Lord Spikeheart is a vocalist, songwriter and producer based in Kenya. Over the past decade, he has become a leading voice in African heavy music, crossing rap, metal, industrial, extreme electronics and traditional African rhythms. His debut The Adept was named one of The Guardian’s Top 10 Global Albums of 2024. His 2025 EP REIGN features Iggor Cavalera, Brodinski and Arka’n Asrafokor. Created with NMR.CC, the REIGN audiovisual show premiered at Berlin Atonal. Known for his fiercely physical live performances, he has also appeared at Le Guess Who?, Unsound, Rewire and the Venice Biennale.

∈Y∋ has been a central figure in the alternative rock band BOREDOMS since the 1980s, presenting experimental performances worldwide and exerting an influence far beyond the underground scene. His extensive body of work includes installations and performances, in which sounds and visuals resonate with each other. His works evoke the exchange of energy among all things, as well as works that express synesthetic imagery. In recent years, he has also been active as a DJ and has launched the collaborative project FINALBY( ), which expands the audiovisual experience through technical experimentation and live performance.

Charlemagne Palestine is a musician who has developed a distinctive practice centered on repetition, duration, overtones, and the resonance of space, and has remained active for more than half a century, emerging from the New York underground. He is regarded as one of the key figures alongside La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Steve Reich. He is also active as a contemporary artist, creating multimedia sculptures and spatial works incorporating plush objects, and has participated in documenta 8. He continues to present sound works and installations at museums and galleries around the world.

A duo by Jim O’Rourke and Eiko Ishibashi. Jim O’Rourke is a key figure who helped shape Chicago’s improvised music scene, and has pursued a singular practice across experimental music, film scores, and production work. Known for his work with Gastr del Sol and as a former member of Sonic Youth, he also worked on music for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company alongside Takehisa Kosugi. Through collaborations with figures such as Tony Conrad, Arnold Dreyblatt, and Christian Wolff, O’Rourke has continually moved between contemporary music and post-rock. Eiko Ishibashi has also composed music for films including Drive My Car (2021) and Evil Does Not Exist (2023), and released her latest album Antigone in 2025. As a duo, O’Rourke and Ishibashi released their fifth album, Pareidolia, in 2025.

A collaboration performance between Keiji Haino and Daniel Blumberg will be presented as a world premiere at this program. Haino is one of Japan’s leading avant-garde musicians, having pursued a singular practice for over fifty years, and is set to receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2026 Venice International Contemporary Music Festival. Blumberg is also highly regarded for his work in film music, and won an Academy Award for his score for A24’s The Brutalist.

Ellen Arkbro is an internationally acclaimed composer known for her drone works built on sustained tones using pipe and reed organs. For this program, she presents the world premiere of a new composition for reed organ and hichiriki, the double-reed instrument that plays a central role in Japanese gagaku. Arkbro performs on reed organ, joined by members of the Reigakusha Gagaku Ensemble—Hitomi Nakamura, Yoshie Kunimoto, Eri Suzuki, and Katsuhiko Tabuchi—who perform on hichiriki.

Cooperation: Goethe-Institut Tokyo

Valentina Magaletti & YPY are a duo that has developed a distinct electroacoustic sound through percussion, electronics, and improvisation. Magaletti’s expanded percussive practice intersects with the structural electronic music of Koshiro Hino, also known as a member of goat, creating dense sonic environments where metallic textures and fragmented rhythms repeatedly collapse and reconstruct themselves. Their music reconfigures existing frameworks of sound through the coexistence of meticulous composition and the freedom of improvisation.

Kuang Program is a duo band consisting of Choi Taehyun and Seo Kyungsoo. Rather than focusing on the pop structures and formal conventions of so-called “rock,” they are interested in exploring, through musical and sonic means, the impulses and tensions that emerge from the culture surrounding it.

Kang Tae Hwan is a pioneering saxophonist who helped establish the foundation of Korean free jazz and improvised music through the formation of the Kang Tae Hwan Trio in 1978. Alongside activities with Kim Duk-soo SamulNori and Ton Klami, he has performed throughout Europe, Russia, and Japan, collaborating with avant-garde musicians including Evan Parker and Otomo Yoshihide. Through extended saxophone techniques and experimental improvisation, he continues to develop his singular world of free music.

Moin are a London-based trio comprising Tom Halstead and Joe Andrews of the electronic outfit Raime, alongside visionary percussionist Valentina Magaletti.
Their music reimagines guitar-driven genres—grunge, shoegaze, and post-rock—through a distinctive lens, reshaping the traditional band dynamic with both conventional and experimental compositional techniques. The result is a sound of visceral immediacy, fully realised in their powerful live performances.

Formed as a quartet in 2013 by Koshiro Hino, goat’s original lineup consisted of guitar, saxophone, bass and drums. Today’s evolution offers a quintet that fluidly switches instruments depending on the song. Disregarding traditional musical forms their melodies focus on muted sounds and harmonics from outside of the 12-tone scale. Their minimalist compositions are an exercise in persistent repetition, filled with contradictions - complex yet simple, mechanical yet sensual - operating in an almost trance-like state in their performances. goat released their third album, ‘Joy in Fear’, in 2023 through NAKID.