LYR is author and current British poet laureate Simon Armitage, singer-songwriter Richard Walters, and multi-instrumentalist/producer Patrick Pearson. LYR’s story stretches back to 2009 when Walters, an admirer of Armitage’s extensive body of written work, approached the poet’s publisher about the possibility of collaboration. The result was Walters setting Armitage’s poetry to music in 2011. Realising that their two-part formula had potential to grow, Walters approached musical acquaintance, Pearson, and his joining provided the impetus to create the genre-splicing ‘supergroup’. The three-piece went on to create two critically acclaimed albums, Call In The Crash Team and The Ultraviolet Age. Coming together with focused, blended labour to instrumentalise Armitage’s words and vocal delivery, opposing the tag of ‘spoken word project’ or similar, the band ruminates instead on what aural breakthroughs could only be possible with a non-singing vocalist, gifted singer-songwriter and alchemistic musician-producer. LYR are now a firmly established part of the contemporary music scene, with regular radio airplay across the networks and over five million streams to their name. They have appeared at many major festivals including Green Man and Blu Dot, and sold out events across the UK. Please note that reserved seating is in place for this concert.

★★ MAY 2ND SHOW ON SALE NOW AT https://link.dice.fm/W018fcb1d1e3 ★★ Presented by Institute of Contemporary Arts. This is an 18+ event

Bad Vibrations presents Crack Cloud Plus guests Crack Cloud is an alternative multimedia group based out of Canada. Presented by Institute of Contemporary Arts. This is an 18+ event

Laurel Halo presents a live soundtrack to the film Midnight Zone by visual artist Julian Charrière, which follows the path of a drifting Fresnel lighthouse lens as it descends through the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone - a remote abyssal plain in the Pacific Ocean, rich in raremetals and increasingly targeted for deep-sea mining - the film traces a descent into one of Earth’s last untouched ecosystems. Laurel Halo is an artist who uses minimalism, ambient, musique concrète, and jazz approaches to meld the materiality and spirituality of sound. Following Atlas (2023), an album of swelling strings, convectional texture, and classical flourishes, she turns to Charrière's film as the next site for her otherworldly musical summonings. Midnight Zone is an underwater meditation upon the Clarion-Clipperton Zone - a remote spot in the Pacific that is threatened by deep-sea mining for its rare metals. Support from Coby Sey, who will be performing a solo set. Presented by Institute of Contemporary Arts. This is an 18+ event

Baba Yaga's Hut presents Kevin Richard Martin: Sub Zero. Kevin Richard Martin has remixed EARTH, Galya Bisengalieva, Rafael Anton Irissari, Moderat, and has also collaborated with KMRU and Hatis Noit both on record and live. Releasing albums on Room 40/Phantom Limb/Intercranial, he hasalso composed an alternate film score for Tarkovsky's 'Solaris' as commisioned by the prestigious GENT FILM FESTIVAL, which was later released on Phantom Limb, as the critically acclaimed 'Return to Solaris'. Sub Zero has been described by BOOMKAT as "A slow-burn blizzard of white-out atonalities..RIYL Thomas Köner, Mika Vainio’s elemental Ø works, or GAS, gone noxious." And has already been made album of the week by BLEEP, BOOMKAT and NORMAN RECORDS on pre-order. Presented by Institute of Contemporary Arts. This is an 18+ event

FORM presents The Orielles peforming in the round at ICA, plus support from Shaking Hand. “You’ve got to die and be reborn between albums,” begins Henry Wade, guitarist for The Orielles, describing the foundations of the band’s fourth studio album, Only You Left. “It comes naturally,” adds singer and bassist Esmé Hand-Halford, “it’s not something we consciously do.” Through this process of creative renewal, the Manchester-based trio - completed by drummer Sidonie Hand-Halford - have managed to weather a pandemic, defy the fickleness of a trend-led music industry, and emerge, phoenix-like, with something familiarly Orielles, yet altogether different. Recorded in two locations - Hydra and Hamburg - over the summer of 2024, the 11 tracks of Only You Left sees the band consolidate the bold experimentation of their previous LP, Tableau (2022), with a return to the more stripped-back, song-led approach of their early origins. Presented by FORM. Presented by Institute of Contemporary Arts. This is an 18+ event

Formed when they were still teenagers, the Orielles make music with the eagerness and abandon of youth, while also looking to the past for inspiration. The group's highly danceable sound is informed by the lighter side of '80s post-punk, the loose-limbed rhythms of Afro-funk, the trippy textures of late-'90s indie dance, and the sweet melodic sense of classic indie pop. Their debut album, 2018's Silver Dollar Moment, saw them already in full stride as a band, and 2020's Disco Volador expanded on their template by adding new sonic elements and a healthy dose of lyrical weirdness.

Bad Vibrations presents Gently Tender Gently Tender are a South London 6 piece band formed from the ashes of Palma Violets- Sam Fryer, Pete Mayhew and Will Doyle are now joined by musicians Francesca Brierley, Adam Brown and Evie Hilyer-Ziegler. Their sound is inspired by the british countryside - an indie rock band with lush harmonies and pastoral melodies - touching on folk, punk and soul. Having released a critically acclaimed, Matthew E White produced debut album in 2022, they’re launching new music in spring 2026. Presented by Institute of Contemporary Arts. This is an 18+ event

Following a sold-out performance at Cafe OTO last year, Kulku return to London for a new and highly anticipated tour. With support from Kiran Leonard and Gentle Stranger. Kulku embodies an exhilarating Happening, a profound ceremony of raw music. Organic, driven, grounded yet floating. Kulku was founded by Johanna Riska and Andreas Riska alias Wenzlovar. The roots of their music grew out of influences from early minimal music (Moondog, Steve Reich), ritual music and art rock legends of the 60s. In the tradition of German Krautrock bands such as Can and Faust, the band is characterized by a sound whose raw material is made up of Orff instruments. With this special collection of instruments: metallophone, drums, orchestral timpani, xylophone, clarinet, saxophone, cello and an assortment of self-made instruments a universe of metaphysical stories is created. Kiran Leonard's unique and ambitious body of work spans more than a decade of frenetic noise rock, ornate avant-folk, DIY no-fi, and everything in between. First becoming known as a teenager for his unpredictable and home-recorded chamber-prog epics such as "Bowler Hat Soup" (2013) and "Grapefruit" (2016), his more recent work has crystallised a vast aesthetic scope into a focused and singular voice, placing a greater emphasis on the directness of song and stream-of-consciousness poetics. Gentle Stranger are a London based trio, composed of Tom Hardwick-Allan, Alex McKenzie, and Joshua Barfoot. They are ‘a band who are not so much without a genre, but operating at a level where the very idea of genre is anathema; they make music purely as is required’ The Quietus. Presented by Institute of Contemporary Arts. This is an 18+ event

Juana Molina, TRISTÁN, Flo Dill (DJ) (nts 15) Presented by NTS & FORM. This is an 18+ event.

SC&P presents Tempers. On her new album, Delusion, Tempers - the musical alias of New York-based artist Jasmine Golestaneh - embarks on a non-linear exploration of healing and becoming. Across ten tracks, she navigates a fever dream of storm clouds and sunburst, examining delusion as a series of survival strategies shaped by desire, distraction, and cultural pressure. The album moves fluidly across genres, from synth pop to techno, grunge to metal cues, with epic balladic moments seeded throughout. Co-Produced by Golestaneh and Jorge Elbrecht, Delusion features collaborations with visual artists Camille Henrot, Estelle Hoy and Sandra Mujinga and is set for release April 24th, 2026 on Golestaneh’s own new label fear of luxury, distributed by Cascine/Secretly. Presented by Institute of Contemporary Arts. This is an 18+ event

Presented by Now Wave. This is an 18+ event

Ghostwoman is a psychedelic rock project led by Canadian musician and producer Evan Uschenko. Formed in the late 2010s, the band blends gritty garage rock, hypnotic psychedelia, bluesy minimalism, and lo-fi textures into a sound that feels both vintage and otherworldly.

White Flowers present an evening of new material. Trialling out new works as well as a previously unseen audio-visual performance, tickets for these intimate shows will sell out quickly. Upon arrival, attendees will also have the opportunity to access two unheard tracks. These will be limited solely to the event. Special guests to be announced in due course. Presented by Now Wave. This is an 18+ event

Gans is a 2 piece from Birmingham, England.
They write music about love and hate.
Inspired by Dark Rum, Dark Literature and Bleak Skylines.

Eat Your Own Ears presents Sassy 009.

Best known under his Physical Therapy alias, Daniel Fisher's Car Culture project brings focus to his sentimental side. He collages fuzzy folktronica, found sounds and unexpected edits into foot-gazing narratives. His productions are sometimes serene, sometimes heart wrenching. Zoom out and you hear tranquilizing electronica, zoom in and you find soulful songwriting. Organ Tapes is a producer and singer from London and Shanghai. His recordings characterised by layered guitar loops, midi instrumentation, field recordings and autotune vocals. ddwy is the project of London-based producers, DJs, and husband-and-wife Naomi and Ronan. What began as an experiment during a 2021 quarantine in a windowless room saw their early output of dubby, loved-up psychedelia drawing unexpected interest, eventually arriving fully formed via Munich-based label Public Possession. This has led the duo to two releases met with open arms internationally - Sprig Songs (2023) and Spinning Stones (2024) - both celebrated by critics and fans. Presented by Institute of Contemporary Arts. This is an 18+ event

Scott Morgan is a composer, sound designer and multimedia artist living in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Morgan’s dual background in Vancouver’s independent music scene and academic composition studies at Simon Fraser University culminated in the creation of his Loscil project in the late 1990s. With Loscil, Morgan explores the marriage of electronic and acoustic instrumentation to create “…stark landscapes that are evocative, earthly, anything but abstract, and so much more than merely ‘ambient’.” (The Quietus). + Marconi Union

North London DJ, producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist Jasper Tygner will be bringing a bag full of classic rave nostalgia, melodic breaks and high tempo house sounds to the club. Inspired by the deep history of London Underground club culture, his sound nods to some of the key movements over the past 30 years (such as jungle, dubstep and garage), subtly paying homage in an emotive and kaledioscopic fashion. The special guest is a past resident of ours who compliments Jasper’s take on contemporary UK underground dance - after 4 sell out shows their return has been a long the coming… Tickets on sale Tuesday 30th April at 10am BST, RSVP for priority access to tickets via the button. This is an 18+ event

Since 2020, Tommy Paslaski (aka Concave Reflection), Ben Paulson (aka kindtree) and Akeem Asani (aka Millia) have channeled their most euphoric musical whims into the Purelink project. Drifting between brittle '90s drum 'n bass and dub techno on their cult debut 12" 'Bliss / Swivel' and vaporizing Windy City jazz and post-rock motifs with muggy soundscapes on 2023's critically revered first full-length 'Signs', the trio have managed to define a painterly signature sound that's reflective but not reverent. Sure, Purelink's music can be graceful and bucolic, but it's powered by their innate devotion to the dancefloor's soundsystem. They make their Manchester/Salford debut following.the release of 2025's Faith. Sailing beyond the boundaries of electronic music, Purelink embrace liquidity on their second album, washing live instrumentation and exposed vocals over their patented cascade of dubbed ambience and ebbing rhythmic experimentation. Presented by Grey Lantern. This is an 18+ event

As part of ICA's In The Round series, Serious present Ana Roxanne. "I wanted to travel / Home into somewhere," Ana Roxanne breathes across an eerie suspended drone on 'The Age of Innocence'. "I wanted to try / And go very far." These are the first words we hear on 'Poem 1' and reintroduce an artist who's in a conspicuously different phase of her life than she was when her debut album, 'Because of a Flower', sprouted nearly six years ago. Heartbroken and reflective, Roxanne surveys the transformations that followed and displays a new- found boldness. Her voice is naked, vulnerable and alive, no longer shrouded in tape noise or looped and echoed beyond recognition beneath layered electroacoustic textures. Throughout the course of 'Poem 1', Roxanne displays her skill as a singer and songwriter in the classic sense, using the limited instrumentation simply to accent her exposed tones. Muted piano phrases and plucked bass notes languidly trail her anguished siren song on 'Berceuse in A - flat Minor, Op. 45', making each word count. On 'Keepsake' meanwhile, she sounds a s if she's alone in an abandoned bar, stroking the dust off the piano's keys as she inventories her emotional scars. There's a smell of old whisky in the air, but 'Poem 1' is a remarkably sober album; never wallowing in self pity, Roxanne finds catharsis in the logic of her expressions, twisting out the edges of her memories into surreal, cinematic asides. 'Untitled II', the album's pronounced, uninhibited centerpiece, delivers on the Lynchian promise that's been present since her first EP, 2019's '~~~'. "\[I \] always picked the slowest, saddest songs in the entire repertoire," she explained to them in 2021, recounting her teenage dream of being a jazz singer. "I would arrange them in a way that was just really slow and quiet, that was always just my vibe." Purring over a brushy, decelerated rhythm and funereal piano, Roxanne glances the edge of a hot spotlight, cutting through the stage smoke with her glassy evocations. Presented by Institute of Contemporary Arts. This is an 18+ event

Horse Lords co-presented by ICA and Baba Yaga's Hut. Horse Lords were founded in Baltimore in 2010; they evolved from the experimental collective Teeth Mountain and began as a trio with drummer Sam Haberman, guitarist Owen Gardner, and bassist Max Eilbacher, soon adding alto saxophonist Andrew Bernstein to the core ensemble. Though Horse Lords grew out of the fertile Baltimore noise and leftfield rock scene, a storied environment for artists and weirdos that has nurtured many an influential outsider band (Lungfish, Matmos), their approach is more omnivorous than the stippled rhythms of instrumental electric rock would indicate. Across sixteen years of frequent touring, Horse Lords have released ten studio, live, and collaboration albums in addition to a split EP with fellow Baltimoreans Lower Dens, a handful of singles and compilation tracks. For RVNG’s FRKWYS series, the band collaborated with Berlin-based composer Arnold Dreyblatt, a onetime student of La Monte Young and Pauline Oliveros whose just intonation chamber music was a crucial part of the post-Fluxus Downtown New York City environment. Presented by Institute of Contemporary Arts. This is an 18+ event

Bristol-based experimental band known for blending trip-hop, jazz, chamber-pop, and psychedelia with a "warm," "textured," and "deliberately lo-fi" aesthetic.

Alejandro Sanchez, better known as Chezile, has had the kind of overnight success that would give anyone whiplash. After 2023 psych-pop single “Beanie” went viral on TikTok, giving Sanchez 1.6 million monthly listeners in under two months, he went from living out of his car in Los Angeles to getting calls from labels. A sensitive soul, the Albuquerque-born multi-instrumentalist and child of Mexican regional musicians is now based in San Diego, where he’s hard at work on a full-length debut.

Parallel Lines presents Genesis Owusu. Over the past five years, Ghanaian-Australian artist Genesis Owusu has emerged as one of the most exciting artists of the moment. Back-to-back albums Smiling with No Teeth (2021) and Struggler (2023) were released to critical acclaim, cementing him as one of the most distinct and innovative artists to have risen from the Australia scene in recent years. Now, at 27, he readies himself to release his third album, REDSTAR WU & THE WORLDWIDE SCOURGE. An eclectic musical journey sits in the underscore of the album. A kaleidoscopic display of instrumentation and sound bending see genre borders crumble into dust. The sound bed shifts with the turning tides of the record. Neo-Soul feeding into Alt Pop, Synth Punk into Funk. This delicate weaving guides listeners through moments of collective ecstasy and desolation, resistance and joy, dance and reflection. The ability to tune his blended taste into one, to carve the purest of human emotions into song is a unique gift that Owusu has honed, the depth of feeling in the record effortlessly matching the depth of his lyricism. Presented by Institute of Contemporary Arts. This is an 18+ event

Lorely Rodriguez, known professionally as Empress Of, is a Honduran-American singer, songwriter, musician and record producer based in Los Angeles, California.

Opening our In the Round series in June, in collaboration with Bird on the Wire, ICA presents Jenny Hval. Iris Silver Mist, the new album by Norwegian musician, writer, and artist Jenny Hval, is not named after a song but a fragrance. The perfume by the same name was made by the nose Maurice Roucel for the French perfume house Serge Lutens, and is described as smelling more like steel than silver. It is cold and prickly, soft and shimmering, like stepping outside on an early, misty morning, your body still warm from sleep. For Jenny, Iris Silver Mist smells like being close to ghosts. “A flower that is a root that has died, been resurrected and finely grated.” In other words, the album didn’t begin with music but with the absence of it. During the pandemic, as concerts were cancelled, the physical presence of music disappeared alongside the bodies that listened to it. The smell of cigarettes, soap, and the sweat from warm stage lights and shared bathrooms was replaced by unphysical, algorithmic listening at home. Suddenly, and for the first time since she was a teenager, Jenny found herself growing interested in perfumes. Smelling, reading, collecting, writing-she immersed herself with the scented while her music was put on hold. It took her a year to understand what was happening, until she did: she was seeking another way of sensing physical intimacy. Where music had turned into a void, she filled it with fragrance Presented by Institute of Contemporary Arts. This is an 18+ event

A an intimate in-the-round performance from electronic music legend Matthew Herbert and Momoko Gill. Matthew Herbert and drummer/ vocalist Momoko Gill released their collaborative album Clay via Strut in June 2025. A soulful, elastic collaboration, Clay treads nimbly between the dancefloor and the more introspective moods of the early hours, both reminiscent of Herbert’s iconic album Around The House while taking off in a compelling new direction. Agile and open-hearted, Clay is a thrilling, sonically adventurous record from two of the UK’s most forward-thinking artists. Orbiting around Herbert’s fleet-footed productions and the ingenuity of Momoko Gill’s dexterous, melodic writing, Clay is at once stripped-back and rhythmically complex, drawing on a variety of found sources - from japanese kotos to basketballs - to give the sound an unmistakably organic feel. Bringing together original sampling techniques, live improvisation and lush, expansive arrangements, Clay is lifted into higher realms by Momoko Gill’s intimate vocal performance, soaring wide-winged across the album’s eleven tracks, whether on the euphoric melancholia of ‘Mowing’ or the emotive duet ‘Heart’. Presented by Institute of Contemporary Arts. This is an 18+ event

An in-the-round double header with French multi-instrumentalist Cécile Schott AKA Colleen and Russian experimental electronic artist, Kate NV. The compositions of Colleen, aka multi-instrumentalist Cécile Schott, areas richly varied as they are precise. Each of Colleen’s albums is shaped by her predetermined distinct instrumentation and parameters, including works composed entirely of music boxes, pocket synthesizers, and baroque stringed instruments. The connective essence of Schott’s music is in her ability to create pieces within specificity that are both transcendently expansive and imbued with profound emotions. Libres antes del final is an album that reaches for the hope and desire to be truly freed from unnecessary suffering and harmful thoughts before reaching the end of one’s life cycle. Kate NV is the multifaceted solo persona of the artist Kate Shilonosova. A changeling that follows afflatus in all its forms, NV is a student of architecture, illustrates curious, colorful characters, and improvises live with bells and water glasses amidst compact synthesizers and cables. Co-presented with Eat Your Own Ears. Presented by Institute of Contemporary Arts. This is an 18+ event

BEA1991 // Beatriz de Rijke (1991) Bea is an Anglo-Dutch mixed media artist with a background in aerial acrobatics. She calls herself a pantheist, polyfocal artist. Her practice reflects and transposes an ongoing personal investigation into the “Human Creative Existence”. Through her artist counselling practice (2021-2026), she helps artists locate their Pinnacle Creative: the essential “no BS” maker hiding within their emotional landscape. This work has led Bea to work with people and places like Andrew Callaghan from Channel 5, Because Music, Potato Head Bali, ECCO Leather, Axel Arigato, The London Contemporary Orchestra, Goldsmiths, and Iconoclast. Presented by Institute of Contemporary Arts. This is an 18+ event

upsammy & Valentina Magaletti present their new collaboration as part of our in the round series in June. A shiver of mischievous vocal snippets, disorienting rhythms and collapsing sonic architectures, upsammy and Valentina Magaletti’s first collaborative album prioritizes motion, modulation and variance. The seeds of ‘Seismo’ were sown following a commission from Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum to soundtrack an exhibition of work from the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam and the duo didn’t want to approach their collaboration flippantly. So, wandering the museum’s maze of rooms, they recorded various improvised percussive sounds with their arsenal of microphones, using the space to inform various rhythms and textures that were sculpted later into electroacoustic vignettes. This was just the starting point, though; as Magaletti and upsammy began performing together, the project evolved and ‘Seismo’ began to take shape. The duo had struck on a salient aesthetic concept, using mostly digital and acoustic mallet instruments to blur the boundary between their roles and create friction between the synthetic and the authentic. And the finished record is a phantasmagoric push-and-pull between its various conflicting elements: harmony and dissonance, randomness and predictability, openness and constraint. Supported by d&b audiotechnik. Presented by Institute of Contemporary Arts. This is an 18+ event

One Leg One Eye is the project of Ian Lynch (founding member of Irish group Lankum) and George Brennan, exploring submerged leylines of music and song, drawing on the raw aesthetics of black metal, noise and drone, while also being deeply imbued with a sense of history and myth Their debut album ...And Take The Black Worm With Me (released on Nyahh Records in 2022) is a slow burning suite of five expansive songscapes that has found its audience largely by word of mouth. Partly recorded in an abandoned Dublin factory where his father worked when he was a child, Lynch’s harrowing vocals are underpinned by vast pillars of uileann pipe drones, overlaid with effects and field recordings to conjure up a sound that is at once dark, mysterious and ultimately transcendental. Presented by Institute of Contemporary Arts. This is an 18+ event

A sublime summer solstice double header with queer goth-folk trio Tristwch y Fenywod and the surreal Americana of Jennifer Walton who will perform a rare full band show. Tristwch Y Fenywod is a band of three queer women who play avant garde Gothic rock using folk, rock, and digital instruments, with lyrics sung entirely in the Welsh language (Cymraeg). Sapphic love and desire, existential darkness, political and environmental anguish/celebration, psychogeographic romance, pagan mysticism, imaginal explorations of Celtic history and myth, psychedelia, and myriad other variations of reverie are conjured through the music of Tristwch Y Fenywod. They were formed in 2022 in Leeds, which is where the band is primarily based. Jennifer Walton is a London-based musician whose debut album Daughters explores grief, memory and surreal Americana. She’s also known for her work witl Cryalot, Microplastics, Iceboy Violet, BABii, and remixes for Metronomy. The album featured on many end of year lists and received widespread critical acclaim from the likes of The Guardian, Pitchfork and The Quietus upon its release. For this special performance Jennifer expands her usual live show to a full band. Not to be missed. This show marks the conclusion of the ICA's June In the Round series, with artists performing live from the centre of the room in 360° spatial audio. Presented by Institute of Contemporary Arts. This is an 18+ event

Like their name suggests, Model/Actriz seek to channel raw emotions into striking new forms. The band’s surface glamor is supported by nerves of steel, leveraging their focus into moments of wild abandon. Since their songs roar to life off the back of blistering guitar, relentless drums, and pummeling bass there’s an expectation that Model/Actriz aim first and foremost to be shit-starters. But their instrumental muscle couches a searching heart and the Brooklyn quartet have long made a mission to reconcile undefinable feelings by charting a ferocious new path through sound, one that brings jagged emotions back into full, sweaty alignment with the listeners’ bodies. Co-presented with Bad Vibrations. Presented by Institute of Contemporary Arts. This is an 18+ event

SYPHEN x BABA YAGA'S HUT PRESENTS: Slikback, Lord Spikeheart, Aho Ssan, Blood of Aza & Mvcoko at the ICA May 22nd, 6.30 to 11pm Diasporic explorations A celebration of the black diaspora through sonic dualities. SYPHEN, Baba Yagas Hut and the ICA team up to bring some of the most exciting artists from the black diaspora together for a deep dive into experimentalism. Slikback Slikback (real name: Fredrick M Njau) is an electronic producer from Nairobi, Kenya mainly focusing on experimental music, noise, bass and high intensity rhythms. Over the years his sound has morphed into various forms all meant to be an expression of different ideas and emotions. Unbound by any specific thing, his unique blend of sounds can be found in his multiple releases. “Attrition" (July 18, 2025) marks his first full-length album for Planet Mu, delivering an immersive melding of cinema and game sound design with tough dance music, drawing on elements of Gqom, Dubstep, Tech-Step, and Hardcore Techno. It's like a sci-fi film for the ears, exploring a chain of events with dark atmospheres and dramatic pacing; trapdoors and auditory jump scares. A standout moment in Slikback’s career, "Attrition" is a masterclass in sound design and vision. Strange yet beautiful, intense yet rewarding. Lord Spikeheart Dedicated to his iconic grandmother Muthoni wa Kirima, the only woman to earn the rank of Field Marshal during Kenya's Mau Mau uprising against British colonists, Lord Spikeheart's long-awaited solo debut 'The Adept' is an album that seethes with revolutionary energy. He's a unique vocalist and enigmatic storyteller who's found his niche in the space between genres, freely mangling elements of death metal and grindcore with rap, mystical folkloric incantations and ear-splitting techno in his unrelenting search for peak sonic intensity. Screaming, growling and rhyming in Kikuyu, Kiswahili and English, he cuts an idiosyncratic shape into the cultural landscape, shining a spotlight on the African continent's hardest, heaviest music. Aho Ssan Aho Ssan is the artist name of Paris based Niamké Désiré. After studying graphic design and cinema, he began to compose electronic music and create his own digital instruments. His debut LP Simulacrum was released earlier this year via Subtext Recordings. Based on the concept of Jean Baudrillard, it pitches society’s presentation of inclusivity and equality against his own experience of growing up black in France. Blood of Aza Blood of Aza is a London-based artist, producer, and DJ whose blissful sonic palette ranges from soothing MIDI lullaby magic and speaker-blowing club edits, to hell-raising ambient soundscapes. Gaining prominence on SoundCloud by releasing remixes of pop and rap idols, the 21-year-old released her debut EP, “Beneath Wings,” on Berlin-based label Soulfeeder in late 2022 before self-releasing album I Heard Your Calls in 2024. Deftly ricocheting between dissonant noise and delicate atmospherics, Blood of Aza is a consummate purveyor of extreme Mvcoko MVCOKO is London-based dj, producer and founder of SYPHEN. Their work engages with the extremities of emotion - drawing on anguish, rage and tension as core materials. Through layered, narrative-driven sets, MVCOKO uses sound as a form of emotional processing, tracing arcs that shift between chaos and calm, abrasion and beauty. Their sets are relentless and unpredictable, distorted and melancholic blending noise, punk, industrial, hardcore, film scores, ambient and more. Each performance brings a state of intensity, reflection and surrender through sonic storytelling. Presented by Baba Yaga's Hut. This is an 18+ event

Like their name suggests, Model/Actriz seek to channel raw emotions into striking new forms. The band’s surface glamor is supported by nerves of steel, leveraging their focus into moments of wild abandon. Since their songs roar to life off the back of blistering guitar, relentless drums, and pummeling bass there’s an expectation that Model/Actriz aim first and foremost to be shit-starters. But their instrumental muscle couches a searching heart and the Brooklyn quartet have long made a mission to reconcile undefinable feelings by charting a ferocious new path through sound, one that brings jagged emotions back into full, sweaty alignment with the listeners’ bodies. Co-presented with Bad Vibrations. Presented by Institute of Contemporary Arts. This is an 18+ event

Superchunk + Oblivians (14+ under 16's with and adult) Superchunk After the shocking, and for many, demoralizing result of the 2016 election, “I didn’t buy the silver lining some were promoting that ‘well, at least art and music will be great now!’,” says Superchunk co-founder and frontman Mac McCaughan. “Obviously, any sane person would gladly trade four to eight years of terrible music for not having our country dismantled to satisfy the whims of a vengeful child and his enablers.” That said, good music and art still have a lot to say, and the urgency of current events gave Mac, Laura, Jim, and Jon the momentum to make something new sooner than later. “It would be strange to be in a band, at least our band, and make a record that completely ignored the surrounding circumstances that we live in and that our kids are going to grow up in.” Enter What a Time to Be Alive, Superchunk’s first album in over four years. It’s a record, says Mac, “about a pretty dire and depressing situation but hopefully not a record that is dire and depressing to listen to.” Indeed, like so much of Superchunk’s music in the band’s nearly three decades together, the songs on What a Time to Be Alive meet rage and anxiety head-on with the catharsis and exhilaration of loud punk fire and vulnerable pop energy. Like 2013’s I Hate Music, which focused on death, loss, and the role of music in an aging life, the new record brings spirit to the frontlines of pain—it’s as defiant as it is despairing, as much a call to arms as a throwing up of hands.