What was the ears? The highlights of the 26th edition of the Berlin Festival at an overview.
After eleven long days and nights, the 26th CTM Festival ended in Berlin on Sunday, February 2. As every year, there was a widely branched, eclectic program of international artists at various locations.
The festival for experimental and electronic music and performance art has been around since 1999. It has a good reputation worldwide among music lovers: from the inside of the western mainstream pop music. Or as the festival makers describe it: the CTM is a “kaleidoscope of voices in the middle of our chaotic and changing realities that reflect and intensify the confusing polyphony of our current moment.”
These were the most exciting CTM moments 2025
1st reminder to start: Berlin is culture!
It started on the opening evening at Silent Green in Wedding with the acts Tarta Relena and 33. This evening, above all, speech of the co -founder and artistic director Jan Rohlf, in which he also contains the challenges related to the Berlin Kulturhaushalschaos entered. The production of this year’s edition was a hard piece of work because of the delayed Berlin budget planning and the subsequent budget lock in autumn because it was not clear for a long time whether the festival could take place at all. “It is paradoxical that the cultural senator calls for more entrepreneurship in culture in parallel to uncoordinated budget planning – because this is exactly what the framework conditions are needed, the initiative,” said Rohlf.
A bitter moment of the warning at the beginning, which once again expressly clarified how threatening the cuts are for the Berlin cultural landscape. And even if the festival is currently not directly affected, Rohlf emphasized solidarity with other affected people such as Silent Green, the event facility of the evening. Nothing going on without moss. And if you shorten culture, you shorten everyone. A Berlin winter without CTM, you prefer not to imagine that.
2. Hexen civilization in the Technoclub with Witch Club Satan
On the first of three nights in Berghain on Tuesday, the CTM makers once again showed impressively how adventurous places and artists are thought together: inside. After a performance by the Mexican violinist and composer Gibrana Cervantes, The classic music tradition connected with a ghostly noise and drone sound, this night belonged above all to a Norwegian band with the sounding name: Witch Club Satan. Feminist, satanic Black Metal in the most famous techno club in the world? This is really only available at the CTM festival. “I want you to scream with me! I want to dance with me! I Want to undress with me! ” – With this announcement, Witch Club Satan’s appearance started, which not only conjure up hellish abysses, but also the female anger in a wonderfully contagious way. Since its foundation in 2020, the three Norwegians re -revealed the history of the male -dominated Black Metal of their homeland. With nudity and a lot of noise against the circumstances that lead from medieval witch burns to the sexism of the present.
3. The rhythmic symbiosis of Nídia & Valentina
On the same evening there was proof in the radial system, what exciting music can come out of a surprising meeting of two artists with a very own access to rhythm and percussion. Nídia is a DJ and producer who constantly shifts the limits in her work. Valentina Magaletti is a drummer, percussionist and composer and a central figure of the contemporary explorative music. Perform together Nídia & Valentina A symbiotic sound world in which new expressions are sought and found between syncopated drum patterns, marimba-rhythms and contagious melodies. That had a unique emotional – and also very physical – effect!
4. Ghost hour with the experimental saxophonist Bendik Giske
Wednesday evening in Berghain belonged to the Norwegian living in Berlin Bendik Giske. The saxophonist, jazz composer and improvisation musician has been continuously shifting the borders – his instrument, his genre and also that of your own body for years. For it, the saxophone becomes a kind of further part of the body and the act of playing a fascinating full body performance, which, like an intimate, nightly seduction dance and at the same time, seems ghostly. At Giske, every breath, every sharp pencil, every key blow and every harmonious squeak of the instrument of micros is removed and part of the performance. Not only is the sound that comes out, but also the physicality, which becomes directly tangible. Due to the technique of circulatory system, which he masterfully masters (he plays the saxophone both when you inhale), the ghost hour never breaks off. A jazz hypnosis session of a special kind.
5. Latinx Invasion with Rattlesnakke and Deiz Tigrona
Through confusingly many layers of sound, Thursday night was hiked in Berghain: over three floors, from the lower dance floor in the pillar, over the main hall above, up to the panorama bar, and down again. A wonderful cacophony, as diverse and complex as the world in which we live. There was experimental high-speed rave music from Murderpact from Brooklyn, Gabber and Grindcore from Kasimyn From Jakarta and Surreal fragmented rhythms of Aya from Manchester.
Above all, however, two women from South America belonged this night: the Argentine DJ and performer Rattlesnakke Association of South American club music with live vocals. And immediately after that was Deiz Tigrona From Rio de Janeiro the secret headliner of the night: As one of the most influential voices of the Baile Funk (called Funk Carioca in Brazil), she helped the genre to gly attention (her song “Injeção” formed the basis for Mia’s “Bucky Done Gun” ). That, like so many musicians: inside the global south, they get a stage here in Berlin-this is one of these great, important CTM moments for which we love this festival.