Brussels-based composer and musician Lukas De Clerck has resurrected and reimagined the long-extinct Greco-Roman reed instrument ´aulos´, transforming it into a striking sculptural instrument. On his new album The Telescopic Aulos of Atlas, released on Stephen O’Malley’s label Ideologic Organ (2024), he channels guttural drones, volcanic textures, and primordial resonances into a living, ceremonial sound world. Both archaeological and futuristic, De Clerck’s performance unfolds like a ritual: reeds vibrating as twin oscillators, pipes as resonant channels, summoning narratives at once ancient and otherworldly.

In Mundanas VII–XI, John McCowen and Madison Greenstone explore the subterranean depths of the contrabass clarinet. Inspired by the seismic rumblings of the 2021 Fagradalsfjall volcanic eruption in Iceland, their music unfolds like tectonic waves: low sine-like tones swell into vibrating harmonic fields, combinatorial frequencies shimmer and collide, silence gives way to surging resonance. Over forty-five minutes, the duo becomes a single organism, weaving a dense acoustic fabric that is at once placid, tactile, and monumental—an orchestra of sound emerging from just two instruments.

György Kurtág’s Kafka-Fragmente (1985–86) distills the author’s diaries, letters, and jottings into forty miniature songs of startling intensity. Described by Süddeutsche Zeitung as “a kaleidoscope of enigmatic thoughts, feelings, and hidden battle cries in pill form,” the cycle compresses drama, irony, and pain into seconds—sometimes literally so.
The work’s concise sound world is brought to life by two extraordinary performers: soprano Donatienne Michel-Dansac - whose artistry spans from Baroque to contemporary premieres by Aperghis or Romitelli and collaborations with artists like William Kentridge, Umberto Eco and Céline Minard - and violinist Igor Semenoff, long-time member of Brussels’ Ictus Ensemble. Together, they reveal the fragments’ precision, volatility, and haunting beauty with subtlety and stupendous expressive depth.

Bagpipe player Erwan Keravec and choreographer Alban Richard become Daou – Breton for “two” – turning space itself into an instrument. Keravec, known for his radically contemporary approach to the bagpipe, moving between free jazz, noise, and new music, unleashes this archaic instrument: raw, physical, trance-like. Richard responds with a choreography of breath – inhalation, suspension, explosion. Together, they transform places such as churches, halls, beaches, or forests into vibrating spaces of resonance. A ritual dance of voice, air, and energy.

Sound and image collide, merge, resonate. Fresh from its world premiere in Leipzig, Norwegian guitar innovator Stian Westerhus brings this new collaboration with video art luminary Frieder Weiss to Cologne´s Christuskirche.
A daring pioneer of his instrument, Westerhus moves between towering walls of sound and fragile, intimate moments with enormous emotional impact. Shaped by a hyperfocused anarchic energy and an abundant sense of space and atmosphere, Westerhus´ playing absorbs elements of Black Metal, Post Rock, the harmonic complexity of Jazz and much more into a highly idiosyncratic approach to the guitar.
The stark, modernist architecture of Christuskirche provides a striking acoustic and visual frame for this rare and intense encounter.

Emerging during the lockdown as a musical collective, Placebo Domingo has developed an intense and unpredictable sound rooted in improvisation. Distorted guitar, analogue synths, alienated vocals, extended drums, and flute fuse into a raw “wall of sound” that mutates like a living organism—building, breaking, and twisting into new forms. Their sonic spectrum ranges from heavy riffs to static structures, hypnotic beats to fragile beauty.

A meeting of three outstanding improvisational musicians who understand sound as an open territory. Guitar legend Fred Frith – co-founder of Henry Cow and a defining figure in experimental music since the 1970s – encounters Tim Hodgkinson, a comrade from those radical early days and an tireless explorer of improvisation, composition, and sound anthropology. Joining them is Liz Allbee, a Berlin-based trumpeter and sound artist who transforms her instrument into a vibrating resonant body of breath, electronics, and material experimentation. A fully improvised trialogue – raw, poetic, and unpredictable.

Florentin Ginot is pushing the boundaries of his art — as a remarkable soloist and as a sought-after collaborator with artists like Helge Sten aka Deathprod, Félicia Atkinson, and Kamilya Jubran. Alongside his international projects, Ginot is also a member of Cologne’s Ensemble Musikfabrik, one of Europe’s leading contemporary music ensembles.
In his latest solo project, ancient harmonies meet analogue processors, synthesizers, and samplers, creating washes of sound and cinematic low frequencies — generating a visceral, immersive experience. Parasites and distortions meld with the clatter of electronics — a strange yet familiar voice emerging from the depths.

For their debut release Body Lapse (Planet Mu, 2025), vocalist and performance artist Cara Tolmie and electronic innovator Rian Treanor create a dizzying, body-centred music of breath, voice, and algorithmic rhythm. Tolmie’s “internal singing” — a practice where inhalation, exhalation, and movement blur into uncanny vocal textures — collides with Treanor’s radically kinetic sound systems, built in Max/MSP to bend and fracture rhythmic structures in real time. The result is a tactile, disorienting sound world of cut-up beats, elastic vocal lines, and ecstatic disruptions: rave-infused experimental music where bodily fragility meets unstable forms.

… and always his singular voice: “an intensely romantic Chet Baker-ish instrument that floats with piercing direction” (The Guardian). Chenaux is defiantly, quietly, and virtuosically one-of-a-kind: His songs sway, simmer, and sparkle. Tender ballads bend into strange shapes, warm and familiar, unlike anything you’ve ever heard. Exuberant gentle subversion.

Berlin-based acoustic ensemble Thuluth - arabic for one third - thrives on deep sonic trust and long-standing musical friendships. Formed after their first trio set at Irtijal Festival in Beirut (2016). The group’s approach is vivid, dynamic, and often playfully ironic: conventional palettes of piano, bass, and voice are subverted into abstract sound worlds where roles blur and unexpected resonances unfold. The result is strange and beautiful music that feels electric despite its purely acoustic means.

Florence Sinclair is a black British contemporary producer and singer-songwriter. Their work blurs the edges between UK underground and ambient experimentalism. They started exploring music through hip hop and grime as a teenager, which still informs their current practice. Their work carries a distinct sense of displacement, merging genres, cultures, and histories.

Karen Constance & Dylan Nyoukis, formerly known as Blood Stereo, are two magnificent Scottish experimental sound artists working primarily with tapes and electronics. They eschew the harsh for more subtle noise using jarring cuts, unexpected sounds, and surreal atmospheres to cook up confusion.
Michael Barthel, born 1977, growing up in East-Berlin, is living in Leipzig and works with language in writing, sound and visual arts. Active in the field of noise / tape music since 1994, his „Sprechstücke“ combines sound poetry, the big mouth East-Berlin dialect and lyrics in the intention and loudness of Punk, tackling topics of desire and despair.
For Night Of Surprise the trio will collaborate for the very first time.

Vibrant harmonics. Radiant precision. Ecstatic momentum. Extended Field brings together two generations of musicians drawn to the world of just intonation. Composer Arnold Dreyblatt’s glowing overtone matrices, the Horse Lords’ driving polyrhythmic thrust and their shared interest in psychoacoustic phenomena fuse into a propelling, living system of sound,
A hypnotic exploration of resonance and rhythm, revealing the subtle architecture of harmonic space.

The musicians of Oùat are known for their versatility and wide-ranging musical interests, which they also explore in bands such as [ahmed] and the Simon Rummel Ensemble. At the beginning of their collaboration, they focused on idiosyncratic, energetic bebop – from Thelonious Monk and Elmo Hope to Herbie Nichols and Per-Henrik Wallin. By now, however, the trio has transcended these stylistic boundaries in favor of an open playing field sustained by collective intuition, deep knowledge, and an uncompromising passion for improvisation.

Silvia Tarozzi and Deborah Walker have emerged as one of the most interesting duos in contemporary improvised music. With their “Canti di guerra, di lavoro e d’amore”, they fuse folk songs from rural Italy with their roots in contemporary classical and improvisation, giving voice to stories of work, love, resistance, and resilience. Violin, cello, voice—and even bicycle bells—become instruments of memory and emotion, transforming history into living sound.

Balmainjeans is the DJ alter ego of electronic and digital musician Lolina. She runs a mid week club night in London called Distressd with previous DJ sets by Denesh, Yumi, Cõvco and Ship Sket - as well as the label RelaxinRecords (with releases from NEW YORK, Kaitlin Simotics and others). Some people who’ve been seen wearing Balmain jeans include Vanessa in Gossip Girl, Lindsay Lohan, 21 Savage and other Atlanta rappers, Estonian fashion models, Fergie and Lil Wayne.

Andras, born in Salvador, Bahia, is an Internationally active dancer, choreographer, and interdisciplinary artist whose work bridges the worlds of contemporary dance, performance, and electronic music. Based in Düsseldorf, Germany, since 2016, they have been developing a striking body of work that moves fluidly between physical expression and electronic music, captivating audiences across Europe and the UK.
Driven by a desire to experiment, Sarah San’s DJ sets are eclectic mixes of genres and contemporary sounds, with dashes from past decades adding depth and color.
The SPA Recordings member will open up the heat for Andras' live performance in style.

Uruguayan DJ and producer Lechuga Zafiro transforms field recordings of metal, wood, glass, rock, toads, birds, sea lions, and water into pulsating, amphibian club music. Filtering South America’s vibrant rhythms through experimental sound design, his debut album Desde los oídos de un sapo (TraTraTrax, 2024) reveals a living biome of elastic textures, bouncy percussion, and resonant bass. In his live sets, tempos slide and samples stretch, creating a fierce, playful sound world where every species finds its groove.

Slikback (real name: Fredrick M Njau) is an electronic producer from Nairobi, Kenya mainly focusing on experimental music, noise, bass and high intensity rhythms. Over the years his sound has morphed into various forms all meant to be an expression of different ideas and emotions. Unbound by any specific thing, his unique blend of sounds can be found in his multiple releases.

Ziúr twists genres and expectations, from punk and metal roots to the turbulent fringes of electronic music. Her DJ sets are instruments in themselves - twisting, looping, and distorting sounds into immersive kinetic narratives.
Her recent albums, Home (2025) and Eyeroll (2023), weave electro-acoustic textures, fragmented vocals, and elastic rhythms into dense, subversive soundscapes. Every beat and signal pulses with restless energy, creating music that is both raw and meticulously crafted. In performance, Ziúr’s music comes alive as a tangible network of sound and spontaneous invention, where every moment can pivot into ecstatic chaos and unstoppable momentum.