ħanek.
Buttigieg’s sound has been described as “a well of time“, “nervous, pulsing ambient” and “gorgeous otherworldly musique concrète”.
A native speaker of Maltese, a minority language, his music increasingly explores the voices and stories of his language and other small and endangered languages.
You can listen further here, on my label page.
For press photos and rider see here.
OTHER WORK
Kurt is also a promoter of anomalous and adventurous music in Malta. He has been involved in the long and short fringes of experimental music for years, in Malta, Belgium and elsewhere – gawking at it, making it, writing about it and organising gigs.
He is the Artistic Director of the Sustain-Delay programme, at one of Malta’s oldest art institutions, Malta Society of Arts, where he promotes adventurous music and arts to the high (and unexpected!) curiosity of audiences unaccustomed to these sounds.
He is an occasional contributor to The Wire magazine, notably writing about the scene in Malta, including a playlist, but not only. He also wrote articles, in Italian, for The New Noise.
In 2020 he co-founded a small label called Complex Holiday and in 2024 he was made Artistic Director of an artist-run space called Każin ISSA.
He is, by trade, a curator and museum designer, having been responsible for temporary exhibitions at the museum of the European Parliament and, subsequently, project management for spin-off museums in several European capitals.
If you want practical info about playing in Malta you can find it here.