Ephemera Festival 2026: Armand Hammer/2K88 & Rainy Miller & Bianca Scout & Lauren Duffus + more

2K88

2K88 — fka 1988, aka Przemysław Jankowiak — is a music producer, graphic designer, and audio director raised in the Poland of the 1990s and on the pioneering rap records of that time. The rawness, chunkiness, and paranoia he took from this period have always been an integral part of his music. They were there when he made his first homemade beats and stayed with him when, in the following years, he distanced himself from hip-hop, going deeper into the world of sampling experiments and the post-genre avant-garde. Later, he and Robert Piernikowski created the universe of the duo Syny - an irreal spectral/ontological phenomenon built out of memories, dreams, and bass, rap, dub, and smoke. Since the end of Syny, Jankowiak has let loose his beatmaker impulses on a collaborative record with Warsaw’s legendary MC Włodi, created the album Ruleta [Roulette] with over 30 featured guests, and struck up a dialogue with the electronic soundsystem work that’s fascinated him for years on the Ring the Alarm EP. He’s also created chart-topping avant-pop with Brodka and a mimetic soundtrack to “Splinter”, but it is SHAME that is the album we might call his sonic résumé.

Rainy Miller

Lauren Duffus

Bianca Scout

Microplastics

aya

Her work is primarily concerned with the transfigurative power of experience and memory on the physical body. They have entered mutually beneficial music distribution arrangements with record labels such as Tri Angle Records, Astral Plane Recordings and Wisdom Teeth, much to the acclaim of Big Music Journalism. AYA really likes the think break and crying in the booth. In 2019, it won the NTS WIP international talent competition, along with the championship belt for best radio host ever.

96 Back

British producer Evan Majumdar-Swift, best known as 96 Back, established himself as a neo-electro wunderkind before quickly expanding his sound to incorporate IDM, ambient, pop, grime, and more. Making his debut with the 2018 EP Provisional Electronics, a straightforward electro workout, his music grew into a more ambitious hybrid of styles on his dual 2021 full-lengths, 9696 Dream and Love Letters, Nine Through Six. Evan Majumdar-Swift was born in Sheffield; his father, Matt Swift, was a promoter responsible for the Jive Turkey parties, which preceded the formation of Warp Records. As 96 Back, 18-year old Majumdar-Swift performed his first DJ set for online channel Boiler Room, at an off-camera showcase for Sheffield-based electro label Central Processing Unit. He became the first Sheffield artist to release music on the label, when his debut EP Provisional Electronics appeared that year. However, he resided in Manchester, where he studied production at the BIMM Institute. His debut album, Excitable, Girl, appeared on CPU in early 2019, and the EP Issue in Surreal arrived later in the year, including remixes by labelmates such as Jensen Interceptor and Sync 24. He also released a split-single with Happa. In 2020, 96 Back released TBQFH EP on Hypercolour, as well as the self-issued digital full-length ADRISM, a "pseudo break-up album" which included a collaboration with Skee Mask. Several additional EPs appeared during the year, including his first release for Local Action, Sugilite. The label issued his two 2021 full-lengths, 9696 Dream and Love Letters, Nine Through Six. The first was a set of futuristic club abstractions, while the second was a more emotive set which leaned closer to hyperpop. In between the two albums, Local Action issued 96 Back's Flex Time, a grime-influenced EP which included a collaboration with Canadian rapper Cadence Weapon. ~ Paul Simpson

Jennifer Walton