May 13th 2026 | Rockhouse Salzburg |
X!XU (spoken “Ski-Schuh”) emerge from Linz as a trio suspended between definitions, where jazz is not a form but a field of tension—entwined with the pulse of repetitive club structures and the restless edge of experimental rock, balanced carefully between all possible chairs and none.
At the drums sits Patrick Pillichshammer, whose playing has already marked him as one of Austria’s most inventive young rhythmic architects, known from projects such as Schmack and Naked Cameo. On electric guitar, Valentin Goidinger—finalist of the Ö1 Jazz Scholarship 2025 and active within the Goidinger/Matheis Collective—traces lines that hover between structure and collapse. On bass, Alexander Matheis, awarded the Joe Zawinul Prize for his work with the trio Eledone, anchors the music in a deep, shifting gravity. On May 13, they arrive in Salzburg for the first time, continuing a lineage already carved by acts such as Schmack within the Eleven Empire series.
In parallel, Hamel Plattner form a different kind of invocation—an electroacoustic duo moving between improvised sound, contemporary composition, and sonic research. The German composer and clarinetist Thelonious Hamel and Vienna-based drummer, composer, and producer Max Plattner converge in a shared language where acoustic gesture, electronic texture, and improvisational openness dissolve into one another, forming a music that does not declare itself so much as it gradually reveals its own hidden logic.
ELEVEN EMPIRE
presents
X!XU (AT)
Support: HAMEL | PLATTNER (DE)
May 12th 2026
Rockhouse Salzburg
