The Bug: Machine
(UK)
“You will experience a few shows in your life that are revolutionary; that are life-changing. And that’s what the Bug is all about for me: sound that can change your life.”
︎︎︎ The Guardian
The Bug is the principal outlet for Kevin Martin, the shape-shifting producer with an unrivalled reputation for his punishing live shows and a heavyweight catalogue of projects and collaborations including Techno Animal, King Midas Sound, Razor X Productions, and a longstanding alliance with London MC Flowdan. On stage he remains a force to be reckoned with, whether calling on an arsenal of MCs including Flowdan, Dis Fig (with whom he released the In Blue collaborative LP on Hyperdub), Manga Saint Hilaire, Logan and Magugu, playing noised-out solo sets based on the Machine material of industrial dubs just released on Relapse, or with his increasingly deep instrumental Bug (In Dub) club sets that join the dots between mutant strains of dancehall, acid ragga and grime.
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Violent Magic Orchestra
(JP)
“On DEATH RAVE, the Japanese group brings a fusion of black metal, techno and visual art
as an ‘absolutely new and overwhelming experience’.
︎︎︎ DAZED
VMO is an ‘Ultimate Extreme Supreme Art’ project that uses humans, strobe lights, smoke machines and intense visuals to create an all-encompassing, smoke-filled, luminous blend of techno, black metal, gabber, hardcore, industrial and noise: “It is like black metal meets Kraftwerk or like Aphex Twin with corpse painting.” Their debut album Catastrophic Anonymous (2020) featured Chip King (The Body), Attila (Mayhem) and Sunn O))), heralding their aesthetic trajectory. Their Principle of Light Speed Invariance EP (2020) introduced the frontman Zastar, and their second album DEATH RAVE (2024), featuring Attila (Mayhem), Kælan Mikla, Dylan Walker (Full of Hell) and Ican Harem (Gabber Modus Operandi), won them rave reviews and tours around the world. VMO make bodies dance, create mosh pits, white out people's vision and invite listeners into new dimensions.
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Gábor Lázár
(HU)
“Lázár’s sound is rawer in concept than his peers’, and manipulated with an implacable, impressive fussiness
most producers would
never attempt.”
︎︎︎ Pitchfork
Gábor Lázár is a Hungarian artist producing electronic music at the intersection of advanced club music, music technology and the aesthetic tendencies related to the culture of computer music. His studio recordings and live performances are both expressions of his self-developed software instruments and music-making systems. Through his critically acclaimed albums of the past ten years, he has explored various territories of electronic music and defined his own musical language. Between 2013 and 2024, he released nine LPs, including a collaboration with Mark Fell and a split release with Russell Haswell. He has been working with record labels such as Raster-media, Planet Mu, Shelter Press, The Death of Rave, and Presto!?. Gábor has performed at festivals, clubs, and institutions worldwide in the past ten years. Notable festivals include Mutek, CTM, Berlin Atonal, Unsound and Terraforma.
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Shekuza
(SI)
»Ljubljana's master of adventurous modular techno.«
︎︎︎ Radio Študent
Since 2019, Ljubljana-based synth wizard extraordinaire, DJ, producer and musician Miha Šajina, known for his work with bands like Moveknowledgement, Warhorse and Ewok, has explored the outer limits of modular synthesis. His albums De Sica (2019) and Coriolis Effect (2020) are a masterclass of syncopated techno, with elaborate arrangements and mind-altering sound design. Since 2022, he has been a key member of the Slovenian modular community Clockwork Voltage. He also produces special effects and music for animation and documentary films. The Floorcuts EP (2023) saw him in his deadliest form yet, compressing his sturdy machine funk to its pure essence. His sturdy techno productions have also been featured on compilations such as Clockwork Voltage and Tehnopolis.
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Murcof: The Etna Sessions (MX)
“In his work as Murcof, Fernando Corona has long shown a talent for drawing beauty out of bleakness.”
︎︎︎ Pitchfork
Mexican-born Spain-based artist Fernando Corona aka Murcof has become known as the ambassador of minimalist electronic music from inner space. Many of his compositions are founded on abstract, glitchy, sometimes complex electronic percussion. Harmonic and melodic influences come from classical music (modern classical music, musique concrète, holy minimalism, micropolyphony, baroque music, etc.), ambient music, drone music, Berlin school synthesizer music, ethnic music and free improvisation. Rhythms are derived from minimal techno, dub, glitch, industrial music and IDM, and are often aligned around a 4/4 beat.
The more recent works, such as his latest album The Etna Sessions (2024), no longer include electronic beats. The album, which contains field recordings made in situ in the Parco dell'Etna and later processed and complemented with an array of analog and digital tools, exists at the intersection of cosmic drone, dark ambient, vaporous dub and minimalist techno. For the live show, a rework of the images captured at Mount Etna by Manu Ros and Murcof was made using a variety of old and new video editing techniques such as AI augmentation and analogue video effects to create a completely new narrative.
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Hassan Khan: The Infinite Hip-Hop Song Live! (EG)
“His constantly evolving body of work offers a subtly ironic perspective of the power relationships that define the political and social context of the contemporary world.” ︎︎︎ Contemporary&
Hassan Khan is an artist, musician, writer and Professor of Fine Arts at Städelschule in Frankfurt. He is the winner of the 2017 Venice Biennale Silver Lion. Recent major solo exhibitions include The Keys to the Kingdom (2019) at Reina Sofia, Madrid, and Blind Ambition (2022), a large survey at Centre Pompidou, Paris. He is considered one of the pioneers of experimental and contemporary approaches in the region. With tabla dubb (2001), he began developing sets that offer unique takes on various genres like new Shaabi, Arabic music, string quartets, live electronics as well as hip-hop in his currently touring set The Infinite Hip-Hop Song Live! – fire bars and rhymes, shifting bass-lines, mutating beats, elastic melodies all put together live into one evolving set using a custom-made digital interface.
Developed from Khan's forward looking algorithmic music installation of the same name, the set relies on a vast database of original beats, melodies, bass-lines as well as vocal units from ten specially written songs recorded in the studio with eleven rappers of diverse backgrounds.
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PYUR
(SHAPE+, DE)
SONICA x SHAPE+ Residency 2025 Premiere
“Her music is clever and refined, with its detail-rich sound design and slow-motion melodicism, but it never feels studied.”
︎︎︎ The Quietus
PYUR is the burgeoning solo endeavor of Berlin-based electronic artist Sophie Schnell. With a foundation rooted in classical composition and vocal artistry, her works are born from the fusion of her synesthetic experiences and her upbringing within a lineage of shamans, resulting in her unique and boundary-defying sound. PYUR debuted with the full-length AV album Epoch Sinus (2016), which eschewed distinctions between the visual and the sonic to reveal their underlying energetic substrate.
Shortly after PYUR performed on Stockhausen’s Oktophonie for Berlin Atonal, earning a return to the iconic Kraftwerk months later for a Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester commission with PAN’s Valerio Tricoli. She was then entrusted with the grand opening performance for MONOM 4D Sound System at Berlin’s Funkhaus. Her second album Oratorio for the Underworld (2019) and her follow-up album Lucid Anarchy (2024) brought forth new prismatic, nebulous and emotionally raw electronic pieces.
PYUR is an artist of the SHAPE+ platform for innovative music and interdisciplinary art, co-funded by the European Union and Pro Helvetia.
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Beam Team (SI)
SONICA x SHAPE+ Residency 2025 Premiere
“Intermedia artists who create new worlds through the play of light and moving image.”
︎︎︎ Mladina
BEAM TEAM is a multidisciplinary collective of artists working in the fields of audiovisual installations, video mapping, light installations, music production, video animation, intermedia techniques and the design of concert, club and festival spaces. The residency, whose key theme will be the interplay of sound and visualisations that react to it in real time, features the work of Stella Ivšek and Urša Čuk, members of the collective.
Stella Ivšek (1987) is a self-employed intermedia artist and designer. As a curator of the V2V platform, she organises various informal meetings and trainings in the field of live visualisations, video mapping and audiovisual installations, giving a space to artists who want to further their education in this field. With BEAM TEAM, she has created several interactive AV installations.
Urša Čuk (1986) is a self-employed video artist and cultural worker. Between 2019-2024, she worked as a creative designer with PRO PLUS, designing video animations for POP TV's productions. Since 2020, she has been involved in video mapping, VJ-journalism for various artists, preparation and realisation of AV works, AR posters, music videos, short animations, visualisations and scenic elements for theatrical/dance performances.
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RAFAEL TORAL (PT)
“We often talk of visionary albums, but Spectral Evolution should be celebrated for how visual it is, cracking open the listener’s mind’s eye to reveal an animated landscape populated by rare and exotic creatures.”
︎︎︎ The Guardian
Producer, composer and performer Rafael Toral is one of the most singular experimental guitarists of our age, involved with rock, ambient, electronic music and free jazz. He pioneered a blend of ambient and rock, recording acclaimed albums such as Wave Field (1998). In 2004, he launched the alien-sounding Space Program, an ambitious long-term project exploring electronic music based on silence and inspired by post-free jazz.
The resulting music, “melodic without notes, rhythmic with no beat, familiar but strange, meticulous but radically free – riddled with paradox but full of clarity and space”, has been described as “a brand of electronic music far more visceral and emotive than that of his cerebral peers”.
Returning to the electric guitar with a renewed interest in harmony, Toral synthesized all of the above on the masterpiece Spectral Evolution (2024), which landed on many AOTY lists. He has collaborated with Jim O’Rourke, Evan Parker, Phill Niblock and Sonic Youth, to mention a few.
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Antonina Nowacka (SHAPE+, PL)
“Nowacka has such a distinctive voice and way of singing that makes me feel she is singing from beyond a threshold. She opens a small portal to a world not quite the same as this one.”
︎︎︎ The Quietus
Antonina Nowacka is a vocalist, sound artist and composer with a background in visual arts. Through years of sonic explorations in natural environments, studies of various music traditions and voice peculiarities, she has developed a deeply relaxing and hypnotic voice quality reminiscent of a theremin. Through her subtle soundscapes, she takes listeners on emotional imaginative journeys inspired by nature, space, dreams and otherworldly happenings.
Her collaborators include names such as Agnieszka Polska, Nicolas Jaar and Sofie Birch. She performs all around the world in prestigious concert spaces, museums, art galleries and theatres such as Lincoln Centre (New York), Barbican Centre (London), Silent Green (Berlin), Centro National de las Artes (Mexico City) and Bourse de Commerce (Paris).
Antonina Nowacka is an artist of the SHAPE+ platform for innovative music and interdisciplinary art, co-funded by the European Union and Pro Helvetia.
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Stamor (SI)
Live premiere of The Absurd“The album [...] leaves a great impression for its sophisticated, multi-layered production and well-thought-out dramaturgy.
A soundtrack that doesn't
require a film!”
︎︎︎ Mladina
Stamor is a new ambient project by Slovenian musician and producer Jan Bajc Funa aka .čunfa, whose debut album The Absurd (2024) is described as “a homage to Albert Camus and his absurdism”. Bajc has channeled his love for minor-key riffs and ominous metal ambience into The Stamor project. It seems as if instrumental parts usually used as introductions or interludes on a post-metal record represent the essence of his expression.
The pensive guitar tones are not followed by blast beats, downtuned riffage and unholy growls, but rather they are expanded with synthesised bass lines, ritualistic percussion, gothic synths and hypnotic field recordings. His expression is reminiscent of Burzum’s dungeon synth releases, Earth’s cosmic drones and, at times, Muslimgauze’s mystical chants. The Stamor project is marked by a sincere desire to grasp the poetics of the absurd.
Bajc will be joined on stage by Manuel Brajnik (guitar, electronics) and Rok Babič (guitar, sampler) from the band Spiral Mind.
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Nitz x Vasko Pregelj: The Constants of Vanishing (SI)
Live to projection“Music for deep listening sessions!”
︎︎︎ Mladina
Tine Vrabič - Nitz has established himself as one of the more active representatives of the Slovenian electronic scene in the last decade.
He creates original music and performs as a live act, is a former long-time programme manager of the Ljubljana club K4 and is an experienced resident DJ. He is the programme director of Keep in Mind, a festival dedicated to contemporary electronic club music, and the head of Ambient Soup, a label and series dedicated to contemporary ambient music.
Vasko Pregelj (1948–1985) was a screenwriter and director who made experimental films exploring the medium's formal possibilities in the style of historical avant-gardes. Between 1965 and 1982, he made 15 films.
The screening of Pregelj’s darkly grotesque and baroquely surrealist experimental films will be accompanied by a live ambient performance by Nitz.
In collaboration with the Slovenian Cinematheque.
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Lifecutter: DELUGE (SI)
AV premiere of DELUGE“One of the main protagonists of the darkest and noisiest shades of domestic techno.”
︎︎︎ Odzven
Producer and multi-instrumentalist Domen Učakar, a passionate representative of extreme electronic music, has been exploring the border sonic areas between techno, industrial, noise, drone and metal since his debut album Kamizdat in 2015. He has played in various bands, including the cult noise duo Ontervjabbit. Lifecutter has shaped the Slovenian scene with his “power electronics meets blackened techno” sound, occupying a rare position between techno and experimental music.
He is also a member of the industrial techno duo Warhorse with Shekuza. Their debut Atlatl was described as“an ode to hard-hitting dance music that will please fans of producers like Perc, Scalameriya, Surgeon and Blawan” (The Quietus). In 2018, he was an artist of the SHAPE+ platform.
On his new album DELUGE (Kamizdat, 2025), he steers away from the industrial pulse of techno into dark ambient waters, addressing the fundamental contradictions between man and nature.
In collaboration with Kamizdat and Emanat Institute.
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tonota
(SHAPE+, HR)
tonota “Her music carries a recognizable ethereal sound, with emotion beneath the ambient veil and thoughtfully dosed details, which are often made up of so-called field recordings.“
︎︎︎ Glazba.hr
Ivona Eterović’s artistic career has been marked by independent work and collaborations that sought to create a unique and fresh sound. Not shying away from introspection and sensibility, as producer and a performer, Ivona combines ambient and bass music with analogue and digital sound design.
She expands her work through ambient and experimental club electronics, hip hop, pop, but also by composing for films and plays. With experience performing at significant regional festivals (Illectricity, ZEZ festival, Music Biennale Zagreb, Grounded), as well as at the first showcase festival in Croatia, SHIP, tonota has participated in numerous music workshops and residencies not only in Croatia but also abroad. Her work has been recognized on an international level.
In addition to her solo release ‘sve se kretalo i sve je stalo’ (2020), she has published her compositions on labels from the United Kingdom and Slovenia.
tonota is an artist of the SHAPE+ platform for innovative music and interdisciplinary art, co-funded by the European Union and Pro Helvetia.
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Vesna Petresin:
Synaescapes
(SI)
Exhibition Opening“The sensual landscapes of sound and light by Vesna Petresin, create an immersive experience for the viewers, inviting them to become lost in the playful fluidity of light displays.”
︎︎︎ Elena Sorokina, curator
Dr. Vesna Petresin is a time-architect, movement researcher, thinker and transdisciplinary artist. She was an Artist in residence and lecturer at the Amsterdam University of the Arts and at the UCL, a Visiting Fellow at London’s Goldsmiths, an artist-in-residence at the ZKM Karlsruhe and a RSA Fellow.
Her PhD was based on research on temporal composition in architecture, art and music. In her practice, she explores the relationship between the (social) body and technology. Through the study of optics, complex geometry and acoustics, she experiments with the architectural dimension of our cognition and understanding of space and time. She composes and performs immersive operas that explore intangible structures: her voice, the contemplation of light, image, movement and the barriers between intimate and public spheres. This format enables her to extend analogue media into immersive experiences of contemporary rituals, critically addressing environmental issues, climate change, clean water and free energy, providing reflections on technological and progressive utopias.
She has exhibited and staged performances, immersive experiences, multimedia installations and artefacts at many international festivals and venues (Tate Modern, Venice Biennale, Cannes International Film Festival, Institute of Contemporary Art London etc.).
In collaboration with Moderna galerija.
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