Valerie Renay (DJ)

The French-Caribbean performer, musician, painter, and much more besides, Valerie Renay refuses every attempt at categorisation. On the contrary, the Berlin-based artist has always moved deliberately through in-between spaces with her poetic pop gestures.

Since 2006, Renay has been elegantly infiltrating Berlin’s underground scene with her dark-pop duo Noblesse Oblige – a sound shifting between ethereal electro chanson and hypnotic post-punk, carried by a voice that feels almost incantatory. You might think of Charlotte Gainsbourg or even Malaria as points of reference, but ultimately Renay is her own guiding star.

Her solo album »Your Own Shadow« marked a condensation of this artistic strategy in 2018 – something like a form of self-therapy, in which its protagonist does not hesitate to share moments of ecstasy and vulnerability openly.

At this year’s Pop-Kultur Festival, she will be playing one of her highly sought-after DJ sets. Valerie Renay approaches DJing not as a linear dramaturgy, but as a vibrating sonic body – from punk to cumbia, from new wave to electro, with indie classics woven in between, all refracted through underground coolness and irony.

What awaits us is a highly energetic and deeply entertaining set where dancefloor and performance blur into one.