Avant-garde vocalist and experimental electronic music pioneer Phew will return to Europe in November for a series of performances, including a performance at Le Guess Who? Festival in the Netherlands. For this performance, Phew collaborates with Italian artist and percussionist Valentina Magaletti. For her shows in the United Kingdom, the Italian sound artist freddy Murphy will join as a support act.
Phew, born Hiromi Moritani, is nowadays seen as a legendary singer, composer and analogue electronics improviser with a body of work that spans different generations and placed her as the queen of the avant-garde. She was the founder of the punk group Aunt Sally, but since the band broke up, she has been active mostly solo. She has done collaborations with Can’s Jaki Liebezeit and Holger Czukay, legendary krautrock producer Conny Plank, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jah Wobble, Bill Laswell, Jim O’Rourke and The Boredoms, the creation of various punk bands. In 2017, she released her first solo album in 20 years, titled Light Sleep.
After that, she kept active by releasing new material with other musicians such as Ana Da Silva and Jim O’Rourke. Live, her voice is at the commands while abstract electronics are treated directly, creating tracks that are both highly emotional and sonically challenging. In 2020, a collection of material previously released on compilations, collaborations, singles and CD-rs only got released with the title Vertigo KO via the label Disciples, while in 2021 Mute Records released New Decade, a new solo album recorded in her home studio in the Tokyo suburb of Kawasaki during the pandemic. In 2023, her 1992 album Our Likeness was re-released on vinyl, CD and digitally via Mute Records.
On 8 August, on the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the 2012 concept album Radium Girls was re-released, on CD and for the first time on vinyl, via Bureau B. Originally, this was released under the project name Project UNDARK, a collaboration between Phew, artist Erika Kobayashi and German electronic music pioneer Dieter Moebius. While the album is strongly influenced by the aftermath of the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima, it is dedicated to the ‘Radium Girls’, the American factory workers who were exposed to radium in the 1920s and suffered serious health problems as a result.
Phew Europe Shows November 2025 Dates
Saturday 1 November, 2025: Les Nuits Weekender – Brussels, Belgium
Tuesday 4 November, 2025: ICA – London, United Kingdom
Wednesday 5 November, 2025: Jam Jar – Bristol, United Kingdom
Saturday 8 November, 2025: Le Guess Who? Festival – Utrecht, Netherlands
Tuesday 11 November, 2025: The White Hotel – Manchester, United Kingdom
Wednesday 12 November, 2025: The Lubber Fiend – Newcastle, United Kingdom
Thursday 13 November, 2025: Glad Cafe, United Kingdom
