Under the theme »Sustain,« the festival presents the latest in music from dancefloor saturnalia to entrancing experimentalism. With a programme that transcends genres, the festival consciously and resolutely moves between the cracks, tireless despite 25 years of an ongoing search for new (or newly unearthed) ideas, connections, and sonic extremes beyond fixed relationships. With the 2024 edition, CTM Festival asks what if »sustain« was a sound? What would it sound like? What music would emerge from it? Would it perhaps be music that not only offers refuge or escape from the world, but also music that reminds us of the possibility of turning towards brighter horizons?
In this sense, CTM 2024 presents itself as a mixture of sensitive and thoughtful, disturbing and liberating sound journeys by both musicians and artists who will appear at CTM for the first time as well as returning guests and collaborators.
Second Acts
Newly announced acts for CTM 2024 are:
- 40Hurtz & Hazey Haze (IE)
- Aldana Duoraan & HMOT (INT)
- Ale Hop & Laura Robles with Natisa Exocé Kasongo (INT) – »Agua Dulce«
- Eduardo Reck Miranda (BR/UK)
- EPROM (US) pres »Syntheism« live
- Felicia Atkinson with Jules Reidy and crys cole (INT) – »Thinking Through the Iceberg«
- FITNESSSfeat. LUNG (US)
- Golem Mecanique feat Thomas Bel (FR)
- Heith feat DECLINO (IT) pres »Inverted Vertigo«
- HJirok (IR/DE)
- Jules Reidy (AU/DE)
- Julian Sartorius (CH) – »Locked Grooves«
- Julian Sartorius & Rabih Beaini (INT)
- Kali Malone (US/SE) – »Organ«
- Kampire (UG)
- KENYA20HZ (BR)
- »Last and First Men« by Neon Dance, Jóhann Jóhannsson & Yair Elazar Glotman, narration by Tilda Swinton (INT)
- Mandidextrous (UK)
- NAH (US/BE) – »Totally Recalled« live AV
- Ocrilim – solo and feat Tim Wyskida(US/DE)
- O Ghettão (PT)
- Opium Hum (DE)
- otay:onii (CN/US)
- Petra Hermanova (CZ/DE) – »In Death’s Eyes»
- Phillip Sollmann & Max Eilbacher (DE/US) pres »Kalkül der Form«
- Riccardo La Foresta & James Ginzburg & (INT)
- RHR (BR)
- Sabiwa (TW/DE)
- SØS Gunver Ryberg & Sybil Montet (DK/FR) – »Weaving Fields«
- Special Request (UK)
- Viikatory b2b Dagga (BY/VZ)
MusicMakers Hacklab fellows: Amanda Bennetts (AU/AT), Claudix Vanesix (INT), Dimitris Mertzos (GR), Gisou Golshani (IR/UK), Ivan Skoryna (UA), Josefina Maro (AR/DE), Tobi Pfeil (NO/DE), Valeriia Khazan (UA/DE), Qusay Awad (SY/DE), Zalán Szakács (NL)
And A2A workshops with: Boris Hegenbart (DE), Diana Azzuz (SY/UA), ELLLL (IE/DE), Enyang Urbiks (KR/DE), Poly Chain (UA), Rabih Beaini (LB/DE), Tarik Barri (NL)
CTM Concerts
The works of composer and sound artist Kali Malone implement specific tuning systems in minimalist structures for pipe organ, choir, chamber music ensembles, and electroacoustic formats. Malone’s compositions are rich with harmonic texture through synthetic and acoustic instrumentation in repetitive motions and extended durations, emitting distinct emotive, dynamic, and affective hues which bring forth a stunning depth of focus. Sounding the massive organ in Berlin’s iconic Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche, Malone’s performance at CTM includes additional accompaniment by Stephen O'Malley – the guitarist and composer behind SUNN O))), KTL, and Khanate among other – on several four-handed organ pieces. The performance takes place only days ahead of the release of her latest album All Life Long, highlighting the organ segments contained therein.
A future race of humans finds itself on the verge of extinction. Almost all that’s left in the world are lone and surreal monuments, beaming their message into the wilderness. Across 2,000 million years, these last humans make contact with us, the first humans, telling their story and of their abilities, possibilities, and also their difference to us. The last humans not only offer their help, but also ask for help from us. Based on the ground-breaking 1930 novel by Olaf Stapledon, »Last and First Men«(2020) concluded the inspiring career of the Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson. Appearing in a world premiere at CTM Festival, Neon Dance presents a stunning and unique contemporary dance performance set to the backdrop of Jóhannsson’s 16mm black and white film, with narration fromTilda Swinton and original score composed by Jóhannsson and Yair Elazar Glotman, who will provide a live immersive spatial audio experience in collaboration with PA specialists d&b. The production features choreography from Adrienne Hart, lighting design from Nico De Rooij, and costume design from the award winning Ana Rajcevic and Mikio Sakabe.
Inspired by diverse writings such as The Sea Around Us by the environmentalist Rachel Carson and Thinking Like An Iceberg by the philosopher Oliver Remaud, in which he paints a web of reciprocal connections between icebergs and human life, the SHAPE+ supported electroacoustic composer Félicia Atkinson will premiere »Thinking Through the Iceberg,« an experimental oratorio for three characters, with the collaboration of the abstract guitarist Jules Reidy and sound artist crys cole. Here, the scenography is the development of the music itself, unfurling an open reflection about what it takes to care about an environment and each other, and what also links solitude to togetherness, a poetic argument between written elements and improvised words, movements and sounds, a meditation on vulnerability. For Atkinson, human voices inhabit an ecology alongside and within many other things that don’t speak; her artistic work imagines possibilities of animating and entering into dialogue with such entities. A five-part performance that will drift and melt slowly, »Thinking Through the Iceberg« combines grand piano, guitar, field recordings, voices, and whispers into an abstract minimal grunge, full of small details, metaphors, abstractions, revealing a complex and fragile interconnectedness even in places where there seems to be no life at all. Produced by CTM and Shelter Press.
»Inverted Vertigo« is the second output in an ongoing collaboration between Heithand Berlin-based visual artist duo DECLINO. Combining installation and live performance, the project explores the ritualistic dimensions of live music through an audiovisual show, where the audience plays the role of viewer and active participant. The stage has historically been a place for new fictions to emerge – worldbuilding requires magical thinking, but it’s also a space for collective imagination to summon new realities. Through an oracular totem that sits in the centre of the room, the show collapses the boundaries between real and imagined, summoning new psychic dimensions through dreamlike encounters. Between mesmerising and ritualistic soundscapes, Heith invites the audience to this journey, to pass along messages between ourselves, to move away from hierarchical and into the communal and conjure cosmologies beyond what we see. Accompanying the performance is the debut of Heith’s EP The Liars Tell…, which will be released January 2024 via PAN.
Award-winning composer, sound artist, and live performer SØS Gunver Ryberg meets the visual artist and CGI director Sybil Montet for »Weaving Fields,« an audiovisual journey where worldbuilding and scenic experience collide, fusing mutant rhythmics and advanced digital cinematography. Equally at ease commanding dance floors with hard-hitting experimental techno as she is producing innovative soundtracks for films, theatre, and the BAFTA award-winning video game »INSIDE,« SØS Gunver Ryberg’s thunderous musical voice is reflected into Sybil's high-speed, hypnotic CGI mirage signature style, as seen on her album covers for Travis Scott or her moving image works exhibited from Japan to the USA. In this singular collaboration, the two artists summon waves of ecological mystique in an ever-evolving core of divergent realities, from postdigital landscapes to luscious emotional drifts. A vivid dream into the interconnectedness of life. A co-production presented with and premiered at Lunchmeat Festival, »Weaving Fields« will see its German premiere at CTM.
Discordian plunderphonics breaching the sonic wash as shards of deconsecrated hi-hats skitter just out of sight – a NAH listening experience is a phantasmagorical audio journey of avant-garde beatsmithery. Mutating and smashing genres since 2011, his ever-decaying and evolving aural universe has brought him into collaboration with Moor Mother, Cities Aviv, Evicshen, and many others sharing similar explorative methodologies and mindsets. For CTM 2024, you’ll get sucked up the wormhole by the debut of his new album and live AV show »Totally Recalled,« a guaranteed head-tripping adventure full of visual reflections on the confusion, disconnection, narcissism, anxiety and fear that pervades the Americanized modern experience. Raw, dirty, and loud. The performance is presented in collaboration with VierNulVier (Ghent) and Stuk (Leuven).
Alejandra Cárdenas, aka Ale Hop, and Laura Robles grew up houses apart in Lima, Peru, without ever meeting each other; now, the two Berlin-based musicians will present their first joint release, Agua Dulce. Their work is a radical deconstruction of the traditional rhythms of the Peruvian coast, with a focus on the cajón, a Peruvian box drum that enslaved peoples made from fruit boxes when Spanish colonisers banned the more familiar foot drum in the 19th century. Robles uses a processed electric cajón to beat out rhythms from dances like Landó, Lamento, and Zamacueca, while Cárdenas fractures the sounds with abstract electronics, splintering the tracks into noisy markers, both harsh and sweet, as the city of Lima. On this occasion, they will be joined by dancer and artist Natisa Exocé Kasongo, who will perform his dance style based on improvisation and experimental storytelling.
HJirok is a project by renowned singer Hani Mojtahedy and Andi Toma (Mouse on Mars) that addresses the devastating effects of climate change in the Iranian-Kurdish region and the Iraqi-Kurdish border area. Blending the fictional character of HJirok, a water spirit that invokes a holistic view of the region, and harsh political realities, the artists process the impulses of the struggle for freedom in Iran as part of its complaint about alienation, division, and man-made disasters. Water is a resource that is reaching its limits, leading to conflicts in nature and between the nations in the region. HJirok waits in her element, amidst waterfalls, for people to return to her and accept her gifts in their true meaning, instead of choosing exploitation and oppression. It's not too late, she sings.
Petra Hermanova’s new release, In Death’s Eyes, combines folk and sacred musical technique and instrumentation which drift between song and heavy distorted drones. Performing on autoharp and voice, the SHAPE+ supported artist, will be accompanied by Jon Eirik Boska (percussion and voice) and the organist Elizaveta Suslova as they perform material from the album. To Hermanova, religious music offers spiritual solace from grief, but folk speaks to the human and earthly as told by the individual, through songs of suffering or joy, sin or salvation. With lyrics riddled with symbolism and allusion and contrasting the affordable and easy-to-master autoharp with the gargantuan organ reserved for skilled performers, »In Death’s Eyes« blends and contrasts the sounds of transcendence with the worldly, poignantly expressing Hermanova’s struggle for spiritual resolution against the reality of death and loss.
With »Kalkül der Form,« Max Eilbacher (supported by SHAPE+) and Phillip Sollmann (Efdemin) present their first collaboration, a complex multi-channel electronic music system inhabited by ten discrete voices executing extremely simple actions. The immersive system emits sound from the generation and live manipulation of geometrical configurations. These forms emerge from the perceptual fusing of the ten actors running against and alongside each other in a constant morphology of different designs. The speed, textures, and musical framework by which these auditory actors output a shape grammar is controlled by Eilbacher and Sollman interacting with their electronic music system.
Ocrilim is the solo moniker of New York based guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Mick Barr, best known for his work with black/post metal bands Krallice and Orthrelm. Active since the mid-90s the prolific output of this non-compromising artist doesn’t fit into easy categories as it straddles the worlds of extreme metal and avantgarde music. Titled by some as the John Fahey of metal, Barr’s speed and agility on the guitar are legendary, displaying a stunning technique that plunges through deep compositions. Performing both a solo set and as a duo with Tim Wyskida of Khanate and Blind Idiot God on drums, Ocrilim will engulf listeners with continuous streams of repetitive distorted phrases and riffs that, despite their rigorous minimalism, coalesce into whirring pieces of jarring complexity.
Riccardo La Foresta and James Ginzburg create a hypnotic looping performance exploring generative music through drum resonances and mechanical string activation. Percussionist La Foresta will create acoustic drum resonances with his Drummophone – four bass drums that are sounded by streams of compressed air. Musician Ginzburg will perform on a custom mechanised string instrument. Together the duo deconstruct connections between musical instrument, object, body, action, surface, architecture, collision, contact, mechanics, breath, and resonance.
A fixture in the international improv scene, Julian Sartorius has become known for a drumming style that plays with suspending time and testing infinity. Presenting the album Locked Grooves at CTM, he interrogates the idea of a static groove by unfurling a percussive suite gradating over tonal nuances, micro expressions, and shifting time signatures. The resulting 112 grooves – or one-minute loops as heard on the digital album – unveil an abundance of rhythmic forms, some vigorous, some frail, others impulsive, alluring, and adrift. The artist explains: »I hope listeners will experience these compositions like they would explore a painting at a museum – letting the work unfold in depth, revealing layer after layer.« The inimitable drummer will also perform at Berghain on a separate night, pairing up for the first time with the polyrhythmic trance of Rabih Beaini’s CDJ wizardry, unfurlingtonal nuances and shifting time signatures towards an intense kinetic peak.
Golem Mecanique is the project of French musician Karen Jebane, who dives deep into the spectral intricacies of drones produced by organ, guitars, and above all, the drone box – a modified and mechanised hurdy-gurdy. At times incorporating her deeply resonant chanting voice, Jebane’s slow-burning compositions evoke a rich world of idiosyncratic liturgical music outside of any canon. For the show at CTM Jebane will be joined by guitarist Thomas Bell, who also contributed to her celebrated album Luciferis on Ideologic Organ.
Jules Reidy uses processed and acoustic instruments to shape non-traditional song forms from unstable harmonic territories, rhythmic elasticity, and abstract narrative. Releases on Shelter Press, Black Truffle, and Editions Mego highlight an artist knowledgeable with microtonal experimentalism and abstract pop textures and open-ended harmonics which are wrapped into over-stretched, episodic song forms resonating with hazy delay. Reidy appears at CTM in support of their latest album Trances, an exploration of the cyclical movements of grief and emotional turbulence through the sound of fingerpicked phrases, open strums, corrugated processing, and a heavy sense of the strange.
Experimental audiovisual artist Sabiwa, supported by SHAPE+, draws inspiration from a myriad of personal recordings – among other daily family life, natural and surrounding soundscapes, sounds and ancient music traditions from native tribes of Taiwan – to create a beguiling journey through traditional Taiwanese folk musics turned concrète. Incorporating her own voice and manipulating and fragmenting source material to the point of it becoming unrecognisable, her mesmerising performance will explore psychedelic narratives through a live multi-projection AV show with additional performers.
Aldana Duoraan& HMOT will revisit the instrumental form of the khomus, a kind of mouth harp, deflecting the focus from its conventional »vernacular sounds« to its more artificial and synthetic sonic possibilities through resynthesis and other computer music techniques. Duoraan has been actively preserving and expanding the folklore and khomus techniques of her native Sakha region. HMOT is the moniker of the artist and researcher Stas Shärifulla, who works with sound and decoloniality through the lens of his Bashqort roots.
The multidisciplinary artist and performer otay:onii, formerly active as the vocalist for Elisabeth Colour Wheel,harnesses a shapeshifting voice, leaping from oddball pop melodies to shrieking caprice as she explores themes of anxiety and selfhood over swirling drones, distorted harmony, noise, and carnivalesque ceremonial forms.
CTM and the Goethe-Institut’s »Studio Quantum« will present a day of talks and performances exploring the potentials of quantum technologies for sound and music. As part of this programme, the composer and researcher Eduardo Reck Miranda will present a concert of Quantum Computer Music showcasing pioneering systems and performances developed by his team at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR) in Plymouth, UK. A state-of-the-art quantum computer, developed by IQM, will be used to run generative music algorithms and to synthesise sounds during the performance. Together with a group of performers, Miranda will control the quantum computer based in Finland with gestures, brain signals, and live coding through the internet. Vintage analogue synthesisers in Brazil will produce sounds transmitted to Berlin in real-time. Further details and guests will be announced shortly.
CTM 2024 Club Acts
New names confirmed for CTM’s first weekend include two acts within our Panorama Bar night with Skrillex. Bass researcher KENYA20HZ navigates the possibilities of low frequencies through unpredictable rhythmic connections; RHR takes off from a love of Brazil’s funky old-school dance scene as he taps into techno, bass, electro and baile funk. Opium Hum will warm up the space with some hazy low-end love. The same night, downstairs on Berghain’s main floor, Viikatory and Dagga trade razor-sharp electro hits in a no holds barred b2b set spliced with funk carioca, breaks and techno.
Topping off the focus on current Irish sounds at the festival will be beatmaker 40 Hurtz, who is joined by the full-throated holler of wordsmith Hazey Haze, painting pictures of the peaks and troughs of Irish life by a distinct and proud Limerick accent.
Armed with self-built controllers as they dive into and disrupt the crowd, the high-intensity live duoFITNESSSfeatLungcombine into a suspenseful sonic assault of high-precision sound design and raw intense vocals, coursing with the distilled rage and sorrow of a decimated Los Angeles.
Appearing with a live AV show crafted from his latest concept album Syntheism, experimental bass producer EPROMdives deep into ultra-digitalized soundscapes, chirurgic sound design and erratic showers of breakbeats, paying homage to acid, dubstep, drum'n'bass, breakcore, and many other genres, albeit with the always recognizable EPROM touch. Syntheism is titled after the belief of spiritual atheism, reflecting the producer’s wish to connect more deeply and meaningfully with other human beings.
A UK underground fixture and leading innovator in fresh genres spanning the hardtek scene, Mandidextrous will bring a diverse combination of high energy 4x4 dnb, speedbass, jungletek keeping true to their 4x4 175bpm style. High energy from start to finish.
Under his Special Request alias, UK techno & house linchpin Paul Woolford takes as his inspiration the unruly conventions of UK pirate radio stations, capturing the raw energy of illegal airwaves via murky house, darkside techno, and eye-of-the-storm hardcore/jungle tear-outs.
Nyege Nyege affiliate Kampire’s vibrant bass-heavy sets have transported her to bring the best of Ugandan party culture to clubs & festivals across the world.
RSO.Berlin’s main floor lineup is expanded withO Ghettão, a new supergroup from Príncipe Discos reps DJ N* Fox, DJ Danifox, and DJ Firmeza. An electrifying and rebellious fusion of polyrhythmic afro-deep-house, shape-shifting kuduro, and minimal povera jazz stylings.
MusicMakers Hacklab – »Sustenance«
The MusicMakers Hacklab is an open, collaborative environment where participants work together during CTM Festival week to explore and realise new musical ideas. Following an intensive week of collaboration in the radialsystem studios, a group of 10 fellows selected via open call will put their ideas to a test in a finale performance at radialsystem Halle. Ten fellows were selected from over 200 applications this year: Amanda Bennetts, Claudix Vanesix, Dimitris Mertzos, Gisou Golshani, Ivan Skoryna, Josefina Maro, Tobi Pfeil, Valeriia Khazan, Qusay Awad, Zalán Szakács.
Hosted by Sophia Bulgakova and Darsha Hewitt, this year’s Hacklab will focus on the idea of Sustenance, which is a contrast to our usual artistic language of appetites and hunger. Sustenance recognises that for all our narratives about markets and success, many artists live below subsistence levels. What does it mean to find nourishment in what we do? Can we escape competitive models of creation that assume finite resources? Against the background of the CTM 2024 theme of »Sustain,« what gives us actual sustenance?
A2A Transmission Workshops
Now an established element of the festival, A2A Transmission is a series of workshops for artists by artists, with an aim to help sound practitioners expand their skill sets and practices. The workshops will be held at Morphine Raum and Refuge Worldwide.
This year the series kicks-off with a look into techniques for creating AV work using AI by the Standard Deviation affiliated artist Diana Azzuz, and an immersive audio mastering workshop that celebrates a fusion of technical expertise and artistic expression with Enyang Urbiks. Producer ELLLL will share insights into creating and working with collectives based on their own experience founding Ireland’s GASH collective, which aims to support FLINTA artists working with forward-thinking club sounds. Respected audiovisual virtuoso Tarik Barri will give an intensive two-day workshop on working with Videosync, a software that he co-created that acts as a visual add-on to Ableton Live, and allows non-programmers to have intuitive, precise control over visuals that live on musical timeline and respond to midi inputs. The playful electro-techno producer Poly Chain will lead a music production workshop with insights into her track-building techniques. Musician and Morphine Records label head Rabih Beaini will deconstruct a series of tracks together with participants, commenting on technical and stylistic aspects of composition, production, dramaturgy. Boris Hegenbartwill share his personal practices in creative use and misuse of AI in producing electronic music.
Presented with Refuge Worldwide, Manila Community Radio managing partners Sai Versaillesand Sean Bautista invite artists from diaspora communities to decode the debate on cultural appreciation vs appropriation and engage with systemic issues of imbalance in the music industry, following their own experiences working from the capital city of Manila while engaging with scenes and communities spread over less accessible parts of The Philippines.
Festival Passes and Accreditation
Festival passes are on sale now in limited quantities. Festival goers can choose between the CTM Pass, which grants access to most of the festival’s events, or the Connect Pass which offers additional access to transmediale festival programming. New this year, we are also offering Weekend Passes for each CTM Festival weekend respectively.
Tickets to many events are now on sale, with more becoming available in soon.
The press accreditationapplication period is open until 10 January 2024. Journalists can apply to cover CTM or transmediale respectively, or for a combined accreditation to both festivals.