Something unusual is about to unfold inside Kraftwerk Berlin. Not quite a festival, not exactly a concert series, but something that stretches somewhere in between. The Infinite Now marks the first formal collaboration between Berlin Atonal and Unsound, two institutions that have spent decades shaping the outer edges of experimental and electronic music. Together, they propose a thirty-hour uninterrupted programme where music, performance, and sound art unfold as a continuous flow rather than a sequence of isolated sets.
The event runs from Saturday, May 16, until midnight on Sunday, May 17, transforming Kraftwerk’s vast industrial halls into a durational sonic environment. More than twenty artists will contribute to the programme, moving across electronic composition, improvisation, performance, and sound art. Among the first names announced are Oneohtrix Point Never, Hania Rani, Actress, Detroit techno visionary Terrence Dixon, and Japanese experimental pioneer Keiji Haino. Theatre director Romeo Castellucci joins composer Scott Gibbons for the premiere of a new performance work titled To Carthage Then I Came.
The first wave of artists already hints at the event’s radical scope. Legendary Japanese improvisation collective Marginal Consort, who convene only on rare occasions, will present one of their extended, unpredictable performances built from acoustic instruments, found objects, and spontaneous interaction across space. Keiji Haino brings more than five decades of uncompromising experimental practice, where performances can move from near silence to overwhelming intensity in seconds. Detroit techno visionary Terrence Dixon premieres a new project titled A Cosmic Display Of Beauty, while Actress returns with a new live show continuing the singular sonic language he has developed across ten albums.
Elsewhere, Scottish smallpipes player Brìghde Chaimbeul expands traditional instrumentation toward drone and electroacoustic minimalism; bassoonist and composer Joy Guidry moves between ambient composition and free jazz; and producer Marta Salogni presents a new work using tape machines and analogue feedback systems as live instruments. Artists such as Joanne Robertson, Paul Jebanasam, Aleksandra Słyż, Shane Parish (performing acoustic interpretations of Autechre) and the collaborative quartet of 2k88, Lauren Duffus, Rainy Miller, and Bianca Scout push the programme even further across experimental club music and improvisation.
Before the main event begins, three Prelude Concerts offer entry points into the wider programme. On May 10, Oneohtrix Point Never presents Tranquilizer, a new audiovisual show developed with multidisciplinary artist Freeka Tet, with Polish composer Piotr Kurek opening the evening. Two days later, Hania Rani introduces her electronic alter ego Chilling Bambino, a synthesizer-driven project that reshapes her compositional language through hypnotic electronic structures, alongside Dutch multidisciplinary artist Torus. The final prelude on May 14 turns toward orchestral minimalism, as Sinfonietta Cracovia performs Gavin Bryars’ landmark works The Sinking of the Titanic and Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, alongside Pure Voices, a recent composition by Aleksandra Słyż.
For those who experienced Berlin Atonal inside Kraftwerk before, the atmosphere surrounding this new project will likely feel familiar. When we attended the festival’s previous edition, https://metalmagazine.eu/en/post/berlin-atonal-2025-resistance-in-sound what struck us most was its ability to transform the monumental industrial architecture into a living ecosystem of sound, bodies, and ideas. The festival unfolded less like a sequence of concerts and more like a constantly shifting environment where installations, performances, and audiences moved through the same charged space. The Infinite Now seems to extend that philosophy even further.
Our relationship with Unsound goes back even longer. We first followed the Kraków-based festival closely several years ago during the strange global moment marked by the pandemic, when the boundaries between digital and physical experience felt unusually blurred. Back then, Unsound explored those tensions through its Deep Authentic theme, bringing together musicians, visual artists, writers, and technologists to reflect on how culture was adapting to a rapidly shifting world.
Seen through that lens, The Infinite Now feels like a natural meeting point between the two festivals’ curatorial philosophies. Rather than asking audiences to follow a rigid timetable, the schedule invites them to inhabit the space differently: to drift in and out, to rest, to sleep, to listen deeply, and to return hours later to something entirely new. Dedicated sleeping areas will be available, and tickets allow re-entry throughout the full thirty-hour duration.
If Berlin Atonal has always been about pushing the boundaries of how sound and art occupy space, and Unsound about expanding the cultural contexts around music, their collaboration lands exactly where those visions intersect. Thirty hours, no interruptions: a continuously evolving field of sound unfolding inside one of the most striking venues in contemporary experimental culture.
