The Vienna based festival Unsafe+Sounds returns this September with a densely layered program. In its 11th edition, the festival once again presents a diverse lineup that foregrounds experimental, electronic, and club music, placing it in dialogue with aesthetic, socio-cultural, and political discourse. The festival is dedicated to artistic practices of a contemporary culture that constructively questions the supposed dictates of the majority and introduces new perspectives and modes of access. Its formats are varied, ranging from concert evenings and club nights to readings and performances, from installations and screenings to artist talks, keynotes, and panel discussions.

The festival understands sound as a transformative force, a medium that can unsettle, reorient, and open new trajectories of thought and emotion. The festival brings together musicians, performers, poets, theorists, and researchers to explore these sonic potentials, inviting audiences into alternative realities and sketching speculative horizons that challenge established worldviews.

In 2025, the invited artists reflect a heterogeneous present, shaped by increasingly pluralistic aesthetic positions. Their works critically engage with our environment and highlight the interconnections between social developments and contemporary aesthetics. Personal narration and political resonance are deeply interwoven here.

Around 70 international and local artists and speakers will be featured from September 2–7 across various locations in the city. In addition to renowned concert venues like Porgy & Bess, institutions such as AIL in the former Postsparkasse and the IFK will also be involved, alongside clubs like Pratersauna and Flucc.

· CEL (Felix Kubin & Hubert Zemler) (DE/PL)

· COBY SEY & CONTINUE (UK)

· ELIJAH (UK)

· GAJEK (DE)

· HXH (US)

· LUDWIG WANDINGER & YVES B. GOLDEN (DE/US)

· NKISI (FR)

· ROSA ANSCHÜTZ (DE)

· SOPHIA EISENHUT (DE)

· EDITIONS MEGO 30 feat.

· FINLAY SHAKESPEARE (UK)

· GENERAL MAGIC & TINA FRANK (AT/DE)

· HÜMA UTKU (TRK/DE)

· ILPO VÄISÄNEN (FIN)

· NIK COLK VOID (UK)

COBY SEY sets the tone for this year’s festival. Sey is a London-based producer, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist whose music moves like stream of consciousness – shape-shifting between trip hop, post-grime, jazz, noise, techno, and spoken word. A fixture of South East London’s underground, Sey’s debut album Conduit (AD 93) channels the psychogeography of a city stitched together in low frequencies, nocturnal synths, surreal vocals and sonic fog. Co-founder of CURL (with Mica Levi and Brother May), longtime collaborator with Tirzah, Klein, Laurel Halo, Dean Blunt and others, Sey builds music like a conversation: open-ended, morphing, vital, thick with lived time.  In Vienna he’ll perform with his band Continue.

Another festival headliner act is club-icon NKISI. Melika Ngombe Kolongo produces intense, powerful sonics influenced by ancient Kongo rhythms, rhythmic noise, our planetary electromagnetic grid, and experimental improvisation. The Paris-based producer is one of the co-founders of the now defunct platform NON Worldwide. She further launched her label INITIATION and research platform The Secret Institute, exploring the secrets and mysteries of vibrational rhythm, the ritual as a socio-political tool, invisible gestural sonics, noise tantra, and strategies of trance.

Infectious rhythms are expected from CEL as well. The electroacoustic duo consists of Felix Kubin and Hubert Zemler. Kubin is one of Hamburg’s most busy and varied electronics lunatics, Zemler is a Warsaw-based percussionist. Drawing on Germany’s lineage of Krautrock motorik and sequencer minimalism, they fuse the mechanical discipline of early electronics with the anarchic energy of free jazz, avant-garde composition, and DIY experimentation. Live, CEL is both meticulously choreographed and joyfully unstable – an unfolding system that hums, clatters, and pulses with a machine logic just on the verge of malfunction.

One of the opening acts that will perform at AIL in Alte Postsparkasse is HXH. The improvisatory duo of Chris Ryan Williams (trumpet, electronics) and Lester St. Louis (cello, electronics) builds worlds traversing through acoustic sound, grainy textures, expansive soundscapes, breaks, cuts and beats. HxH describe their music as ‘electroacoustic’, but until recently the presence of Black musicians in this field has been greatly overlooked and largely ignored, making this term only partially appropriate, as their presstext states. Their 2025 debut, released on KMRU’s OFNOT label, is tender and personal – ’a hybrid of late-night sirens and a temple at dawn’.

The second announced artist of the opening on 2. September is the multifaceted artist ROSA ANSCHÜTZ moves between composition, installation, and performance art. Her voice is reminiscent of Nico: dark, mysterious, elusive. Her introspective, self-reflective songs fuse the dark ambience of post-punk and cold wave with ethereal, sacred polyphony, synth-driven melodies, and a distinct theatrical sensibility.  Across her releases she weaves sound with visual media -ceramics, embroidery, and staged performance – building a transdisciplinary sonic language. At Unsafe+Sounds Rosa will present songs from her upcoming album that will be released in September via L.A. based label Heartworm Press.

Also the songs and sonic vignettes of Matti Gajek are emotionally strongly charged. GAJEK revisits forgotten subcultural memory in his tracks. Born in the GDR, the Berlin based artist-musician draws from haunted frequencies of post-socialist rupture, re-tuning Kraut-inspired tracks and childhood gabber into glitchy, refracted time-crystal-tracks. His compositions emerge like retro-loops from a parallel timeline – full of personal traces, and unresolved histories. In eerie lyricism, Gajek commemorates the blurred textures of youth, and collective afterimages. Live, he builds atmospheres that shimmer between raw pulse and poetic tension. His latest record Cutting Together Apart was released on Belgian label stroom.tv, and can already be filed as one of the most original albums of 2025. 

The experimental producer, drummer, composer, and visual artist LUDWIG WANDINGER moves fluidly between ethereal microtonal harmonies and abrasive sound-sculptured design. His debut album was released on Caterina Barbieri’s label Lightyears this year. It too foregrounds emotional depth though with much bigger gesture – oscillating between dark, glowing tapestries and abrasive sonic extremes. The result is music that is rich in affect, imbuing listeners with a sense of aching romanticism through oscillations between darkness and light.

Wandinger will be performing together with the US-born, Berlin-based poet, artist and DJ YVES B. GOLDEN. Golden’s work probes human worth, dignity, and transmutation through mixed media, including sound, poetry, and sculpture. She hosts the monthly radio programme Stride Breaker on dublab, a sonic and spoken-word series merging experimental music with personal reflection and narrative pacing that ‘moves through thoughts of being and unbeing, seeing and unseeing’. Yves B. Golden will be performing alongside Ludwig Wandinger. Together, they create a space that is both hypnotic and unafraid of beauty.

The Berlin-based artist and poet SOPHIA EISENHUT explores the performativity and materiality of writing through a feminist critique of language in her work. Eisenhut studied art history, typography and fine arts. Her practice spans writing, audio, performance and installation; her work often deconstructs authorship by blending genres and historical layers. Eisenhut’s first book, Exercitia S. Catarinae de Manresa: Anorexie und Gottesstaatlichkeit, was published by Merve Verlag. It reimagines a saint’s life to question authority, authenticity and the politics of the body. In 2025 she released Spam in Alium (Merve), a collection of twelve texts–essays, a screenplay, poems and dialogues–that, in their ‘constant transgression of genre forms’, are united by a search for the ‘counterpart of writing’. By merging lyric, theory and prose, Eisenhut’s work has claimed a unique place in contemporary feminist essay and performative literature.

Unsafe+Sounds is further presenting a special two-day showcase celebrating 30 years of the iconic label Editions Mego. Following anniversary events in London, Paris, and Berlin, the celebration now arrives in Vienna – the label’s hometown. 

For three decades, Editions Mego has been a driving force in the discovery and dissemination of experimental, genre-defying sonic practices. With an uncompromising commitment to the radical edges of electronic sound, the label has shaped – and often anticipated – the vocabulary of contemporary music. This Vienna edition pays tribute to Mego’s lasting influence and continued urgency.

The showcase brings together legacy artists like Pan Sonic’s Ilpo Väisänen, Factory Floor’s Nik Colk Void, or Mego’s co-founders General Magic & Tina Frank, and emerging artists like Hüma Utku and Finlay Shakespeare.

The Finnish artist ILPO VÄISÄNEN functions as a cult figure for a devoted audience. As one half of the legendary duo Pan Sonic – together with Mika Vainio – he redefined the sonic limits of techno, industrial and noise, when recording live on homemade analog gear. Väisänen has continued to forge a singular path through solo projects under aliases like I-LP-O In Dub, combining political edge with raw sonic minimalism. His acclaimed releases on Editions Mego explore memory, power and vibration through scorched dub textures and haunting silences. Väisänen crafts dense soundworlds that feel both futuristic and elemental. Composing with oscillators he builds himself, Väisänen bypasses digital convention in favor of tactile, visceral exploration. 

NIK COLK VOID‘s creative practice revolves around the unconventional use of analogue and digital instruments, primarily voice, guitar, and modular Eurorack systems, where she explores new musical languages through extended techniques and cut-up self-made samples via synthesis. The compositions of the British artist span techno, club, electro-acoustic, experimental, and noise genres. A founding member of Factory Floor and one-third of Carter Tutti Void (with Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti), she’s long pushed the boundaries of post-punk and industrial electronics.    

GENERAL MAGIC is the legendary Viennese duo of Andi Pieper and Ramon Bauer – together with Peter Rehberg co-founders of Editions Mego and pioneers of DIY sound experimentation. Known for turning refrigerator hums into sonic raw material, their debut Frantz (1997) mixed glitch, industrial techno, and abstract electronics and dissolved the line between club and sound lab. Their 2nd full-length album Bosko was released this year. On stage, they collaborate with visual artist TINA FRANK, whose bold video synthesizer work merges with General Magic’s custom-built interfaces to produce confrontative audiovisual collages.

Crafting restless synth-pop from a background in DIY electronics and modular design, the London-based artist and modular synth head FINLAY SHAKESPEARE bridges the hooks of ’80s icons with the grit of experimental sound. His albums channel melodic intensity through analog circuitry, raw vocals, and dense rhythmic energy. Live, he blends charismatic performance with hands-on modular rig improvisation, landing somewhere between post-punk urgency and electronic futurism.

HÜMA UTKU is a composer and sound artist from Istanbul, now based in Berlin. Drawing on her background in psychology, she interrogates themes of the human condition, dualities, and matrescence in a narrative-driven approach. For her latest release Dracones she is weaving industrial textures, ultrasound recordings, and haunting melodies together. Her music explores inner landscapes and collective hauntings.

The first announced discourse guest of this year’s edition is no one less than ELIJAH. The hyped London-based writer and DJ is working at the intersection of independent music, visual art, and critical discourse. With over 15 years of experience across artist management, label work, event production, and creative strategy, he co-founded the influential grime label Butterz, which helped define the UK’s grime and garage resurgence. Since 2021, his Yellow Squares project on Instagram has blossomed into a hybrid creative platform of visual installations, lectures, an album, a book, and a lecture series. A contributor to The Guardian, a Sónar +D panelist, and a lecturer at SOAS University of London, Elijah decodes creative practice and champions sustainable, DIY cultural entrepreneurship. In a keynote he will emphasize transparency, resilience, and radical self-determination in the evolving music ecosystem.

⟢ The reduced price 2nd wave Early Bird Festival Pass is available now!

 The pass gives you entry to all events at all venues.

⟢ Single ticket sales will start with the full line-up announcement at the beginning of August.

⟢ As each year the discourse programme can be attended for free.

⟢ Check updates and further announcements on the festival website, on Instagram, or subscribe to the Telegram channel, or newsletter! 

UNSAFE+SOUNDS 2025
– Festival for challenging sounds and discourse
02-07. September
Various Locations, Vienna / Austria

www.unsafeandsounds.com