Nuits Sonores 2025

When entering Nuits Sonores’ Les Grandes Locos site, your eyes are instantly drawn to the NEF stage: a vast 19th-century shell once used for train repairs, now partially revived as part of the broader cultural venue. Situated in La Mulatière, where Lyon’s centre gives way to the light industry of its outskirts, the space is defined by its scale and scars: control cabins on broken plinths, electrical boxes rusted shut and cracking concrete beams sealed with a patchwork of mortar. Sunlight slants through fractured skylights at the Day programmes’ 4pm entry time, illuminating minimal, temporary interventions – hanging gauze-like sheets, steel staging setups, and projected visuals – and imploring those on the outside to come take a peek.

It’s an imposing, even theatrical, entry point, and one that seems to promise something monumental. But for all the grandeur of the NEF, I found myself pulled time and again to the festival’s denser corners. Chief among them was the Garage stage, directly opposite the NEF: the tightest and arguably least adorned of the four, but where the sharpness of programming brought the most reward.

Here, Gooooose delivered some compelling live creations on day one, re-constructing tracks from individual elements, often with unconventional time signatures; a snapping snare here, a thunderous bass kick there, causing similarly twitching responses from those watching on. The following day, Simo Cell and Abdullah Miniawy paired the latter’s twisting spoken word with murky, dubwise production and layered textures, commanding deep nods and metronomic head twists of approval upon each pulse (notably, Simo Cell also played a bass-heavy, word-of-mouth set at Unité Centrale, a record store in the city centre, more akin to his usual stylings, highlighting the value of keeping your ear to the ground for such extra-curriculars).

It was Harry Wright’s set as Mun Sing that stood as the key Garage highlight, however. As a former Bristol resident who’s caught Wright play many times – both solo and as half of Giant Swan – this latest chapter feels like his most realised. Donning blue face paint, a yellow wig and red lipstick in a pantomime scarecrow costume (mirroring the cover of his Frolic EP), he brought a surreal, theatrical flair that cut through a festival heavy on four-to-the-floor energy.

The scarecrow-as-conductor metaphor held weight: he shaped the mood and tempo with embodied intensity, careening across stage with the wide-eyed, startled glee akin to The Scream, but with none of its same dread. Instead, the performance tilted towards queer cabaret and ecstatic release, as Wright mouthed pitched-up pop vocals by the likes of Golin straight back at the front row — a tangle of strangers briefly united by reverence and joy.

It recalled a conversation I’d had earlier that day in Democracy in the Night: Club Politics, a Lab programme workshop that traced how clubs can operate as microcosms of inclusion, control, and community. When the balance is right, the floor becomes more than just a place for dancing, but, to get a little cheesy, an explicit or implicit experience of belonging, with strangers and besties alike, often based on shared values built by those communities. Wright’s performance didn’t preach that point, but when artists transmit such infectious enthusiasm, you can usually feel it, physically and collectively, on the floor.

Of course, while performer engagement and attendee alignment help shape a set’s becoming (to borrow a Deleuzian term), everything still revolves around and is enmeshed by the music — and some sounds are more primed for this alignment than others. 

For me and many others interested in the business of shaking ass, the showcase of largely Latin-influenced and originating DJs playing (baile) funk, cumbia, guaracha, merengue and more, is a major highlight. O Ghettão – the combined forces of DJ Nigga Fox, DJ Danifox and DJ Firmeza – made a rare live appearance to start the early evening mood at serene 80bpm, eliciting swaying grooves and some dropped shoulders from the crowd. 

For this, the Soundsystem stage was an excellent host, channelling the rhythms through its corridor of overhanging quilt, via some upside-down Funktion One speakers (having asked a club-running friend, it remains unclear why this was done). The atmosphere was similarly playful, as Danifox and Firmeza tapped away stripped-back percussive lines on their beat pads in typical Kudoro fashion, while Nigga Fox took on the role of a buoyant DJ-cum-MC.

Smiles abound, the set ended up closer to the 120bpm mark to set the stage for Rosa Pistola to inch things up further. As part of an altogether sweatier affair, she offered up crowd favourites like Muevete Loka’s new track Freebot and its swirling ‘Estupida’ breakdown, decades-old club classics like Faithless’s Insomnia and other viral earworms such as last year’s incredibly popular TikTok funk Eternxlkz’s Enough!. These were mixed with slightly more obscure references, including El Nick DGO and Clementaum’s hot Dale pal pari or – one for the French locals – King Doudou’s propelling neo perreo track Hellcat, but the crowd loved all of it the same.

As Toccororo saw out the sunlit hours with some hardstyle, the Night slots commenced on the other side of town. This great migration takes place over the nearest bridge – by foot (thirty mins), bike (fifteen mins) or car (five mins) – to Le Sucrière for four of the five days. A taxi driver who takes me to the airport remarks that he’s done the journey nearly fifty times in three days. Previously the home of the day proceedings, the distinctly more modern and club-ready ex-sugar factory site is perched on the edge of the Saône River, just past a hotel bar with an incongruous painting of Nick Cave.

Lose your breath up five flights of stairs and you arrive at Le Sucre, a rooftop club with panoramic views and a more intimate club setting. Proceedings tend to be eased into with more calm-inducing, chin-stroking works, such as The Talk, a performance by Heith, James K and Günseli Yalcinkaya.

Setup by the Times network (a coalition of festival groups including Terraforma and Reworks), The Talk cleverly integrated real-time AI visuals that smoothed the trio’s faces in a kawaii-style rendition of themselves, while Heith and James K crafted hypnotic textures via laptop or guitar. Yalcinkaya provided the spoken word (and occasionally sung) narrative, taking the audience on a trip that coalesced into processional bass drumming and Heith’s electric guitar noodles. I had passed some techno enthusiasts on the stairs, who gleefully urged me to ‘shh’ as another remarked on there being ‘no noise allowed in the club’, though this is exactly the sort of original, commissioned work that I find most intriguing. Ultimately, it provides a space for newness (and another reason for these festivals to exist, in that as incubators), even if not all will find it appealing at that specific time and place.

Granted, these early morning hours surrounded by the drunk and/or sleep-deprived may not be the best place for quiet introspection. There can be a calling for visceral attention to the body instead, and many acts brought such an approach to stage.

Floor shaking force came from Tshegue. Wrapped in an Afro-Black Panther flag, lead singer Faty Sy Savanet entered through the crowd at Le Sucre, rather than from backstage, establishing from the first moment that this was not a performance you watched at a distance. Her energy was unrelenting: she stalked every inch of the stage, jumped off it and re-entered the crowd to beckon the whole audience crouch with her, before singing in Lingala, French and English directly into the eyes of the transfixed. At one point, she casually borrowed a cigarette from the front row, lighting it and having a puff, before passing it to Nicolas Dacunha, the drummer of the duo. The floor trembled beneath the crowd, which had splintered into clusters of groups jumping and dancing with abandon. Unlike the focal-point hypnosis often created by DJs, Tshegue’s unbridled movement spread outwards, dissolving any fixed centre and electrifying the space with collective energy.

A similar dynamism came from Mali’s MC Waraba and his Furie Soundsystem DJs, whose set soon after fused high-tempo djembe-inflected rhythms with Waraba’s irrepressible movement: stomping, striding into the crowd, and even headbutting imaginary footballs (clearly inspired by Paris Saint Germain, who won its first UEFA Champions League mere hours before). Like Tshegue, his energy reconfigured the space into something closer to ecstatic release and ceremony than concert.

Despite all these highlights, clearly enjoyed by many, it’s worth reflecting on that I may not be Nuits Sonores’ target market — or, at least, the market that was seemingly in the majority. I can’t profess to be the biggest fan of Peggy Gou’s ‘business techno’, nor was I gurning my face off at Chase & Status’. In fact, I rarely found myself in the magnificent NEF stage I opened this account with for long, and where the former (alongside many other more commercially-inclined, mass-market artists) drew massive crowds. Likewise, I found myself generally underwhelmed by the offerings at Le Sucrière’s main Central or Club hubs, where Jersey’s viral DIY party-spirit didn’t translate, and the likes of Funk Assault only delivered on the latter aspect of the duo’s name.

That doesn’t mean those sets shouldn’t be there. They just weren’t for me. My taste leaned more towards the eclectic programming at the Garage and Le Sucre, or the rhythmic, bass-first pull of the Soundsystem DJs. This isn’t high-brow enthusiasm either – much of this was plainly accessible and had the whole dance floor full – but the more repetitive, expected approach (massive kick drum, breakdown, white noise, repeat methodology) is no longer my bag. In that sense, perhaps the true strength of Nuits Sonores lies in its refusal to cater to a single taste or type. It allows different rhythms, bodies, and scenes to coexist. You don’t have to love every booking to feel like part of the whole.

But beyond personal taste, what struck me most across five days was how Nuits Sonores carries itself as a cultural proposition. In a music festival landscape increasingly shaped by private-equity  and branding excess, its quieter structures of independence and intent stood out.

Unlike many of its contemporaries, Nuits Sonores remains independently run by Arty Farty, a non-profit cultural organisation based in Lyon. That autonomy preserves curatorial freedom and keeps the festival anchored in its local community, without the moral murk of wondering where ticket revenue ultimately ends up. This spirit also ran through its collaboration with the Reset! network, a Europe-wide coalition of independent festivals and cultural actors, who hosted a series of panels and workshops as part of the Lab programme, with members in attendance whom I had the chance to chat with. 

That decentralised, values-led model resonated across the programming too, from the radio showcases by Lyon’s Radio Béguin and Palestine’s Radio Alhara, to bookings like Brazil’s Batekoo collective, underscoring the festival organiser’s apparent belief that cultural exchange and artistic brilliance don’t need to be traded off against ethics or scale.

Of course, the programme isn’t guided solely by curatorial risk. Artists like Peggy Gou signal the festival’s need to balance global star power (and the tickets they can sell) with commitments to local initiatives and independent voices. And while Nuits Sonores has far more autonomy than many of its peers, it isn’t free from compromise — Crédit Mutuel, one of its sponsors, has financial ties to illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, for instance. 

That said, there’s an important distinction to make between festivals owned outright by private equity firms, where profits are funnelled directly to shareholders and ethically questionable ventures, and those that accept partial funding from sponsors whose interests may be more diffuse. In this case, the connection felt distant, and the brand presence on site was non-existent (branding was limited entirely to the Brooklyn Brewery-sponsored bar, or the radio stations playing at its Plateau Radio stand).

Whether you're in it for the headliners, the oddities, or just a dance in the sun, Nuits Sonores offers enough variety to shape the experience to your own tempo. In the name of journalism, I stuck it out for the full five days, but I recommend choosing more wisely. With separate day and night programmes (as well as ticketing), and stages that loosely connect artists by tone, genre, or geography, it’s easy to dip in and out without burning out. So too do the Lab’s talks and workshops, which offer space to pause and re-anchor the music within a broader cultural and political context.

None of this would matter much without the people. And that, too, was – for the most part (setting aside some nonplussed chatter over Lyra Pramuk’s admittedly low-mixed vocals) – a pleasure: a refreshingly unpretentious crowd, ranging in age from teens to retirees, mostly local or from nearby regions. Patterned shirts and slogan tees (Ska Wars, Cool Guys Like Techno, I DJ to Forget About You) abounded. But unlike some of London’s overstuffed, ketamine-dulled club nights, these were dancers: sweating, smiling, actually moving to the music. A festival can have all the good intentions in the world, but the crowd can make or break it.

Nuits Sonores’ 22nd edition made its future feel clear: keep making space for the grassroots, for plural voices, and for the joy that emerges when all that work actually lands.