From Barcelona
Recommended if you like Throbbing Gristle, Boy Harsher, Pelada
Up next Headline London show in May

Dame Area aren’t bothered about making hits – in fact, when the Spanish-Catalan electro-punk duo see a song catching on in their live shows, they might remove it from the set list. “We never want to be dependent on any one track,” says Silvia Konstance, who whispers, shouts and thrashes at drum pads alongside Viktor L Crux. “It keeps things exciting.”

This year has been Dame Area’s biggest yet. Across the 76 shows they’ve played, in South and North America, Africa and Europe, they say every setlist has been different. They often only decide which tracks to play within an hour of starting and sometimes improvise mid-performance. “For me, the worst is when I’m playing and I’m thinking: OK, tomorrow I have to go buy this [thing], then I have to call my mom,” Konstance laughs. “You have to be in the moment.”

The pair met a decade ago through Màgia Roja, a 100-capacity DIY music venue, label and creative hub Crux co-founded in Barcelona, where musicians and punters writhed alongside each other on the dancefloor in lieu of a stage. “People would wear weird costumes, engage in crazy shenanigans, play chess or do an improvised concert in the bathroom,” says Crux. “There was total freedom. The only policy was to be curious and to not bother other people.”

Màgia Roja is where Konstance, who is originally from northern Italy, encountered experimental music for the first time. “Seeing other women up there playing weird stuff and having a good time made me want to try doing it myself,” she says. In 2017, she enlisted Crux to help her produce a string of demos; they released their first record the following year.

Using synths, drum pads and a perforated metal sheet that is pounded, impaled and looped up with a contact mic and pedals, their music sits somewhere between EBM (electronic body music), post-punk and techno, with shades of flamenco.; it’s inspired by groups such as Throbbing Gristle, Suicide and Sonic Youth as much as Màgia Roja’s open-music policy. Over pummelling percussion, hypnotic synth loops and blasting noise, Constance yells in Spanish, Turkish and German, as well as her native Italian. Their unpredictable performances, which have no breaks between songs, blur the lines between a gig and a club set. “We like music you can dance to that goes beyond being just this functional, metronomic thing,” says Crux.

Dame Area have released four albums, but it was only this year that they made something that matched the sound and energy of their raucous live shows. While their older material is more shimmering synth-pop and coldwave, Toda la Verdad Sobre Dame Area (The Whole Truth About Dame Area) is rowdy, relentless and suited to dark, sweaty dancefloors. Most of the album was recorded live, a process that Crux summarises simply as “blood, sweat and tears” – and the cliche is understandable once you see how intense their performances are.

In January, Konstance and Crux will return to Barcelona to play their first show on home turf since 2023, before taking a few months off to regroup and write some new material. After that, they will return to the gig circuit, including several yet-to-be-announced dates in the UK. They urge audiences to expect the unexpected. “It’s never going to be the same show they saw last time,” says Crux. “We want to keep people on their toes – and keep the project alive.”