SAGE Gateshead welcomes back the ever-popular Tusk Festival back for its 8th edition next week, once again bringing its diverse programme of adventurous international music to the North-East.

This year, the festival is expanding to make full use of the landmark building, its flexible public spaces and truly high-end production values to showcase a TUSK 2018 line-up that is as unwavering as ever.

Tusk 2018 features over 20 live acts from eight countries including:

l Godfather of minimalism Terry Riley

l Japanese avant garde hero Otomo Yoshihide

l Blondie and Ramones producer and creator of his own classic electronica Craig Leon

l The serene Canadian drones of Sarah Davachi

l 75 Dollar Bill’s big city desert rock

l The North African trance music of Maâlem Houssam Gania & The Gnawa Of Essaouira

l German free music legend and instrument builder Limpe Fuchs

l Afro-futurist rapper Moor Mother at the blazing helm of Irreversible Entanglements

l Roaring Turkish improv rock from Konstrukt

Tusk also presents another unmissable film programme as part of the weekend, featuring more than five hours of filmic big screen genius you’re unlikely to see anywhere else, including:

l The film that’s set to change the face of music documentary making, Milton Graves: Full Mantis

l A truly unhinged journey through the world of musician and artist The Reverend Fred Lane

l Indian travelogue footage undergoing an audio-visual remix live to produce a truly disorienting spectacle in Rajasthan Live Cinema

At nearby Workplace Gallery we present Lyres Of Lemniscate – an interactive exhibition that creates a slowly evolving sonic meditation of drone tonalities and hypnotic visual stimuli. Produced by the Newcastle collective of artists and instrument builders Drone Ensemble, the exhibition is the result of commission by TUSK, Workplace Gallery and Culture Lab and the ensemble will also perform in the gallery during the festival.

Sage Gateshead will also host an exhibition that has sprung from a mail art project based around butchered tape recordings of the live set performed at last year’s TUSK by UK avant stalwarts Nurse With Wound. Plus two of the line-up’s artists – Limpe Fuchs and Adam Bohman – will each offer workshops for attendees during the weekend. A projected exhibition of the collages of artist Karen Constance, writ huge onto the high walls of Sage’s concourse and visible across the river in Newcastle.

Lee Etherington, producer of TUSK 2018, said: “We are delighted to be delivering another unique and diverse programme this year at Sage Gateshead. We are pleased that TUSK’s ever popular talks and discussions feature again this year, with Marlo Eggplant talking about her Ladyz In Noyz project and Ceramic Hobs talking about their evolution as a band, their involvement with Mad Pride and more.”

n Tusk Festivalk, Sage Gateshead. October 12-14 Full weekend passes are on sale now at £70. Tickets for Terry Riley & Gyan Riley plus Maâlem Houssam Gania & The Gnawa of Essaouira in Hall One are now on sale at £21.80. (Holders of weekend and Sunday day passes may also attend this). Day tickets are on sale now at the following prices: Friday - £21.80, Saturday - £27.30, Sunday - £32.70 at http://sagegateshead.com/tour-dates/tusk-festival-2018