Festival Lineup

HEXENBRUTAL (SLO)

Tough Prekmurje maximalism of intense burdens

The Prekmurje duo Hexenbrutal performs heavy musicianship with intense burdens. Their maximal sound intervention of post-noise/industrial/hardcore/doom/sludge/metal made a first mark on the Slovenian scene in 2004, and until a creative pause in 2017, carved out one of the most unique expressions of domestic heavy sounds. After extensive touring across Central Europe and the region on the back of a strong trio of albums, the project went on hiatus until being resurrected in 2023, while this year soon they plan to release their anniversary, fourth album. Expect rhythmic fervor and a fresh combination of percussiveness, mixed with vocal and synthesizer incorporation of sound interventions.

Matej Kolmanko – electronics, effects, synthesizers, vocals

Iztok Koren – drums, guitar, effects, synthesizer

Facebook

Bandcamp

Yvonne Moriel SWEETLIFE (AUT)

For a sweet life, new jazz of dub gravitation and hip hop intelligence

Austrian saxophonist Yvonne Moriel is stylistically versatile, trained in jazz and classical music, and highly active in the field of contemporary/experimental music. She created her live project sweetlife in 2022, which now brings together four of the most promising austrian artists of the young jazz generation. The music of sweetlife combines jazz with dub effects and electronics, while free-jazz-inspired improvisational sections meet complex rhythmic patterns and beats influenced by modern jazz and hip-hop. In 2024, sweetlife was selected as a New Austrian Sound of Music act for 2025/26, with Yvonne Moriel shortly after winning an Austrian Jazz Award as Best Newcomer. Driven by the constantly innovative spirit of jazz and the experimental music the project will release an album debut in 2025.

Yvonne Moriel / saxophone, flute

Lorenz Widauer / trumpet

Stephanie Weninger / moog & keys

Raphael Vorraber / drums

https://yvonnemoriel.com

Instagram

Facebook

Youtube

PLANTING JUPITER (SRB)

Igors, masters of the creative moment

The convergence of two Igor’s in the entity named Planting Jupiter is a merging of analog and electronic rhythmic and its disruptions. Blending organic drumming of Igor Malešević with cutting-edge synth textures and samples of Igor Lečić, the duo crafts immersive soundscapes through half-improvised sessions, allowing spontaneous creativity to shape the music in real time. Moving fluidly from deep, atmospheric soundscapes to raw, aggressive bursts of energy, they create a translucent cocoon between the current moment and the history of minimal, ambient music, IDM and experimental music.

Igor Malešević – drums

Igor lečić – electronics, effects, synthesisers

Facebook

FUNK OF TERROR (SLO)

Philosophy of a leftfield electronic abstractism

Funk of Terror is a Slovenian duo consisting of Peter Žargi and Sašo Podobnik, unlikely sources, composition and DAW, DAW and composition. In December 2024, they put out their debut release Insect Politics EP on ENTE Tapes, which presents their philosophy of leftfield electronic abstraction. With the EP they make a contemporary refreshing of the postulates of old acousmatic compositions and explore the tangibility of club-adjacent music and the influences of soundsystem traditions – from older dub to the younger bass school. The saturated music hums in mantra-like undulating frequencies and draws attention to itself from surprising corners of Slovenian creativity.

Bandcamp EP

https://ffm.to/fot1

RIVOCS (ITA)

Imagining Friulian countryside through new folk and pop

Rivocs is a duo of young musicians from Friuli, based in Udine, that presents an imaginary representation of the Friulian countryside, where expanses of fields and unlikely skies are the protagonists. The project’s music threads the expanse of new folk and pop, where the traditional-popular binary is decontextualized and re-inserted into new sound environments. In late 2024 they published their debut self-titled album for the Italian label Nota.

Instagram

Bandcamp

Soundcloud

Youtube

CUT TRIO (AUT-SLO)

Autonomous creativity of free jazz

The Austrian-Slovenian free jazz band CUT Trio is made up of outstanding instrumentalists of freed creativity. Tanja Feichtmair’s alto saxophone, Cene Resnik’s tenor saxophone and Urban Kušar’s percussions met for the first time in 2021 at the suggestion of the FriForma curators for the V:NM festival in Graz. After an exceptional audience response and their debut album Pelletron / Dynamitron for the sub-label Inexhaustible Editions / Edicija FriForma, which received numerous compliments, they presented their second album Accelerator at the end of 2024. We have already had the possibility to hear the musicians at Sajeta in various other bands (Acamar Trio, Kombo B, with Giovanni Maier, solo,…), and now the previously unheard combo of three unique sounds in Tolmin comes after performances at Jazz Ravne, Jazz Cerkno-Keltika, Artacts-St, Johann, Austria and at Kulturforum-Villach, Austria.

Tanja Feichtmair – alto saxophone

Cene Resnik – tenor saxophone

Urban Kušar – drums and percussion

Inexhaustible Editions

https://inexhaustibleeditions.bandcamp.com/album/accelerator

SULLA LINGUA (AU-ITA)

Riccardo La Foresta: drums/drummophone

Anthony Pateras: electronics

Stefano Pilia: baritone guitar

Sulla Lingua is the world’s only Australian-Italian electroacoustic noise rock trio, featuring Anthony Pateras (tētēma/PIVIXKI) on electronics, Stefano Pilia (Zu, Rokia Traoré, Massimo Volume) on guitar and Riccardo La Foresta on drums and his own creation, the Drummophone. Sulla Lingua in Italian means ‘on the tongue’ or ‘on language’, which summarises the band’s high/lo aesthetics – they could be referring to Roland Barthes or saluting Gene Simmons, but they still haven’t decided. Both seem fitting to their trance-y harmonics and heavy grooves mixed with psychoacoustic electronics and cinematic textures. Their debut album ON recalls the radical, contradictory first statements of music nerds’ past. It proposes invention, challenging yet weirdly catchy, as an energised salve for messed-up times. It recalls slowly moshing at a musique concrète diffusion, or perhaps being lost deep in thought at some kind of sludge rock fest. Mixed by Timothy Lewis (Thighpaulsandra, Coil, Spiritualized), mastered by James Plotkin (Scorn, Khanate, Phantomsmasher) and released on Improved Sequence, it sounds huge: thick, tight and immense.

https://www.anthonypateras.com/news/new-band-sulla-lingua

BO NINGEN (JPN)

Japanese force majeur of alternative rock

Meaning ‘Stick Man’ in Japanese, Bo Ningen are a Japanese London-based four-piece alternative rock band. Embodying today’s art-music scene where crossovers of different cultures are flourishing, they can list such an iconic list of conspirators and collaborators as is rarely seen – Alexander McQueen, Douglas Hart (The Jesus and Mary Chain), Damo Suzuki (CAN), Juergen Teller and Matthew Herbert to cherry pick just a few. Bo Ningen are fusing disparate sounds and influences into a fierce, eclectic torrent of grooves and bringing them across the oceans to the stages of Glastonbury, Coachella, Fuji Rock and Roadburn, where they’ve rained sweet hell with their chaotic and anarchic performances, often leading to personal injury. With the release of their alternate soundtrack to the movie Holy Mountain in 2024 and new material being recorded, Bo Ningen are yet again bringing their quest for artistic invention to the fore.

https://www.boningen.info

Instagram

Facebook

Spotify

ČAO PORTOROŽ (SLO)

Yugoslavian luxury for rock deviants

Čao Portorož are those that wear sunglasses in a dark club, dressed as knights stroll around Tivoli park and think who constitutes a Slovenian. In other words, they are cool, rock’n’roll, spirited and caught up with the zeitgeist. They passed the master’s exam for the musical combination of alternative rock and new wave at the Yugoslav school and forefathers such as EKV, Idoli, Borghezia and Paraf. The futuristic vision of the latter is given a stylistic and thematic modernization of punk dance, but maintains the same brawling intensity. In 2024 they released their fourth album Design (Kapa Records), which reaches deeper into the spheres of synth-punk and electronics, while remaining faithful to the indie-punk foundations of their discography.

Instagram

Facebook

Spotify

Youtube

E-PLAY (SRB)

Softhearted vivacity of a shunted non-genre

Lost in sound, but not lost with words – E’Play are a hub for the blissed out indistinction of alternative, that shunted 90’s non-genre which the Belgrade band brings back into full vivacity. From 1998 their softhearted sound encapsulated in distorted bass and gentle, atmospheric guitars aims for the perfectness in rock. This, more than successfully achieved paradox, brought them critical acclaim on the Serbian music scene, most freshly at the start of the year with the sixth studio album Diši duboko (PGP RTS), which will bring even the staunch believers of guilty pleasures to the righteous side of rock enjoyment without prejudice.

Maja Cvetković – bass guitar/vocals

Goran Ljuboja Trut – drums

Mina Knežević – backing vocals

Bojan Ristić – electric guitar

https://www.eplaymusic.com

Instagram

Facebook

Spotify

Youtube

ŠUMSKI (HRV)

Musical summit of the nonaligned bops and leftfield rhythms of the cult Croatian alternatives

One of the most well-known Croatian alternative bands Šumski has been for over 30 years cultivating a rainforest of nonaligned bops and leftfield rhythms. The Zagreb trio’s extensive postrock-kraut-jazz-funk-electronic flora and fauna urges one to dance and be present in their infectious optimism. Their ‘sound without borders’ is akin to Can, Faust, Blurt, Captain Beefheart but also the movies of Jacques Tati and the books of Blaise Cendrars. Touring all around Europe and with 6 albums under their belt, they’ve in 2024 reissued Ronioci (Zvuk Močvare), which sounds as fresh as it did in 2003.

Instagram

Facebook

Spotify

Bandcamp

Youtube

MDSHMARIQ (EE)

From Estonia with Love, an expressive sparring match of modular electronic instability and a theatrical vocal 

From Estonia comes a sparring match between electronic instability and a theatrical vocal. MDSHMARIQ is a creative collaboration between Modulshtein, an artist who blends IDM, future jazz, ambient and downtempo, and MariQ, an expressive singer and performer. The duo was formed in 2024 during their work on a major theater project, but doesn’t conform to the velvety stuffiness of the old, instead offering a thrilling sense of adventure in a tense game of contrasts.

Instagram

Youtube

Spotify

LIAMERE (SLO)

Distinct fusion of electronic music with far reaching atmospheric landscapes

A mysterious duo, which doesn’t follow the well trodden musical pathways, but shapes their own. Malidah (Kaja Skrbinšek) and two round robins (Andi Koglot) create atmospheric landscapes with a distinctive fusion of future garage, ambient, and trip-hop, where soft pop contours meet gritty urban and sonic escapades. After two longer creative pauses, Liamere again emerged on the scene in the fall of 2023, and made known that their music is not intended for instant hedonism, but is a far reaching consideration of nostalgia and the future. The sensual mists of contemporary electronics will re-materialize this spring in the highly anticipated album Re-, which the project will present with a brand new 6-member live band.

Instagram

Facebook

Spotify

Youtube

THE ANSWER IS NO (SLO-AUT)

Duo united in the quest of exploration, expansion and deconstruction of the sonic possibilities of their instruments. 

In their project The Answer is no, the Slovenian-Austrian duo Maja Osojnik and Ursula Winterauer use the same sound sources – voice, electric bass and sampler. This conscious choice creates a live situation that creates an exciting mirroring on a visual and sonic level. Their goal is to explore, expand and deconstruct the sonic possibilities of their instruments, entering into an intense dialogue in the process. A master presentation in movement through the border area between analog and digital sounds and between virtual and real spaces from two sonic mutineers.

Maja Osojnik & Ursula Winterauer
e-bass, sampler, electronics, vocals

Website – Maja Osojnik

Instagram – Maja Osojnik

Website – Ursula Winterauer

Instagram – Ursula Winterauer

BaBa ZuLa (TUR)

The unrivalled masters of 21st century Turkish psychedelia

What is psychedelia? That, which expresses the soul. The creative spirit of the unrivalled masters of 21st century Turkish psychedelic are open to everything that the world has to offer. Guided by the musical compass of Istanbul rock’n’roll, psychedelia and electronics, their joyfully decadent performances are rituals that join together various artistic disciplines, dance, poetry and theater, into an audiovisual treat. By mixing oriental instruments such as darbuka, electric saz, finger cymbals and spoons with electronics and modern sounds and retro Turkish drum machines, BaBa ZuLa chart their own history. Proponents of musical eclecticism and life’s diversity find home on the renowned Glitterbeat label, for which they released the album İstanbul Sokakları last year, which opens a dialogue with the situation in contemporary Istanbul.

https://www.babazula.com

Instagram

Facebook

Spotify

Bandcamp

MARYLOU (FRA)

A DJ trip of cinematic proportions, sacred beats and hypnotic explorations

Marylou is the French, Berlin based DJ, painter, herbalist, dancer and radio host. Though she’s been labeled a non career DJ, her radical taste and unique execution makes her the DJ’s favourite DJ of Donato Dozzy, Rabih Beaini, DJ Marcelle and Lena Willikens. Her genre-defying sets are a hypnotic blend of tradition and futurism, weaving psychedelic layers of traditional music, free jazz, noise, dub, footwork, and breakcore. As an affiliate of Morphine Records,YOUTH and Ominira, a regular guest of stages such as Atonal, Terraforma and Freerotation, a host at Rinse France and Refugee Worldwide and a SHAPE artist, her performance at Sajeta shouldn’t be missed.

Instagram

Soundcloud

Youtube

TROMBONEEE (ITA)

Radical and non-idiomatic electroacoustic improvisation

Tromboneee is a radical and non-idiomatic electroacoustic improvisation trio formed by Andrea Laudante (laptop), Carlo Mascolo (trombone) and Paolo Montella (laptop). In a project born from a constant dialogue on form, structure and materials, they explore the tension between sound and silence, gesture and matter. Characterized by gestural power, rapid execution and the creation of soundscapes, their performance balances acoustic, concrete and synthetic sounds. Along the way, Tromboneee members have presented their work at major international festivals and institutions, including IRCAM (Paris), ICMC (Shenzhen), WOCMAT (Taipei), InaGRM (Paris), Tempo Reale (Florence), Atemporanea (Buenos Aires), CIM XXIII (Ancona), In-Sonora (Madrid), Prix CIME, Futura (Crest) and ACMC (Sydney).

Andrea Laudante – website

Carlo Mascolo – website

Paolo Montella – website

DENGA STAT (SLO-ITA)

Italian-Slovenian quartet of impro-jazz limitlesness

Denga Stat is an ad hoc quartet made up of Italian-Slovenian musicians, united by the limitlessness of musical expression, based on jazz improvisation. The band’s rhythm section and wind instrument come from Vrtojba’s musical nursery, possibly the most prolific domestic impro-jazz incubator, while the keyboardist often appears on Slovenian stages with various bands and projects.

Marko Lasič is a drummer and instrumentalist who studied at the Nova Gorica music school and at the private school of Zlatko Kaučič. Since then, he has been playing in Kaučič’s band Kombo Zlatko Kaučiča, as well as the Jubileium Orchestra and the Borderless Orchestra. He has also studied and played with other well-known artists, including Tristan Honzinger, Joel Loandra and Evan Parker. He is active in the Free Stellar trio, Gian Agresti quartet, Alchemical Playgrounds, Kača Sraka in Lev, Orkester brez meja, Trus!, The Puzzled, and many other bands and projects. 

Giorgio Pacorig is a pianist and composer, active in jazz and improvised music. He graduated in piano in 1996 from the “G. Tartini” Conservatory in Trieste, where he currently teaches. In his rich career, he has recorded around seventy albums as a bandleader and studio musician.

Timi Vremec is a bassist from Gorica, who completed his education at the Zlatko Kaučič school in 2023, and further developed his instrument prowess under the mentorship of Jošt Drašler. He has played in the bands Nesesari Kakalulu, Kavasutra, Spranga Farbat, Grunt, Gal Furlan Quartet, Bregove dere and others. He’s a member of the organizing team of the Improbiro festival and the Fri-Fru-Fra concert series, and forms the team of the Creative Zone Vrtojba. His musical interests cover a very wide range of genres, from improvised music, funk, afrobeat, to avantrock.

Jure Boršič is a Slovenian saxophonist and clarinetist of the younger generation. He is interested in various musical styles and genres, ranging from improvised music, free jazz and electroacoustic music to noise and experimental metal, while also collaborating with poets and dancers. For several years he worked as part of the Kombo school of Zlatko Kaučič, and was, and still is, a member of numerous Slovenian alternative music groups. He also participates in the organizational teams of the Fri-Fru-Fra concert series in his native Nova Gorica and Taktišče in Ljubljana.

Marko Lasič, drums

Girgio Pacorig, keyboards

Timi Vremec, electric bass

Jure Boršič, saxophone

ENIKŐ SZABÓ & FRIENDS (HUN)

Spiced up Hungarian folk for a slow musical tourism

Enikő Szabó and her band spice up Hungarian folk music with an addicting sweet complexity. The musician imbues authentic folk instruments with an aesthetic language of love and light, producing a captivating atmosphere both for folk music fans and modern urban music lovers. This is music for a slow musical tourism, led by a whimsical flow and piercing our imagined landscapes with even richer reality. She’s coming to the magical Sotočje with her own project, but in the past her talent shined next to well known artists of the Hungarian folk scene such as the dulcimer player Kálmán Balogh, the Elemer Balazs Group, Ökrös Band, the Honvéd Art Ensemble, and many others. 

Youtube

Spotify

Soundcloud

CHRIS ECKMAN (SLO)

Alchemical singersongwriting of a Slovenian Americana

Chris Eckman is one of those songwriters with the alchemist’s touch. He’s proved it over the years as the songwriter of the Seattle rock-folk band The Walkabouts, as well as across a lauded six album solo career. His songs have been recorded by Townes Van Zandt, Steve Wynn, Willard Grant Conspiracy (and others), and his last album, the spare, haunted Where the Spirit Rests, won the prestigious German Record Critics Award (Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik) in 2021. Three and a half years later he’s back with The Land We Knew the Best, and new stories to tell. He is going to do that accompanied by an extended lineup: Blaž Celarec (drums), Žiga Golob (contrabass), Alastair McNeill (electric guitar), Jana Beltran (vocals, acoustic-electric guitar) and Andraž Mazi (pedal steel).

Chris Eckman (guitar, vocals)

Blaž Celarec (drums)

Žiga Golob (double bass)

Alastair McNeill (electric guitar)

Jana Beltran (vocals, acoustic-electric guitar)

Andraž Mazi (pedal steel)

https://www.chriseckman.net

Instagram

Facebook

Spotify

Bandcamp