Go to CTM 2025 Sub-site        Tickets

With less than two weeks left, we’re breathlessly bringing you some heavy-hitting final music confirmations, our daytime Discourse talk programme presented free of charge, as well as immersive spatial sound workshops and concerts thanks to our partnership with d&b Audiotechnik. We’ve got some wild new additions on board, from post-sewer operatic darkness and quivering flashfried emotions to hard-coded generative synthesis and maximised queered club vibes—a sweaty, teeth-baring celebration to leave your aura shimmering.

For those who aren’t in town, you can tune in to our Refuge Worldwide festival broadcasts for a glimpse of CTM 2025’s sonic palette.

This year we will again collect donations with transmediale to support humanitarian and peacebuilding efforts aimed at the ongoing Israel-Gaza war. Half of the donations will be sent to ALLMEP – the Alliance for Middle East Peace, with whom we partnered last year, while half will be given to Cadus thanks to a new partnership. Keep an eye out for donation boxes at CTM 2025 venue entrances / box offices, and at our festival info counters.

We’re looking forward to seeing you around our myriad concerts, dancefloors, focused artistic labs and talks from 24 January to 2 February! The festival schedule is online for your browsing pleasure, with all event tickets now on sale. 

CTM 2025 – Final Acts

The CTM 2025 programme is rounded out by:

• Zola Jesus (US)
• Xiu Xiu (US/DE)
• Bendik Giske (NO/DE)
• ZULI (EG/DE) »Lambda«
• Dadabots (US)
• softchaos b2b River Moon (INT)
• Venus X Machina (UK)
• obese.dogma777 (PH)
• Anthem (DE)
• Europa (DE)
• Rizla Ops (UK)
• Yungfya (UK/DE)
• Ifeoluwa (UK)
• DJ BOTOX (DE)
• Opium Hum (DE)

A mix of performances and workshops focused on d&b Soundscape with:

• Andrew Rahman (US/DE)
• Bella Comsom (BR/DE) »A light goes off in your ears, while the rivers are d(r)ying«
• Eve Aboulkheir (FR) »Venus Road«
• Ralf Zuleeg & Brigitta Muntendorf (DE)
• Younger Sibling (CH)

The CTM 2025 Discourse programme with:

• Artists and researchers exploring the thematic strand of Stranger AI: Dadabots (US), Michael Salu (UK/DE) and James Ginzburg (US/DE) and the Wilding AI cohort with Beth Coleman (US/CA), Daniela Huerta (MX/DE), Maurice Jones (DE/CA), Pía Baltazar (CA), Romi Morrison (US), Sahar Homami (INT), and William Russell (AU/DE)
• Explorations on Resynthesising the Traditional with meLê yamomo (PH/NL), and artist talks with ganavya (US), and Adela Mede with Marta Forsberg and Nindya Nareswari (INT)
• Points of connection to the strand of Affection via softchaos (US/DE)

Refuge Worldwide x CTM broadcasts with Abdullah Miniawy (EG/FR), Adela Mede, Marie Davidson (CA), Marta Forsberg, and Nindya Nareswari (INT), ANTCONSTANTINO (BR), Deize Tigrona (BR), Dis Fig (US/DE), gyrofield (HK/UK), Lénok, Grinderteeth and Synthtati (INT), Murderpact (US), rEmPiT g0dDe$$ and LnhD (INT), Tayhana (AR/MX),

CTM 2025 Music Programme

Zola Jesus unspools operatic rigor and avant-garde ferocity from her core, balanced on a blade. The alias of Nika Roza Danilova emerged from guttural industrial, the gnawed noise and flickering synths of her early works counterpuncturing soaring voidic vox, but has long since burst from this chrysalis of sewer-sounds to turn into a gravitational force, pulling listeners into the roiling event horizon of her universe. Her music has always stalked the edges of mortality and chaos, her voice a fierce summons to the depths, tearing at its own seams—not just facing the abyss, but climbing in gnashing for a swim. For CTM, she’s presenting a special set for voice and piano.

For over two decades, Xiu Xiu has reigned as one of the most unrelentingly inventive acts in experimental music. Led by Jamie Stewart, their music cycles through emotional and sonic intensities with disarming ease, Stewart’s quiver-to-bark vocals strutting and shivering in Angela Seo’s kaleidoscopic production. Beloved across scenes for their prolific output, gonzo explorations of darkness and experimental ferocity, theirs is music for those gnawed-out by life’s horrors yet unable to avert their gaze. Showcasing their 17th (!) album »13” Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips,« their by-now signature blend of unflinching emotional honesty comes soaked in a sheen of industrial pop maximalism, shimmering with synthectic glam and pulsating percussion that yet drips with peeled-back vulnerability.

FKA Saint Deepthroat, perpetually-online rave princess River Moon can be found bodying a Boiler Room set one night and slamming out a viral club smasher the next. Her music is a messy, genre-smashing love letter to queer South African electro-pop, Afrofuturism, ballroom, and club culture served with an HD dose of »don’t touch me unless you’re ready« energy. She’s going b2b with ​​softchaos, whose brutally melodic sets weave groove-driven rhythms with hard-edged percussion and those genre-defying club sounds we love.

Pop this in your hear-holes: a phat wad of obese.dogma777’s esoteric maximalism colliding melon-first with abrasive post-modem club carnage: a tangled mess of speculative pop culture, net concrete aesthetics, tech cults, occult chaos, meta-ironic loops, hyperreal fever dreams, and meme-fueled spirals. You’ll flip your wig when they flip mainstream club tropes on their heads, mangling them with glitchy, experimental sound design, intrusive noise, and dystopian vibes. Taking over for a postponed DJ Love, who’ll be joining us for another edition, obese.dogma777 will also be leading a workshop on the budots and post-budots universe, replacing a similar previously-announced workshop by DJ Love.

The alias of composer and producer Nontokozo F. Sihwa, Venus Ex Machina weaves soundscapes that defy the bounds of industrial, temporal, and sonic norms. Her post-industrial incantations are a dark, intricate amalgamation of futuristic mechanics and ancient chants, shaped by a rigorous exploration of mathematics, machines, and meaning. Along with the presentation of her work »Marshlands« at MONOM, she’s bringing her skills to the decks for a special set at RSO.

Bendik Giske wields his saxophone like a fifth limb, flexing full-body-and-soul performances that are equally acts of intimacy. Rooted in the traditions of his Norwegian upbringing, shaped by the pulse of Berlin techno and haunting nights of gamelan music in Bali, Giske’s work is as unfiltered as the breath he pours into his instrument—each sharp gasp, key thud, and harmonic squeak is amplified, laying naked the physicality of his process as he lovingly eviscerates the polished expectations of traditional jazz. His mastery of circular breathing turns his sax into a perpetual motion machine, exhaling pulsating hypnotism.

Unpredictability is ZULI’s playground. From the edges of Cairo’s underground he emerged tearing through genres like a storm, his hard-edged textures and razor-sharp experiments too writhing to pin down. The live A/V performance of his recent album »Lambda« manifests as an electrifying interplay of tension, texture, and movement. Rooted in the precarious soundworld of the album, ZULI translates its swirling atmospheres and fractured rhythms into a multisensory experience, winding through a liminal space where sound is untethered from rhythm. Flickering unpredictably between chaos and clarity, intimacy and vastness, light and motion are mirrored in a fragmented chalice of guttural drones, ghostly falsettos, and pulverized strings as they twist and collide.

Our Surf Gang takeover at Alte Münze is completed with two additions hand-picked by the collective themselves. Rooted in Berlin’s experimental undercurrents, ANTHEM deconstructs the familiar—dancehallisms, rapthms, and fragments of found sounds—reassembling them into kaleidosonic mosaics. Formerly known as 4D:8K_GUARDEDTRIPZ, the producer and sound designer has become adept at making each track feel like a journey through the Dreamlands, beats bending and twisting into impossible fractals that slap you upside the face before dissolving into shimmering afterimages. Both cerebral and physical, it’s designed to soundtrack moments that linger long after the last note fades.

Europa’s art spills across sound, video, and installation, spiral, loop, burst into bloom like wildflowers, take root in soiled cracks of concrete. He births his music in the liminal: penned in jet-lagged twilight, forged in the groaning belly of planes, trains, and transit purgatories. His songs are restless, »alive«, shedding old skins as new ones form, always on the cusp of somewhere else. Pop is rendered into pixelated shards, club anthems stretched to their breaking point, ambient tones leaking glittery viscera.

Rizla Ops bends bass into off-kilter forms from the between-spaces. Balancing intricate percussive textures, nastee grooves, and tactile atmospheres crafted for busting down barriers. Seeking to challenge how folks think about genre, he also aims to pull them in rather than shut them out; by knitting diverse rhythms and unexpected emotions into his sonic sweaters, he subverts the monotony of the club monoculture, pushing for spaces where experimentation and community collide.

The seismic selections of Yungfya hit hard and cut deep, a cornucopia of gritty electro, steppy techno, and rolling drum-and-bass. An activist as well as musician, she uses sound as a tool for tearing down barriers. Her heart-shaped bassquakes reverberate beyond the booth, creating a sense of communal connection.

Ifeoluwa joins global drum-driven rhythms, moody UK club sounds, and unconventional techno into sets that grip both heart and feet, dragging both through an emotional vortex where euphoria and introspection collide under the strobes. She thrives on keeping the unexpected at the forefront, pulling threads from across continents into an ever-whirling tapestry of get-up-and-move.

Tying into our thematic strand of AI, we’re joined by hacker dons Dadabots. Tempered by art and algorithm, their networks mutate chaotically—breeding within erratical-to-the-max distortions to phreak the average dome, bending data into death metal-free jazz hybrids and spiraling 24/7 live stream. Veterans of over 65 hackathons and winners of a dozen, the duo will run an entire night of prompt jockeying at CTM: live neural net pirate radio generated straight from the GPU, ephemeral AI bangers created together with the audience, fake artists, genre fusions, features and collabs that never existed before and will soon be deleted. So is the impermanence of life.

Whether as the face of Berlin’s Boiler Room, exposing new talents on his show Hyper Real Radio, or acting as one of CTM’s curators, Opium Hum has been serving up cutting-edge electronic artistry for over fifteen years, spotlighting both experimental legends and rising talent. Known for DJ sets that feel like late-night rites of passage, he layers hypnotic drones, bombastic atmospheres, and throbbing rhythms to bring clubgoers on an unforgettable trip across sonic continents and hyperfied basscapes.

DJ BOTOX is the unapologetic, club-focused alter ego of our very own Born in Flamez. No playlists, no genres, no rules: injecting the club full of high-voltage cocktails of bass-driven chaos, BOTOX is designed to jolt bodies into motion, lifting those dance muscles up up UP.

Browse the CTM 2025 Festival Schedule.

d&b Soundscape Concerts and Workshops

The second year of collaboration between d&b and CTM will see the launch of the d&b Soundscape Room in Berlin, at the newly opened Haus der Visionäre’s Sonnenraum space. The room will feature a dynamic program of concerts by Eve Aboulkheir, Young Sibling, and Bella Comsom who will also speak about her practice with spatial audio ahead of her performance. Workshops by sound designer and composer Andrew Rahman, and sound artist Brigitta Muntendorf with d&b Soundscape creator Ralf Zuleeg will allow participants to immerse themselves into the technology. All events will be presented through d&b’s advanced Soundscape technology—a flexible, immersive system offering precise control over the placement and movement of sound objects within a three-dimensional sound space. Concerts at the Volksbühne will also be presented in d&b Soundscape, expanding the immersive experience across both locations.

Check out the full d&b Soundscape programme here.

CTM 2025 Discourse Programme

The Discourse programme will touch on several thematic strands suffusing the festival’s concert and lab programmes.

Looking into the playful and poetic possibilities of AI, Michael Salu and Subtext co-founder James Ginzburg present a literary anthology of 15 short stories with a companion album, that reimagine Italo Calvino’s ideas of language evolution, mythology, and speculative futures in the context of modern AI and creativity. Two panel discussions presented by the Wilding AI Lab will explore how anarchic features of large-scale generative AI can shape creativity. Beth Coleman, Romi Morrison, and Maurice Jones examine the trend of AI development turning to opaque »black box« systems where universal solutions prioritise statistical norms in visual, linguistic, and sonic outputs—and dig into the ideas behind the Wilding AI Lab which resist normative middle grounds in envisioning technologies that can be wilder. Artists Daniela Huerta, Sahar Homami, and Pía Baltazar will speak with William Russell on how these experimental practices translate into immersive spatial audio works and environments like 4DSOUND, offering a glimpse into the transformative potential of AI in multisensory art. Dadabots will also be giving a special presentation, hacking into the process and practice behind their keystrokes. In a world of easy fast food AI music apps, trve kvlt music hackers take on the arduous path of building, training, and breaking their own neural nets. If this is you, this workshop will start your journey, highlighting a decade of underground experimentation with neural synthesis.

Resonating within the theme of our Resynthesising the Traditional Lab, several talk sessions will also feature artists exploring how traditional practices can intersect with contemporary sounds to create new expressions of heritage. In conversation with Ján Solčáni, Adela Mede, Marta Forsberg, and Nindya Nareswari will speak about their SHAPE+ supported residency and performance at the festival. Their collaboration dives into how voice, sound, and light can transform traditional elements into immersive artistic experiences, addressing questions about cultural heritage’s relevance in an era of political polarization, and the possibilities for updating tradition without losing its essence. Vocalist and multi-instrumentalist ganavya will detail the layered interplay of tradition and experimentation that defines her work, shaped by Tamil Nadu’s classical arts and her diasporic experience, and exploring how improvisation, language, and community act as conduits for universal connection to transcend the divisions between audience and geography. 

Related to our theme of Affection, multidisciplinary artist softchaos will give a lecture and reading exploring a fundamental question of who is permitted to be experimental, as part of her investigation into the aesthetics of the Black radical tradition.

Check the Discourse programme overview here.