Unsafe+Sounds 2025 – “Time Dream Rhythm Machine” – Full Music Programme
“Time Dream Rhythm Machine”
Unsafe+Sounds is an avant-garde festival in Vienna dedicated to experimental, electronic, and club music, socio-cultural discourse, and artistic practices that stretch the limits of the present. We challenge how the world is perceived and lived, tuning into the transformative power embedded in sound. Unsafe+Sounds is articulating resistance, fostering solidarity, and envisioning future perspectives for the societies we inhabit.
“The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.” (William Gibson)
For our 11th edition, we turn our attention to time — its many shapes, speeds, and politics. We explore chronopolitics: the struggles over how time is structured, controlled, and experienced. We listen for temporalities that have been marginalized, erased, or constrained. We move from deep ecological time to ancestral myth time, from the frantic acceleration of the now to the slow drift of deceleration, from haunted pasts to imagined futures. We dream reality into being.
“You know the future is really happening when you start feeling scared.” (Shumon Basar)
Time is political. It is not universal — it is situated, embodied. Time is not a straight line, it unfolds in spirals, glitches, ruptures, in temporal slips. It is a texture. We aim to release alternative temporal orders that disrupt dominant conceptions of time, unsettling how we think and live within it, and opening the possibility for us all to become otherwise. We advocate for a chronopolitics of equality.
Marked by a shared sense of a historical ending in sight – the end of democracy, liberalism, a cool planet, in a time of war, climate catastrophe, pandemic emergency, racial injustice, we seem stuck in a collective sentiment of “Endcore” – “We feel like The End is approaching, like an astroid is hurtling towards us; but it also strangely never seems to reach us“ (Shumon Basar). When the present is “stretched into an endless crisis loop”, we no longer “build the future, we just manage catastrophe.” (Bifo Berardi), The Western model of linearity, constant growth, and acceleration has led to the “slow cancellation of the future” (Mark Fisher), a future without future. Instead of running loops in dystopic no-time, we want to build on the multiple temporal dimensions that disrupt capitalist time.
“That there should be time no longer” (Revelation 10:6, New Testament)
In the 20th century, fascism mobilized anxious now-time as a state of permanent crisis. Time has been colonized, racialized, economized. Technology bends our sense of duration, urgency, and memory. Our digital lives compress time into a perpetual present, a “space that has been robbed of temporality” (Bifo Berrardi) where updates arrive instantly and algorithms predict our next move. Today, accelerationist capitalism keeps pushing us faster. We reject the hegemony of the technological-industrial, Western linear model that homogenizes time in oppressive narratives of progress. Instead, we embrace indigenous, Black, multispecies, and anti-capitalist politics of time as the origin of radical futurisms, and of a justice-to-come. We want to reclaim agency over our timelines, dismantle temporal borders, and expand the possible. As Black Quantum Futurism notes, quantum physics dissolves the sequence of past, present, and future in favor of simultaneity — multiple cyclical time levels coexisting.
“Dismantling the Master’s Clock” (Rasheeda Phillips)
This year we offer a Time Dream Rhythm Machine — a device for hacking the clocks that govern our lives, for inhabiting the fractures where futures leak into the now. The Time Dream Rhythm Machine is our proposal: to sample, loop, and remix temporalities until linear progress collapses into spirals, until time is revealed as entanglement.
COLLAPSED STAR
A collapsed star is a paradox of time: both an ending and a continuation, a remnant of the past but still to be perceived in the present. It’s a marker of time’s vast scale. The opening concerts explore sound as living archive and temporal experiment, folding together the microscopic and the cosmic, the intimate and the infinite.
Opening Night – Tuesday, 2. September – Alte Postsparkasse
In ROTOЯ – SONIC BODY, the paradox becomes experiential: the rotating sound-sculpture accelerates to the point where motion seems to vanish, creating a gravitational standstill that bends our perception. Electronic musician and sound researcher Peter Kutin and visual artist Martina Moro sculpture warped spacetime in their immersive A/V-performance. In this vortex, time is not a neutral backdrop but becomes material. Zosia Hołubowska’s composition “ Lovers / Lichens” enters into deep ecological time. “Lovers / Lichens” proposes a time shared across species and systems. Inspired by lichens – organisms that are themselves archives of deep time, the performance offers a sonic model of symbiotic temporality. Hołubowska and Muciño, together with AI sound models, weave bassoon, voice, and archival singing into porous, ever-changing structures. NYC based duo HxH navigate time as lived, felt. Their deeply auratic improvisations are echoing personal and collective memory. Drawing on their own histories as Black musicians within a historically exclusionary electroacoustic tradition, Chris Ryan Williams and Lester St. Louis also confront how cultural timelines are constructed, edited, and erased. Their ambient tracks build of haunted loops of the past. The multifaceted artist Rosa Anschütz moves between composition and performance art. 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 that seem to have fallen out of time.
19:00 — Zosia Holubowska feat. Mucino pres. Lovers / Lichens (AT/PL/MEX)
20:00 — HxH (US)
21:00 — ROTOR (AT)
22:00 — Rosa Anschütz (DE)
LUCID GHOSTS
Lucid Ghosts lingers in the temporal afterglow — the phantoms that persist after events have faded. The night presents sonic memories that flicker between personal experience and collective history. We move through politics of memory: how histories are preserved, or rewritten, and how sound can turn ghosts audible.
Wednesday, 3. September – WUK – Projektraum
An ephemeral trio moving between improvisation, experimental textures, and free-floating forms, Kampan opens the night with a set that feels like a séance – channeled sonic streams, dripping wet with atmosphere.
Vienna-based singer-musician rogine creates intimate, fragile soundscapes that navigate loss, memory, and transformation. Her performances unfold in private recollections, merging ethereal, ambient atmospheres with melodic threads, always at the verge of fading away.
Berlin artist Gajek works with the haunted frequencies of post-socialist memory. Born in the GDR, he re-tunes Kraut-inspired structures and “childhood gabber” into glitchy, refracted time-crystals — compositions that feel like transmissions from parallel timelines, where personal and collective histories blur, and are being commemorated.
Berlin-based producer and drummer Ludwig Wandinger’s, emotionally highly charged, microtonal harmonies meet poet Yves B. Golden’s hypnotic voice in a collaboration that is part dreamscape, part incantation. Their work moves into neo-romanticist realms, situated somewhere between darkness and light, beauty and abrasion. Words, sounds and intensities resonate in each other, and timelines overlap.
18:00 — Kampan (AT)
19:00 — rogine (AT/IRN)
20:00 — Gajek (DE)
21:00 — Ludwig Wandinger feat. Yves B Golden (DE/US)
TIME INFOLDING
Time Infolding is about streams and flows, of consciousness, of sound and of time. Collapsing the distinction between pasts, present, and possible futures the invited artists guide us into layered realities. Here, time is not a straight line but a fabric that can be folded, and rewoven. Each performance offers a different cosmos, from political memory to intimate reflection.
Thursday, 4. September – Porgy&Bess
Vienna drummer-producer Lukas König and Kurdish-Canadian pianist-composer Kasho Chualan meet in a collaboration charged with tension as intimate acoustics are put in contrast with ecstatic outbursts. König’s fractured beats and sculpted feedback collide with Chualan’s tactile prepared piano and electronics, confronting disparate musical lineages and personal histories.
Zimbabwean-born literary and sound artist Belinda Zhawi channels diaspora narratives through spoken word, free jazz, and experimental electronics. MA.MOYO’s voice becomes the carrier of poetry that speaks from the folds of lived and inherited time, of memory carried across geographies, where histories overlap and identities are continually rewritten.
One of the protagonists of the London music underground is vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Coby Sey. Together with his illustrious band Continue – feat. Momoko Gil and Raisa K.- he approaches music as a stream of consciousness, inspired by a present thick with lived experience, and the urban psychogeography of the city of London. Trip hop, post-grime, jazz, noise, and spoken word blur into a present dense with traces of what has been.
Closing the evening, Mara Never dissolves the edges between waking and dreamstate. Her atmospheric, spoken-word-driven sets move through text, texture, and tone like nocturnal rituals.
21:00 — Lukas König & Kasho Chualan (AT/CDN)
22:00 — MA.MOYO (ZWE/UK)
23:00 — Coby Sey (UK)
00:00 — Mara Never (AT)
LIGHTSPEED BACK HEREAFTER
The speed of light is a measure of the ultimate forward rush; back hereafter is the pull of return. Together they sketch a paradox: movement so fast it loops back into memory, futurism tangled with debris of the past. This evening assembles artists who bend chronology.
Friday, 5 September – WUK Projektraum, Vienna
Artist, DJ, and co-founder of the post-punk/wave party series Sniffin’ Glue, Annie High sets the temporal tone for the evening, threading together eras of sound that never quite stay put. Berlin-based poet and artist Sophia Eisenhut’s readings layer lyric, theory, and prose into feminist critiques of language and power. By reimagining historical figures, splicing genre, Eisenhut dismantles the linearity of literary tradition, and opens writing into a space where past and present coexist. Similar applies to Berlin’s Das Wettbüro. The duo deal in precision and play — their motoric grooves, retrochic textures, and shapeshifting arrangements feel like dispatches from multiple musical decades at once. Drawing on krautrock, pre-unification disco, and experimental radio drama, they gamble with history, reframing the past as a surreal, time-bending trip. Electroacoustic duo CEL, consisting of sonic magician Felix Kubin and percussionist Hubert Zemler, fuse sequencer minimalism with free jazz volatility, crafting meticulously choreographed yet joyfully unstable live sets. Their sound pulses with a machine logic constantly on the verge of collapse, channelling the spirit of Germany’s experimental lineage in their retrofuturist tracks, while spinning a SciFi-driven narrative around it. Vienna’s Autor find punk’s urgency in hardcore, metal, and avant-rock histories, translating it into something ecstatic, and immediate. Untamed lead singer Hannah Todt transforms the crowd into a boiling mosh pit. This is now.
18:00 — Annie High
19:00 — Lesung Sophia Eisenhut
19:30 — Das Wettbüro
20:30 — CEL (Felix Kubin & Hubert Zemler)
21:30 — Autor
PHASE SHIFT
A phase shift marks the moment when two waveforms slip out of or on the contrary fall into sync. In time, it’s the threshold where one state becomes another, where change is not gradual but abrupt, and perception recalibrates. Tonight’s line-up activates that idea across club rhythms, experimental electronics, and diasporic sonic storytelling, turning the dancefloor into a multiverse of temporal warps and altered trajectories. Every set tilts the axis: speeding up, slowing down, or simply slipping through temporal registers.
Freitag, 5. September – Flucc Deck
NYC-based producer Dasychira works in fantasy electronics, conjuring layered, cinematic compositions that blur reality and the imagined. Each track is highly emotionally charged, a journey through liminal, dreamlike temporalities. Similar qualities are inherent in the sonic palette of b1unt b1ade. The alter-ego of artist-musician Jessyca R. Hauser moves between vulnerability and force, weaving industrial textures, choral resonance, and drone into atmospheric soundscapes that flicker between the intimate and the monumental.Composer, producer, DJ, Mille-Plateaux-labelhead and critical sound culture researcher, Lain Iwakura fuses noise, rhythm, and theoretical inquiry into performances that unsettle our conventional experience of time and sound. The 2nd part of the night is dedicated to the incredibly broad range of rhythms that deviate from the typical western dancefloor-dominating 4/4 beat, highlighting voices from the so-called global South. Drawing from Angolan batida, kuduro, and Lisbon’s Afro-diasporic pulse, prodigious DJ and producer Vanyfox brings propulsive energies that bridge rooted tradition and cosmopolitan futurism on the dancefloor.A shape-shifter between continents and genres, ephemer transforms their performances into a portal, collaging reggaeton, cumbia, baile, trance, and noise into sets that shift mood and velocity in unpredictable sets. Between Dhaka and Vienna, মm. traces queer, BIPOC-centered club histories, layering percussion-heavy mixes that connect global South rhythms with diasporic nostalgia. With subtle atmospheres, layered drama, and a focus on Latin American producers, call me daddy closes the night with deep, narrative-driven selections that stretch the dancefloor’s sense of place and time.
22:30 — Lain Iwakura v
23:00 — b1unt b1ade
23:30 — ephemer
00:30 — Dasychira
01:30 —Vanyfox
03:00 — mwo
04:30 — call me daddy
BECOMING
To become is to resist the fixed, to morph, to evolve, to unfold — to exist in a state of continual change, where identities, bodies, and rhythms are kept in flux. In chronopolitical terms, becoming refuses the linear progress narrative, moving instead through loops, and transformations. Tonight’s programme celebrates music as a medium of metamorphosis: shifting forms, dissolving boundaries, and opening portals to states that are at ecstatic, and collective. Across two floors, the night moves from slow atmospheric seduction to high-energy ecstasies, traversing the many temporal registers of the dancefloor from techno to house, UK bass to trance BECOMING is not about arrival — it’s about the joy of transition, to set free liberating energies.
Saturday, 6. September – Pratersauna
The opening set comes from Luca Carlotta, who weaves digi-dub, cosmic synth pop, and diverse rhythms into playful, mood-shifting sets that fold unexpected breaks into hypnotic grooves. The Vienna-based producer Philipp Pettauer aka Fingers of God fuses deep atmospheric textures with IDM- and UK bass-inflected club rhythms in his modular live-sets. He balances intricate sonic detail with physical impact. London based producer, DJ and labelhead Nkisi on the other hand channels ancient Kongo rhythms, electromagnetic frequencies, and strategies of trance into intense, physically charged sets. Nkisi is exploring the secrets and mysteries of vibrational rhythm, the ritual as a socio-political tool, invisible gestural sonics, and noise tantra. Similarly to Nkisi, zey is linking traditions while creating liberatory spaces on the dancefloor. They maps sonic connections across Black contemporary music in an attempt to set free emancipatory energies. We continue with cheeky house and kinky progressive trance. One of the most original emerging producers and DJs is Montreal-born, Berlin based Maara. In her kinky, cheeky tracks she brings a signature blend of progressive, trance, and house to the club. Euphoric, sapphic, and unapologetically playful. Local DJ and Kissen club-series-host aua&angst hold the energy with shifts between ballroom, breakbeats, and femme-empowering vocals, balancing approachability with a critical lens on the DJ’s role. jess_whereyouat is part of the newly formed Presshouse collective. She will close the night with sensual selections that move from house to the unexpected, keeping the groove alive until morning.
Main
22:30 — Luca Carlotta
00:00 — Fingers of God
01:00 — zey
02:00 — Nkisi
03:30 — Maara
05:00 — aua&angst
06:30 — jess_whereyouat
On the Bunker Floor, Vienna-based producer, Superskin kicks off the night with lofi-dub-inflected compositions that seduce with melody and rhythm, pulling listeners into hazey trance states. His colleague, DJ and producer Flower Crime delivers minimal, pulsating techno in her DJ-sets that feature tracks of crystalline precision. The night continues with a live-set by Vienna-based Mitra. The duo will sculpt psychedelic, subfrequency-rich atmospheres, guiding audiences into collective trance through repetition and subtle intensity. The Budapest-based DJ Zituli Space Project merges trance, hypno-techno, and progressive. Her sets run deep resembling shamanistic journeys through ancient and future imaginaries of cosmic scale. Finally Kollektiv Ärger resident and Served club-host saschka will close the 2nd floor. He rides the line between hypnosis and euphoria with trippy grooves, seductive synths, and warm atmospheres.
Bunker
23:00 — Superskin
00:00 — Flower Crime
01:30 — Mitra
02:30 — Zituli Space Project
04:30 — saschka
EDITIONS MEGO 30
Unsafe+Sounds is 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.
Saturday, 6. September – WUK Projektraum
Editions Mego 30 – Day 1
The music of keyboard-player and impro-wizard Philipp Quehenberger has existed as a consistent strain amongst the Austrian underground for the last 20 years. His output is a cracking combination of dance floor zeal and deep disco disorientation. The Stockholm-based artist Klara Lewis follows, building layered, shifting sound fields where ambient texture collides with noise abrasion. She has spent the last decade creating albums equally tender and brutal, and has has gained recognition for her unique sound and innovative approach to composition. Mego-co-founders Ramon Bauer and Andi Pieper aka General Magic join visual artist Tina Frank for one of their rare shows. 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. The night closes with Nik Colk Void, whose fractured guitar, voice, and modular synthesis create volatile states between club pulse, industrial density, and electroacoustic space. 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.
18:00 Philipp Quehenberger
19:00 Klara Lewis
20:00 General Magic & Tina Frank
21:00 Nik Colk Void
Sunday, 7. September – WUK Projektraum
Editions Mego Day 2
Sunday traces other coordinates of the Mego network. Chra opens with low-frequency, tape-processed electronics that suggest landscapes both intimate and remote. Stefan Juster aka Jung An Tagen is researching the boundaries of techno and dissociative computer music. He’s testing strategies of physical disorientation and forceful sonic phenomena, encouraging minds and bodies to calculate and intuit their own place in spacetime. The Finnish artist Ilpo Väisänen functions as a cult figure for a devoted audience. In 1992 Mika Vainio and Ilpo Väisänen started Panasonic which later became Pan Sonic. The duo redefined the sonic limits of techno, industrial and noise, using homemade analog gear. Väisänen has continued to forge a singular path through solo projects under aliases like I-LP-O In Dub, elaborating his raw sonic minimalism. Hüma Utku weaves industrial textures, field recordings, and melody into narratives of inner and collective memory. Drawing on her background in psychology, she interrogates themes of the human condition, dualities, and matrescence in a narrative-driven approach. Her music explores inner landscapes and collective hauntings. 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.
17:00 Chra
18:00 Jung An Tagen
19:00 Ilpo Väisänen
20:00 Hüma Utku
21:00 Finlay Shakespeare
UNSAFE+SOUNDS 2025
“𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦 𝐑𝐡𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐦 𝐌𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞”
02. – 07. September
Various Venues, Vienna / AT
www.unsafeandsounds.com