For a decade, Unsafe+Sounds Festival has been presenting pioneering positions of a contemporary culture that defies the dictation of a supposed majority. The festival for advanced electronic music, experimental sounds, progressive club sound and contemporary discourse, which takes place in Vienna, Austria, stands for sonic challenge and uncompromisingness, but is also an invitation to build bridges together. It focuses on artistic positions which confront the rampant challenges of our time. With a discourse programme focusing on socio-cultural topics and the relatively young discipline of sound studies, it further investigates the connection between social trends and contemporary aesthetics.

The festival will celebrate its 10th anniversary in 2024. For this jubilee edition, it will welcome almost 80 international and local artists and speakers. The formats are just as diverse as the venues. They range from specially commissioned works, concert and club nights at Arena Wien, Flucc and Zacherlfabrik to discussions, talks and workshops, performances and an exhibition at Vienna’s WUK.

The following acts are already confirmed:

· ABADIR (EGY/DE)
· Black Page Orchestra (AT)
· Blood Of Aza (UK)
· Dorian Concept (AT)
· FRANKIE (DE/AT)
· HUUUM (IRN/AT)
· Iceboy Violet (UK)
· Miriam Adefris (AT/UK)
· Mopcut (FR/DE/AT)
· Rashad Becker (DE/SYR)
· Safety Trance (VEN/ESP)
· Senyawa (IDN)
· Susu Laroche (FR/EGY)
· Talita Otovic (PL/FR)
· Van Boom (KWT)

Of Many Worlds’ is a high-calibre commissioned work that will be realised as part of the festival. Three artists will meet for the first time in Vienna. ABADIR is considered one of the most renowned producers in the Arab region. The Egyptian producer, DJ and music journalist creates kaleidoscopic, imaginary worlds. His albums have been released on the Shanghai-based cult label SVBVLT. ABADIR is a master of world building and storytelling. His narrative tracks oscillate between grand compositional gestures, cinematic opulence and contemporary club sound. He transfers traditional rhythm patterns, e.g. the maqsoum and folkloric instruments such as the darbuka drum, or collective religious chants into the present day, catapulting us into different regions, time zones and realities. Rojin Sharafi and Omid Darvish also bring the past, present and future together in magical tales. As HUUUM, the two Iranian composers, who are based in Vienna, interweave musical elements and instrumental sounds from the Persian musical tradition with advanced electronics to create an expressive form of magical folk-futurism. For a commissioned work initiated by the Unsafe + Sounds Festival, the three musicians are now coming together for the first time in Vienna to let their sonic worlds collide.

The Indonesian duo SENYAWA enjoy cult status among their dedicated fan base. Situated somewhere between psychedelic rock, doom metal, free improvisation and ceremonial ritual, Rully Shabara and Wukir Suryadi use instruments from their home country to create their mystical sound. It is above all the sound of the bambuwakir, a traditional stringed instrument that Suryadi recreated himself, that carries us through the songs. Shabara’s shamanistic voice covers various expressions, from metal growling to painfully beautiful singing. The mysterious atmosphere is also evoked by the Egyptian-French musician, singer, producer, filmmaker and artist SUSU LAROCHE. She uses Dabke-inspired, Levantine rhythms for her mystical music and combines them with ritual-magical singing. In her lyrics, she references the sci-fi author Ursula K Le Guin or the poetry of 19th century occultists.

As every year, there is also a lot to discover in the field of club music. The Venezuelan producer and DJ, friend & collaborator of pop icons such as Arca or Rosalía, SAFETY TRANCE aka CARDOPUSHER is one of the headliners of this year’s festival. In his ecstatic sets, Luis Garban lets rattling reggaeton collide with euphoric trance, Latin pop songs and old-school hardcore anthems and unleashes the crowd in the process. Kuwait-based producer VAN BOOM also renounces the notorious 4-to-the-floor beat in his energetic sets. His harsh sounds and hyper-industrial high-BPM sets speak of anger and resistance. Van Boom is the figurehead of Kuwait’s underground scene. His releases on Cease 2 Exist are to be understood as a sonic rebellion against the prevailing social repression in the Gulf state. BLOOD OF AZA‘s productions and DJ sets are similarly intense and resistant. Based in Surrey, Blood of Aza probably delivers the noisiest pop edits and the most disturbing deconstructed club tracks currently to be discovered in the SoundCloud underground. Here, great emotions and trigger melodies meet brutal noise-scapes, R’n’B vocals meet gabber beats and jungle breaks. Catharsis pre-programmed! French producer TALITA OTOVIĆ breaks with the male dominance of hardcore techno. Her captivating live sets bring together different styles from gabber to trance. Credo: the faster, harder and more euphoric, the better.

ICEBOY VIOLET is a key figure in the British hip-hop scene and another highlight of the festival. Violet’s ethereal UK post-rap fuses stream-of-consciousness songwriting with drill, post-grime, ambient and noise, telling stories of love and loss. Collaborations with colleagues such as Space Africa, Blackhaine, Slikback and Dawuna testify to Iceboy Violet’s musical versatility. FRANKIE is the name of Franziska Aigner, an Austrian musician, dancer and actress based in Berlin, who appears as a performance artist for Anne Imhof, as a vocalist in Holly Herndon’s ensemble and as an actress in Austin Jack Lynch’s latest feature film. For her somnambulistically surreal ballads, the multi-facetted artist manipulates her voice and live cello with the help of digital tools, creating an intimate form of neo-romanticism.

DORIAN CONCEPT is without doubt one of Austria’s most internationally successful musicians. The award-winning keyboard/synth player and virtuoso multi-instrumentalist layers dazzling melodies into polyphonic and polyvocal, orchestral-sounding tracks that are released by labels such as Ninja Tune and Brainfeeder. His latest track ‘Hide’ went viral. Not only can it be heard in clubs and festivals, it has also made it onto social media, where it has been covered hundreds of times by TikTok fans worldwide. Dorian Concept will present a live set specially prepared for the Alte Postsparkasse hall on the opening evening. The second musician to perform will be the Austrian-Ethiopian harpist MIRIAM ADEFRIS. Currently living and working in London, Adefris is now an important part of a scene that is forming between jazz, experimental electronics and club sounds. She regularly performs with musicians such as Shabaka Hutchings, Valentina Magaletti, Floating Points or plays at FKA Twigs’ private birthday party. As a solo musician, she develops impressionistic, immersive soundscapes with her precise harp playing, which is reminiscent of Alice Coltrane’s Afrofuturistic soundscapes and draw on the artist’s East African musical heritage.

The sounds of the German-Syrian producer and renowned mastering engineer RASHAD BECKER, whose albums focus on a fictional species, including their traditional dances and songs, open a similarly imaginative space. Becker uses his modular synthesiser to create sonic entities that communicate with each other. The results are sonic fictions par excellence. The expressive sounds of experimental vocalist and musician Audrey Chen also resemble an imagined language. MOPCUT is the name of the formation centred around Chen, Lukas König – one of Europe’s most renowned percussionists – and French guitarist Julien Deprez. All three come from a jazz background, but their ability to improvise defies any genre classification. The numbers oscillate between unleashed, relentlessly free expression and tamed noise; composition and improvisation.

The closing night of the festival sees the 10 Years anniversary concert of BLACK PAGE ORCHESTRA at the auratic Zacherlfabrik venue. Its artistic director, composer and Unsafe+Sounds festival founder Matthias Kranebitter, initiated the musician-composer ensemble in 2014. It was also the starting point for the festival, which has accompanied the journey of the renowned Austrian ensemble ever since. Black Page Orchestra stands for an uncompromising examination of the present, our society and established orders. In confrontational arrangements, in which classical instrumentation is expanded to include digital and multimedia forms of expression, they break with entrenched patterns of perception. This year’s programme features compositions by the ensemble members themselves. These include a work by the hyped Croatian composer MIRELA IVIČEVIĆ and a composition by MATTHIAS KRANEBITTER himself.