Unsafe+Sounds 2026: First artist announcement
Unsafe+Sounds, the annual Vienna-based festival, returns in September with a kaleidoscopic programme, offering a multifaceted view of contemporary music. Since 2015, the international festival has been one of Austria’s most important platforms for advanced experimental and electronic music. In its 12th edition, Unsafe+Sounds once again dedicates itself to outstanding artistic positions beyond the mainstream.
With its bridge between high and subculture, experimental and club music, sound and discourse, Unsafe+Sounds has carved out a distinctive position within the Austrian festival landscape. Since its beginnings, the festival has focused on making visible the connections between social tendencies and contemporary aesthetics. It questions how the world is perceived and experienced, and turns its attention to the transformative potential hidden within sound.
“The world must be romanticized” (Novalis)
Under this year’s theme, “The level sunlight still warms walls”, the festival turns toward the emotional qualities of sound. Remaining true to its eclectic spirit, this year’s festival invites you to look inward, and deepen your capacity to feel – to be affected by sound. The programme is less confrontational than in previous years. Instead, it turns toward Romanticism, foregrounding sentiment and sentimentality, sensitivity and sensuality, nature, beauty and harmonies.
From voices as mesmerising as water shimmering in the light to sounds as wistful as a solstice sunset, from bucolic sonic animism to metamodern romanticism, from somnambulant, autotuned melancholia to burning polyrhythmic fever-dream, from sentimental digital glitches to sensitive, sensual folk-mantras, Unsafe+Sounds 2026 offers a kaleidoscopic programme that resists binaries, commodification, and algorithmic categorisation of what contemporary explorations in music can make us feel. This year, we invite you to feel it all with us.
The festival opens on 4. September at the brutalist Wotruba Church and its expansive garden area. From 8. to 13. September, the programme continues across more than six renowned venues, including Porgy & Bess, the Radiokulturhaus and AIL in the Alte Postsparkasse. Formats range from immersive ambient concerts to ecstatic club nights, from synesthetic AV settings to sublime organ concerts, from multimedia laboratory arrangements to intimate poetry readings.
Over six festival days, around 50 international and local artists will appear at various locations across the city.
The psychedelic beauty of…
The New York Times has called them “the greatest trio on Earth”, while The Guardian described them as “one of the most entrancing live acts in the world” – few formations captivate live audiences quite like the Australian trio THE NECKS. Since 1987, pianist Chris Abrahams, bassist Lloyd Swanton and drummer Tony Buck have pushed the art of improvisation to its limits. Today, they enjoy cult status. The Necks are oriented as much toward jazz as toward minimal music, as much toward krautrock as toward the avant-garde. Their sound is warm and hovering, tonal and accessible, yet complex and challenging. Their dynamic playing always retains its focus while remaining mobile, developing an unmistakably hypnotic pull. Improvisation becomes a collective act of alchemy.
High on emotions
“opening up the emotional floodgates” Boomkat
With her releases on AD93 and CODES, the PAN sublabel, SKY H1 is regarded as one of the key figures of the contemporary ambient sound. Introspective and personal, yet clearly connected to the club, the Belgian producer’s tracks reveal a distinctive pop sensibility. Harmonic atmospheric pads, abstract vocals and melancholic-melodic hooks merge with reverberant fragments of drum’n’bass, grime and dubstep, offering full satisfaction to “ambient dance romantics”.
Sky H1 will present her new album at the festival, due to be released on AD93 in autumn.
Great emotions also lie at the heart of the work of her colleague Joeri Woudstra, aka TORUS. The Hague-based musician and artist does not shy away from pathos and kitsch, accessibility or musical clichés; on the contrary, he filters emotional peaks out of pop songs, embeds them in atmospheric, hazy synths and creates effective, sentimental-metamodern tracks. Free of irony, Torus draws on pop culture and trance music, moving from individual feeling toward collective sentiment.
Neo-Romantic Chamber Music
Warsaw-based producer, musician, theatre and film composer PIOTR KUREK presents “Smartwoods”, an ensemble piece that feels as tender and enchanted as a pastel-coloured midsummer night’s dream. Inspired by Baroque music and ethereal jazz, “Smartwoods” is a newly refracted surreal pastoral, a wondrous, delicate chamber music, a piece of magical animism. Kurek unfolds the tableau of a bucolic landscape full of living beings in communication with one another.
The pieces by Ulla Straus – ULLA for short, or even shorter, U.e – also have a chamber-musical character. Ulla’s contemplative miniatures behave weightlessly. They are intimate, sensitive vignettes, delicate small treasures. Flute, guitar, piano, saxophone, voice and electronics come together in somnambulant pieces that always seem on the verge of dissolving. Peaceful like a daydream, fleeting like a thought, carried by a gentle melancholy.
“music propelled (…) by the mercurial drift of air particles warmed by the first rays of the sun.” Pitchfork
His releases have shaped styles; his sound is unmistakable. Christian FENNESZ is considered one of the great names in experimental music and an international figurehead of the Austrian scene. Using guitar and computer, the Vienna-based musician and composer developed an unmistakable sonic language in the early 2000s, in which melodic gestures, reverb-rich atmospheres, digital noise and glitches merge inseparably. The result sounds shimmering, alive and abstract, yet incredibly beautiful. Inspired by nature, Fennesz opens spaces of sensation and emotional landscapes, earning him the reputation of being “the scene’s great romantic” (Pitchfork). Collaborations with international heavyweights such as Ryuichi Sakamoto, David Sylvian and Keith Rowe testify to his standing.
“the scene’s great romantic” (Pitchfork)
Timeless Organ Concerts
In a commissioned work initiated by Unsafe+Sounds and the concert series “Organ in Focus” of Austrian public radio oe1, Fennesz meets the Swedish, US-based film composer, organist and cellist CLAIRE M SINGER for the first time. Both Singer and Fennesz release on the influential label Touch. Both draw inspiration from nature and landscape, and are able to create an extraordinary atmospheric density and emotional depth. Singer coaxes rich harmonic textures and complex overtone structures from the organ, continuously generating new melodic patterns and subtle rhythmic pulses. Her minimalism is at once sensitive and sublime.
Claire M Singer & Christian Fennesz will perform live as a duo at Radiokulturhaus.
HAMPUS LINDWALL is another organist featured in the festival programme. The Paris-based musician is titular organist at the Church of Saint-Esprit, an award-winning organ improviser and a collaborator of artists such as Cory Arcangel, Ellen Arkbro and Stephen O’Malley, on whose label Ideologic Organ his most recent release appeared. Influenced by Xenakis, metal and rave, Lindwall’s playing is electrifying and often stubbornly dissonant. Sounds are partly digitally transformed, partly stacked – triggered via MIDI – into stochastic compositions. Through his intensive engagement with the instrument, Hampus Lindwall has developed a practice that consistently leaves traditional ideas of organ music behind.
Resistant Forces
Political, urgent, powerful and intense: SAINT ABDULLAH & EOMAC create resistant, confrontational tracks that act as a pressure valve. Behind Saint Abdullah are Iranian-Canadian brothers Mohammad and Mehdi, who grew up in New York’s improviser music scene and now live between London and Tehran. Eomac is Irish producer, composer and DJ Ian McDonnell. What unites them is a pronounced rhythmic sensibility. While Eomac contributes visceral, forceful beats, Saint Abdullah launches samples and found sounds into the mix, charged by a diasporic consciousness in which questions of identity, memory and political urgency resonate. The samples become carriers of historical and cultural references, placing the sounds within a political context. The result is not over-conceptualised or cerebral; on the contrary, it is deeply sensual and gripping.
Saint Abdullah & Eomac will present their latest album, due to be released on Planet Mu in autumn.
“Mind-melting” The Wire
With releases on the renowned label Upset The Rhythm and a recent cover feature in The Wire magazine, EARTH BALL rank among the most exciting bands of the Candian underground scene. The quintet moves between ecstatic psych-rock, impulsive avant-jazz and brutal noise, developing a sound that is as immediate and improvised as it is precise. Each concert builds a powerful sonic backdrop from eruptive sax, ritualistic singing, trance-inducing drumming and distorted guitars. The result is transformative: a collective psychedelic trip that releases its listeners back into reality changed.
New Sincerity
RICHARD YOUNGS is regarded by many as a key figure of the British underground scene. Described by The Quietus as “a magus of the avantgarde”, the Glasgow-based musician moves between folk, avant-pop, improvisation and minimalist composition without ever submitting to the conventions of a single genre. Youngs’ expressive and charismatic voice has earned him comparisons with musicians such as Robert Wyatt, Arthur Russell and Bill Callahan. Sincere and moving, and marked by a purist beauty, his songs consistently move beyond the mainstream.
With FEEO, one of the most exciting new voices from London’s music scene comes to Vienna. Abyssal and vehement, yet vulnerable and sensitive; fragile as much as powerful; sparse, but full of depth – like romantic poems, feeo’s songs unfold between opposites. Accompanied by Caius Williams on bass, Theodora Laird presents an Avant-R&B rich in references. The emotional quality of her voice recalls the romanticism of Joni Mitchell, the dynamic melodic lines Alanis Morissette, the doomy qualities Anna von Hausswolff, and the sensuality Kate Bush. feeo’s debut album was released last year on AD93 and was praised by Pitchfork as “one of the most breathtakingly beautiful albums”.
UGNĖ UMA is a phenomenon. Born in Vilnius, the singer has not yet released a solo album, but has already collaborated with numerous renowned artists and, within a very short time, has become a favourite of the European music scene. Uma moves with velvet-footed ease and an exceptionally distinctive voice between soul, jazz, trip-hop and folk, atmospheric electronics and experimental poetry. Self-determined, with a softness and coolness that bring comparisons to Sade and Beth Gibbons to mind.
Lebanese musician, composer and musicologist YOUMNA SABA explores, in both theory and practice, the relationship between singing voice, the Arabic language and electroacoustic music. In her musical work, she expands the oud through new playing techniques. Interested in the materiality and tactility of sound, she approaches the traditional instrument as a resonant space and sound body, while her voice possesses astonishing emotional depth. The result sounds unsettlingly beautiful.
First confirmed artists
CLAIRE M SINGER (US/SWE)
EARTH BALL (CDN)
FEEO (UK)
FENNESZ (AT)
HAMPUS LINDWALL (FR/SWE)
PIOTR KUREK PRESENTS “SMARTWOODS” (PL)
RICHARD YOUNGS (UK)
SAINT ABDULLAH & EOMAC (UK/IRN)
SKY H1 (BE)
THE NECKS (AUS)
TORUS (NL)
UGNĖ UMA (LI)
ULLA (DE/US)
YOUMNA SABA (LBN/FR)
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