We're thrilled to announce 50 more artists joining our already pulse-pounding programme! Selected highlights are Witch Club Satan’s unholy, feminist black metal rituals, Lucy Railton’s psychoacoustic exploration, the alien futurism of Aisha Devi's and Slikback's collaborative club experiments as AKA HEX, gyrofield’s hyperactive, internet-born drum & bass, and Lechuga Zafiro's aquatic rhythmic-timbral universe.
Further, we're announcing collaborations with Berlin-based club collective Meta Rave, NYC’s on-fire collective Surf Gang spanning rap, ambient futurism, and witchhouse atmospheres to the festival. Our collaboration with Australian cutting-edge crew SOFT CENTRE will push experimental boundaries with Tayhana’s mutant cumbia, Karina Utomo's death metal prowess and Thick Owen's dissonant hedonism.
Fourteen participants approaching machine learning and sound from diverse entry points have been selected for the Wilding AI Lab looking at the messier sides of AI.
The music journal Dancecult have also announced their full DC25 conference programme, which aims to explore the challenges associated with documentation, preservation, and archiving of electronic music dance cultutes. DC25 will take place in partnership with CTM.
The festival schedule is now online for your browsing pleasure, with all event tickets now on sale. The final music programme confirmations as well as our Discourse talk programme will be announced in January.
CTM 2025 – More Acts
Newly confirmed acts for CTM 2025 are:
- alys(alys)alys (BR/DE)
- claire rousay with Martyna Basta (INT)
- Ellen Arkbro with Microtub pres »Clouds for Three Tubas and Chords for Trumpet« (INT)
- gyrofield (CN/UK)
- Isaka (US/DE) »Elytra« Live
- Kuntari (ID)
- Lucy Railton with Charlie Hope and Rebecca Salvadori (INT) »Not A Word From Me«
- MODULAW (CH)
- rRoxymore b2b Deena Abdelwahed (INT)
- State OFFF (NL)
- Tarta Relena (ES)
- Witch Club Satan (NO)
Surf Gang takeover with:
- evilgiane (US)
- Eera (US)
- fakemink (UK)
- Lauren Duffus (UK)
- and more tba
SOFT CENTRE x CTM collaboration with:
- Female Wizard (AU)
- Karina Utomo x Joshua Wells x R. Rebeiro (AU)
- NERVE (AU)
- R. Rebeiro (AU)
- SOLSA (AU)
- Thick Owens (AU)
- Tayhana (AR/MX)
- and the previously announced project »STACK«
Meta Rave presents:
- Gadutra (BR)
- Genosidra (CO)
- Lechuga Zafiro (UY)
- Maque (BO)
- Nuevo Prohibido b2b DJ LOUI FROM JUPITER4
- and the previously announced rEmPiT g0dDe$$
The Wilding AI Lab fellows:
- Daniel Limaverde (BR)
- Evangeline Y Brooks (CA)
- Federico Visi (DE)
- Gadi Sassoon (IT)
- Hyeji Nam (KR/AT)
- Irini Kalaitzidi (UK/GR)
- Nico Daleman (CO/DE)
- Ninon and Jun Suzuki (INT)
- SENAIDA (CA)
- Three Amps (DE)
- Transient Cat (FR)
- TWEE (INT)
The detailed programme for the DC25 Conference by Dancecult is also now announced.
CTM 2025 Music Programme
A new live show combining the work of three distinct artists in music, video and light design, »Not A Word From Me« showcases a specific encounter between the trio of Lucy Railton, Charlie Hope and Rebecca Salvadori, who met over a decade ago in London. Going deep into an experience of sensorial exploration, this performance submerges the listener into visceral and psychoacoustic states well known in Railton’s sonic work. Together with Hope’s signature light reflectors and Salvadori’s highly personal portrait style video work, »Not A Word From Me« summons the audience to engage in the sprawling, hybrid, multi-faceted dialogue between elements, where dynamic live cello and electronics, architectural light and projection design and beguiling narrative envelop a sensory environment.
Raising chaos from the infernal abyss, Witch Club Satan’s feminist black metal summons the spectral fury of women burned at stakes, resurrected through the howls of their own defiance. Both theater and invocation, live rituals unfold in grotesque beauty with gore-drenched costumes, nudity, and wretched personas: a witch’s sabbath for the disenchanted and the enraged, flensing the sanitized archetype of womanhood to lay bare the monstrous, divine truth beneath.
Ellen Arkbro's output unfolds as immersive sonic environments, whether through long-duration ensemble works or live installations that blur the boundaries between listener and sound. Exploring the depths of intervallic harmony through just intonation, spacious architectures of form and harmony are raised, where chordal shifts and layered textures evoke states of simultaneous clarity and disorientation. In this rare performance she’s presenting two new pieces, »Clouds for Three Tubas» and »Chords for Trumpet«, that will be released as an album in 2024. She’s joined by microtonal tuba trio Microtub, comprised of Robin Hayward, Martin Taxt, and Peder Simonsen.
claire rousay takes the bleeding-heart earnestness of ‘90s pop-punk and filters it through muted electronics and textures that drip with fragility. Her songs are relational autopsies where melodies ascend and dissolve, guitars shudder under violins, and autotuned voices stretch syllables into vapor trails, all smudged together by the grainy hum of room noise: vulnerability drowning in its own echoes. She’s joined at CTM by Martyna Basta. A classically trained guitarist turned experimental composer, Basta constructs sonic diaries that hover between the lush and the haunting, embracing imperfection as a creative force.
SHAPE+ supported Tarta Relena’s music emerges as a dialogue between the rich vocal traditions of the Mediterranean and the subtle whispers of synthetic nuance. Layered harmonies and sonic experimentation uncover new resonances in age-old melodies, drawing on diverse vocal techniques—flamenco’s raw intensity, the precision of lyrical singing, and the fluidity of jazz. Folklore is treated as a mutable and living tradition, unconfined by historical boundaries; melodies from the oral traditions of Sephardic Jews, Sappho’s poetry, and medieval hymnody are reinterpreted, suffused with a shared, time-transcendent language: grief and joy, divinity and earthliness, dissolving into a singular resonance.
Kuntari’s primal-core sound snarls with the guttural echoes of mating calls and tribal Indonesian rhythms resurrected from the 16th century. Inspired by Hadrah Kuntulan rhythms and the clamor of field-recorded soundscapes, a brutal aesthetic devoid of distortion yet drenched in weight and resonance emerges. Instruments gasp, groan, and shriek under their touch, manipulated into sounds that scrape against the marrow, tearing them open with unflinching teeth.
rRoxymore draws from a wide palette—house, dub, UK bass, leftfield techno, breaks, and jazz—blended into hypnotic, crystalline patterns emerging from a custom sound bank painstakingly built over years of experimentation featuring percussive textures and shimmering synths both tactile and ethereal. She’ll go b2b at CTM with Deena Abdelwahed, the Tunisian powerhouse whose influences range from the propulsive rhythms of Egyptian mahraganat to shaabi wedding songs and dabke, layered with shape-shifting basslines and metallic edges: designed for the dancefloor but writhing with complexity and depth.
Modulaw conducts architectures of sound, resonant ecosystems where unseen narratives strobillate. Drawing from an eclectic palette that ranges from acousmatic compositions and 3D audio to pop-splashed melodies and hip-hop-riddled beats, he reimagines sound as identity and atmosphere, where venues become collaborators.
Taking drum & bass and giving it a sparkly, hyperactive remix straight from the heart, gyrofield is pure internet-born magic. Growing up in Hong Kong, her online exploration coded her music with dreamy synths, growling basslines, and rhythms with big, emotional cores, powered by the kind of cute-chaotic energy we could all use more of.
A key innovator in Gqom’s evolution, State OFFF’s debut EP »GQOM TODAY« pushes the boundaries of the genre’s minimalist, dark rhythms into gnarly territory, blending its driving pulse with a dynamic range of contemporary sounds from the African diaspora and beyond.
A hyperreal exploration of identity, transformation, and the boundaries between organic and artificial realities, Isaka’s »Elytra« is built on her »hyperbass« framework and a blend of hand-drawn collages, sketches, and AI-assisted 3D imagery. Merging aggressive low-end energy with sound design, glitchy textures, and hyperpop vocals that balance experimental abstraction with dance fever immediacy, themes of insect moulting thread through the work: metamorphosis as a cyclical, layered and often traumatic process.
The SHAPE+-supported alys(alys)alys smashes experimental club and Soundcloud vibes into wild, unpredictable works and DJ sets that are as much party as experiment: playful, collage-heavy jams thriving in that sweet spot where genres clash and brains get dropped in the blender. One of the minds behind the now-defunct collective and Tresor residency Dry Berlin, this is her second appearance at CTM.
Browse the CTM 2025 Festival Schedule.
Surf Gang x CTM 2025
After a wild 2024 concert with Snow Strippers and Surf Gang’s evilgiane and Eera, we had to have the NYC collective back for the festival proper. In a takeover of Alte Münze’s Maschine floor, we’re gathering a host of these unholy noisemakers for a night of debauched aural pleasures—all guts, no gloss.
Surf Gang founder evilgiane has become a cornerstone of alternative rap’s DIY ethos. His fingerprints are all over the underground and mainstream alike, shaping its pulse with ethereal, genre-blurring productions for everyone from Playboi Carti and A$AP Rocky to cult favorites like Bktherula and Black Kray. Layering complex emotions into sounds that are equal parts gritty and surreal, his vibe thrives on unpredictability and the extremes of emotion—ecstatic highs, crushing lows, and seething anger.
Collective co-founder Eera’s influence stretches beyond his own tracks, reshaping the landscape of underground music by fusing trap’s hard-hitting percussion with sugary hooks reminiscent of ‘00s pop. His collaborations with figures like Babyxsosa, Bladee, and Black Kray have expanded this sonic palette, reinforcing his reputation as both a tastemaker and innovator. His own work channels the chaotic energy of the internet era into a distinctive merging of 8-bit nostalgia with sprawling ambient futurisms.
In the dim, fogged chambers of Lauren Duffus’ aurals, there’s a palpable tension between ruin and rebirth, each moment teetering on the edge of dissolution before lurching into clarity sculpted from shadow: unyielding structures redolent of dredged choirs and the flickering whisper of shrouded lanterns. Drawn heavily on witch house’s haunted atmospherics and the somber pulse of drill’s mournful chords, Duffus channels cinematic compositions that reverberate with the catharsis of unspoken emotions, supplicating a sublimation of personal pain into soundscapes that creak and shriek.
fakemink embodies a stark dichotomy of luxury and grit through both his music and persona. At just 19, he operates almost entirely from the confines of his bedroom, a cluttered sanctuary where an unrelenting stream of creativity takes form. fakemink’s sound skirts the boundaries of jerk-inspired rhythms, but distilled through a sense of nocturnal detachment, rich with introspection and the alienated confidence of someone meticulously crafting their vision since childhood.
Soft Centre x CTM 2025
We’re thrilled to announce a first-time collaboration with cutting-edge Australian arts organisation SOFT CENTRE. Since its inception in 2017, their annual festival in Sydney has forged a left-hand path through the tangled intersections of experimental sound, digital media, and performance art, building immersive experiences as disorienting as they are revelatory. With a reputation for championing fringe subcultures and outsider art, their ethos is rooted in staunch experimentation and cross-disciplinary collaboration, dismantling conventional artistic modes to platform future-facing creators.
SOFT CENTRE have co-curated a number of projects at CTM 2025, showcasing leading voices from the burgeoning Australian underground. On RSO.Berlin’s main floor, Karina Utomo (RINUWAT, Kilat) will bring blackened vocals drawing from extreme metal, Javanese mythology, and the outer edges of human vocal expression, weaving together themes of tradition and defiance. She’s joined by Joshua Wells (A Colourful Storm, Downwards) purveyor of extreme rhythmic programming traversing drum and bass, noise, electro and dark ambient, and R. Rebeiro (HTRK, My Disco), who subverts traditional percussive modes such as Japanese gagaku and Indian Tabla, to coax rhythms that flicker between precise pointillism and metallic thunderclaps.
RSO’s second floor will become a dedicated SOFT CENTRE x CTM event with late-night oriented live and DJ sets. Female Wizard’s cross-genre DJ set will baffle the binary, delaying gratification and embracing dissonance to transform hedonism into an act of defiance. Blended tempos with visceral intensity mirror her fascination with the fragility and power of breath, a recurring motif in both her music and performance art.
On-the-rise rapper, producer and performance artist SOLSA will join forces with SoundClown and SOFT CENTRE co-director Thick Owens to unveil an itinerant new live set. Expect deft and irreverent lyrics, unhinged stage theatrics and razor-sharp production, mashing gnarled strains of gutter rap, freetekno, industrial and bush doof-inspired squelch.
As a solo electronic musician R. Rebeiro explores probability as an artistic methodology to enact rhythmic expression. Combining analogue grit and digital precision by the use of manipulated drum machines and Max/MSP, R. Rebeiro’s set will unleash lazer sharp generative rhythms to explore ideas around cause and effect, variation, acceptance, and deep listening.
Under the moniker NERVE, sonic architect Joshua Wells forges tracks that feel like precision-tooled machinery breaking free of its programming, fusing elements of drum & bass, jungle, industrial, electro, and noise into dense, kinetic compositions that pulse with both mechanical intensity and organic chaos.
Argentinian DJ and Latin Grammy winner Tayhana’s sets are a collision of pulsing energy and fearless experimentation—seamless kaleidoscopes of mutant techno, cumbia turra, ballroom, and Brazilian batucada to fill minds and feet with the fires of resistance and celebration.
Taking place on another evening at Radialsystem, the previously announced live film experiment »STACK« explores power dynamics and cultural peculiarities arising from posthumanism, bio-capitalism, and ecological horror to redefine sci-fi horror and smut through dematerialisation of human matter, bringing together artists Harrison Hall, Henry Lai-Pyne (Eek), Sam Mcgilp, and Alexander Powers (Female Wizard). After the festival we’ll be announcing more collaborative programming which will see CTM visit SOFT CENTRE in August 2025. Get the full program details here.
META RAVE x CTM 2025
Meta Rave is a Berlin-based collective championing diasporic and queer LatAm artists. With a pulse that merges underground club culture with shadowy atmospheres of wildness, they’ve fostered a multi-heritage rave community where diversity thrives. They’re joining CTM at OXI for a full floor takeover.
Fusing big club moods and intricate sound design, Lechuga Zafiro’s music floats among the textures of Latin American identity. Combining the calls of animals, the hum of objects, and ambient landscapes into his creations, he builds a sonic language both poetic and the primal.
Maque’s work pulses with the vibrant fusion of pleasure, rage, and rhythm. Now rooted in Berlin, she builds spaces where reggaeton, cumbia, and traditional sounds from her native Bolivia collide with the physicality of contemporary dance and Yoggaton—her signature blend of perreo, empowerment, and ritual.
Gadutra is pure combustion: DJ, producer, tattooist, and force of nature weaving chaos into creation. Her collision of baile funk, footwork, noise, and industrial grit transforms dancefloors into arenas for sweat-soaked resistance and sonic transcendence.
The sharpened soundscapes of Genosidra move fluidly between weirded electronics and avant-club: a non-linear approach to dance music that baffles traditional rhythms with jagged textures and chaotic elegance, channeling pachanga noise into sonic rituals with the lasting power of scars.
Meta Rave co-founder Nuevo Prohibido pulls from the ecstatic pulses of 90s and 2000s rave culture and infuses it with the frenetic energies of Guaracha, Tribal, Baile Funk, Jungle, and UK Bass. Simultaneously, their sound draws from post-punk’s defiant edge and the fragmented chaos of deconstructed club music, creating dissonant yet euphoric waves of sound. Going b2b with NP, DJ LOUI FROM JUPITER4 is on a mission to interconnect dancefloors and diverse scenes. Co-founder of Berlin-based collective Safada, and head of the Jupiter4 label, Loui curates events that redefine the local diasporic Latin club scene.
Wilding AI Lab Fellows Announced
The four-day lab hosted within the 4DSOUND environment at MONOM will assemble a group of participants to learn about the application of generative AI in spatial audio, and collectively explore the wilder territories of AI. Created in collaboration with the initiative »Wilding AI« the namesake four-day lab will assemble a group of 14 participants selected from an open call to learn about the application of generative AI in spatial audio, and collectively explore the wilder territories of AI.
Congratulations to Daniel Limaverde, Evangeline Y Brooks, Federico Visi, Gadi Sassoon, Hyeji Nam, Irini Kalaitzidi, Nico Daleman, Ninon and Jun Suzuki, SENAIDA, Three Amps, Transient Cat, and TWEE who were selected from a pool of 75 applicants this year! Read more about the participants here.
Hosted within the 4DSOUND environment at MONOM, the lab will take place under the guidance of hosts Alexandre Saunier, Beth Coleman, Maurice Jones, and Portrait XO. Be sure not to miss the open studio session on Sunday 26 January where participants will be presenting ideas and works-in-progress along with discussions.
Dancecult DC25 Conference
The full programme for Dancecult’s DC25 conference is now online! Hosted by the peer-reviewed, open-access journal for the study of electronic music and dance culture, Dancecult in collaboration with Audio Communication Group of Technische Universität Berlin, and CTM Festival, the two-day conference will feature a combination of paper presentations and panel discussions, where all presentations will be live streamed. The conference will run 24–25 January 2025 at the Technische Universität Berlin, with free entry.
DC25 aims to explore various dimensions of electronic music and dance cultures (EMCDs) and the challenges associated with their documentation, preservation, and archiving. While the topic of cultural preservation in (popular) music cultures has been extensively discussed, EMDCs have yet to be fully included in these conversations. Furthermore, despite the accessibility of oral histories, there remains a lack of extended collections of archival materials on this subject.
This conference aims to address this gap by questioning the necessity of preservation and the role of institutions in keeping these cultures alive. It also reevaluates existing oral histories by exploring who has been asked to share their stories and who may have been left out, particularly marginalised individuals. The conference will also address methodological challenges of cultural preservation: How and what to archive and preserve when it comes to electronic music and dance cultures?