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Tim & Puma Mimi

Tim & Puma Mimi describe themselves as sushi served with Swiss chocolate for wasabi. As off-the-wall as that sounds, that’s just an appetizer in their world. This Swiss-Japanese duo, who for the most part reside in Zurich, have been crafting a colorful, wacky world for themselves (and us) for more than a decade now. They’ve been spotted using a cucumber to trigger their synthesizers, to prove how crazy triggering interface design could get, if you wanted it to. (It’s worth noting, however, that Tim often complained that these funky veggies made a mess of his keyboard.) As far as we know, they were also the first to utilize Skype during live shows. On their first tour, while Tim was performing in clubs scattered around Europe, Puma Mimi joined him nightly, beamed up to a screen behind him – as she performed the songs from her Tokyo apartment, while having her first cup of coffee before going off to work. All these quirks and eccentricities, of course, pale next to the music.

On their latest release, Der Die Das (the German articles), Tim & Puma Mimi not only pushed their idiosyncrasies to the maximum, but also refined them to perfection. By analogy, it’s as if Towa Tei and Lady Miss Kier of Deee-Lite ran into Giorgio Moroder at the thickest, craziest 90s rave. Then all of them took copious amounts of mushrooms and turned into anime characters who just so happened to live in an 8-bit video game. Then, somehow, they were all teleported back to 2016 and made a record together about this entire experience. The point is that Der Die Das is a wildly bizarre ride, one that manages to weave the very roots of Electronica, with a touch of that sexy, sensual 90s rave music, some great pop songwriting and a bit of an 8-bit aesthetic. And it does this using a modern production craft.

Their performance will include a live-steam video performance from Zurich.