Experimental saxophonist Tapiwa Svosve is a defining figure on the Swiss scene, who started out in jazz and drifted into musical areas between minimal music, avant-garde, ambient and rock, including with the highly acclaimed band District Five, in projects with musicians Evelinn Trouble and Tizia Zimmermann, and as part of the drone collective WIRREN. In 2023, Svosve released the experimental jazz album The Sport of Love on the cult label PAN (Arca, Eartheater, Marina Herlop, Holly Hernodon, among others) together with musicians Patrick Belaga and Asma Maroof. Last year, he won one of the seven Swiss Music Prizes awarded by the FOC. His solo concerts are idiosyncratic explorations of the alto saxophone that shed the aura of the iconic jazz instrument.

Erika de Casier is a singer, songwriter and producer from Denmark. Since 2019, she has been bringing her elegant tracks to the stage – somewhere between early 2000s, mystical pop, futuristic beats and R&B. Whether softly whispered or with a clear statement, her songs are often soft, playful and full of little sound details. After three previously released albums (including on 4AD) featuring Blood Orange and Shygirl, among others, the surprise release of Lifetime followed in early summer 2025 – an album written, produced and released entirely by De Casier herself. The album is an acoustic mood board compiled by the artist herself and an exploration of the passing of time, intimacy and loneliness, set against a backdrop of trip-hop textures and pop structures. It also showcases Erika De Casier’s special ability to draw on the past, consciously curating sonic and visual references and transforming them into something unique that is entirely her own.

Canadian musician Marie Davidson started the duo Essaie Pas in 2012, but only gained international attention as a solo artist. Her first two albums were still dark and influenced by minimal wave. Since 2018 at the latest, she has established herself in the international canon with the album Working Class Woman. Since then, her works have ranged between catchy experimental pop and technoid electronica, with her cool spoken vocals being the most distinctive feature of her songs.

After a five-year hiatus, she released her most concise and mature work to date this spring with the album City Of Clowns, which is even more directly aimed at the dance floor. Radio SRF called it «retrofuturistic escalation inspired by a hyper-technological society.» And Pitchfork describes it as «a real-life sci-fi dystopia that’s a little bit The Matrix and a little bit The Substance.»

Unfortunately, Pharmakon’s entire European tour had to be cancelled. Fortunately, we were able to get Evicshen (who played at Full Of Lava 2023) to create an exclusive duo show for Full Of Lava with Zurich-based musician Miao Zhao, alias MiMi At Capricious.

Victoria Shen is a sound artist, musician, performer and instrument maker from San Francisco. In no time at all, she has carved out her own niche in the European festival scene with her radical, physical stage performances that oscillate between control and chaos. She uses acrylic fingernails equipped with vinyl needles, which allow her to play up to five tracks simultaneously from a record, and she doesn’t shy away from using a riding crop. However, the primary source of her raw soundscape is synthesizers – both off-the-shelf and those she has built herself – as well as effects units.

For an exclusive performance at Full Of Lava, Evicshen is teaming up with noise musician Miao Zhao, alias MiMi At Capricious. Miao has been living in Switzerland for several years and has earned a reputation as an exceptional artist as a clarinettist in both contemporary and classical music. However, she decided to go down a different path, immersed herself in the local and international experimental music scene, and finally started her own harsh noise project with MiMi At Capricious.

Kali Malone is an American composer and organist. Since 2012, she has been working at the intersection of electronic and acoustic music. In her works, which are rooted in the minimalist compositional tradition, she integrates choirs as well as string and woodwind instruments.

With The Sacrificial Code (2019), Kali Malone created an album based on the church organ that propelled her to the top of contemporary minimalism and drone music internationally. Since then, she has played sold-out shows in many places around the world. In 2024, Kali Malone, together with Caterina Barbieri, performed at the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale. The composer’s incredibly strong sense for the finest structures of sounds and their long reverberations can be experienced at Full Of Lava as part of a very rare electronic show.

Haley Fohr from Indiana is the artist behind the Circuit des Yeux project. Since 2007, she has been releasing music from an inhospitable parallel world that moves between avant-garde folk, experimental rock, psychedelic art pop and electronic, melancholic soundscapes. Her extraordinary and unmistakable alto voice is characteristic of her work.

On stage, Fohr is a fearless performer whose performances oscillate between restraint and ecstatic freedom. Circuit des Yeux’s albums have been released on three of the largest and longest-running US indie labels: Thrill Jockey, Drag City and Matador. The latter also released Halo On The Inside in March, a surprisingly strong work interspersed with electronic beats, whose postmodern pop anthems she will present live with her band. «Haley Fohr’s latest studio album sounds like her take on industrial dance music: sludgy, colossal, and teeming with darkness.’» (The Quietus).

Once an Olympic star, they fainted in the tournament. It badly hurt their shoulder – an injury that left them unable to compete. Hoping to make it in the adult film industry, they started a relationship with a millionaire’s wife, who they loved deeply. Playing happy families when he was out, they decided that because of the secretive nature of their love affair, it would be ethical to steal money to save up for top surgery.

But one day they got caught taking a necklace. The wife pretended they had never met and called the police on me.

They made a run for it. Took the car and headed south. To the gym. To sleep. Insomnia. Cash Converters.

Smerz is a Norwegian duo consisting of Henriette Motzfeldt and Catharina Stoltenberg, who released their second LP, Big City Life, this spring on the Danish label Escho (ML Buch, Astrid Sonne, among others). Smerz operates at the intersection of genres, drawing inspiration from the compositional techniques of classical music, the experimentation of computer music and the directness of pop music.

The duo’s discography includes their critically acclaimed debut album Believer on XL Recordings, the eternally out-of-print EPs Have fun and Okey (also XL Recordings), as well as the fantasy project ALLINA and the choral piece Tidligere den dagen with the vocal ensemble GAEA on their own label Shopping.

From their choral performance at the MUNCH Museum to soundtracks for fashion catwalks, Smerz are known for their ability to create and control new soundscapes.

In the dense, artful soundscape created by siblings Chuquimamani-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton, traditional genres and ancestral wisdom coexist with digital ephemera and ethereal noise. The fast-paced, collage-like songs of Los Thuthanaka are about negotiating with time, breaking it down so that it no longer appears linear. They are imbued with the history of queer and indigenous people and a sense of connectedness.

Los Thuthanaka is their self-titled debut. Unmistakably unmastered and deeply psychedelic. A trance album in the truest sense of the word, eternal time in the rhythms of cumbia, following the steps of the Andean dance Huayño.

The duo, which is difficult to find on the internet, consists of Senegalese-American visual artist Coumba Samba and Estonian performance artist Gretchen Lawrence. One evening before their live show, they will play a DJ set at Full Of Lava.

Just as their releases are collages of different musical styles and lyrical fragments connected by the loose but recognisable threads of pop culture, a New York DJ set is also likely to be a bizarre and interesting excursion.

i-vye moves between presence and understatement. Layers of breakbeat, percussion, voice fragments, melody, and abstract textures fold into one another carrying an off-kilter, playful energy. The work resists spectacle, leans into precision and contrast, and remains attentive to context.

Unfortunately, Nicky Mao from the duo Enxin/Onyx had to travel to the USA at short notice for family reasons, so Tot Onyx will be playing a solo concert.

Tot Onyx is Tommi Tokyo, one half of group A, which performed at the Saint Ghetto Festival in 2016 and caused a sensation, enthusiasm and controversy.

Tot Onyx’s sound art is always connected to visual elements, especially a strong performative live presence. It pays homage to an atmospheric, disharmonious exploration of noise. Haunting voices bubble between wildly proliferating electronic sounds, sometimes graceful and erratic, sometimes confrontational. Embedded in a motoric, bumpy and stuttering rhythmic framework, memories of the beginnings of industrial music are evoked, and at the same time her music is characterised by ingeniously designed, post-apocalyptic soundscapes.

Tot Onyx recently performed with dancer Yuko Kaseki, with whom she studied Butoh, at the preview of the BONE Performance Festival in Bern.

Friendly coordination with BONE, bee-flat, and Queersicht.

John Glacier creates music that is difficult to categorise – somewhere between rap, spoken word, electronic fog and lo-fi poetry. The artist from Hackney (London) deliberately remains elusive, but that is precisely what makes her sound so captivating: raw, honest, atmospheric and always a little detached.

With her new album Like a Ribbon (2025) on the YOUNG label (The xx, FKA twigs, among others), she presents a work that shimmers and flows: fragile piano loops, washed-out samples, melancholic guitars and lyrics that feel like diary entries. Songs like Steady As I Am, Nevasure and the ethereal Sampha duet Ocean Stepping are about closeness, withdrawal and change – but never with pathos, rather with an almost casual depth. Live, John Glacier brings all of this to the stage with minimalist clarity. No big show spectacle – more of a hypnotic sound trip that slowly draws you in.

With a radical mix of pop, post-punk, electronica, neoclassical and experimental sound art, These New Puritans are one of the most extraordinary bands of their generation. Since the release of their first album Beat Pyramid (2008), British twins Jack and George Barnett have never been constrained by conventional genre boundaries – instead, they have created a musical universe between dark minimalism, orchestral soundscapes and hypnotic beats.

The expressive yet fragile tone of Jack’s vocals, combined with wide-screen synthesizer sounds and sometimes martial drums, form the basic framework of the duo’s sound, around which organ, marimba, glockenspiel and trumpet can entwine. These New Puritans sound like a contemporary refresh of the exact middle ground between (late) Talk Talk and (late) Scott Walker.

Their current album Crooked Wings, released this summer six years after its predecessor, is once again introspective and haunting, full of breaks, and at the same time more accessible than ever before.

Tracey is an anonymous London duo or collective that released a debut EP on the AD93 label (Coby Sey, Joanne Robertson, Damsel Elysium, among others) earlier this year. Musically, the self-titled EP is full of grandiose contradictions: it begins with the breakthrough «Sex Life» – an unusual, dubstep-infused track that condenses themes such as sexual constraints into an unexpected dancefloor hit – before transitioning into minimalist folk ballads and muddy R&B with the three following songs.

Tracey recently released another wonderfully irritating and driving single, «Sleazy» and rumour has it that there’s more to come. Either way, everyone loves a little mystery, and yet Tracey’s songs are all personal and playful observations on love, shame and submissiveness that feel very close and intimate.

One day after the concert with Los Thuthanaka, DJ E aka Chuquimamani-Condori will play a DJ set as part of the Full Of Lava club night.

Chuquimamani-Condori – known to many as Elysia Crampton Chuquimia – is the Aymara name of the California-based artist, who belongs to the Great Pakajaqi people, currently occupied by the states of Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.

Chuquimamani-Condori has always balanced dissonance and unity in their compositions in a unique way that is rarely heard. On the self-released album DJ E, released in November 2023, the artist has almost perfected this formula. This may be why fans on the internet repeatedly use terms such as «light-giving», «life-affirming» and «cathartic» to describe it. This highly euphoric, wonderfully bizarre and dense wall of sound is composed of flutes, synthesizers, power chords, a whole soundboard full of DJ drops and even, as mentioned in the Bandcamp liner notes, the sound of a real circular saw.

The London duo New York, formed by former roommates and artists Gretchen Lawrence and Coumba Samba. Their music invites you on a glitchy performance journey: nonchalant vocals, ironic lyrics and electrifying dance beats.

Their latest album, Rapstar*, was released on Lolinas’ label Relaxin Records and combines dub, hip hop and DIY electronica with satirical statements about gender, consumerism and digital self-image. Pop and glitter beyond glamour and mainstream. Since this summer, New York has been releasing new tracks one after the other, including wonderfully irritating videos.

Haya33 is the DJ alias of visual artist Maya Hottarek from Biel. Her artistic practice encompasses ceramics, film, sound and found materials. In her work, she explores the complex interactions between the individual, society and the economy. She connects all these themes with our basic human needs, such as our connection to nature and the philosophical question of the nature of existence.

As Haya33, she can often be found behind the DJ decks, where it is entirely possible that a set will begin with a classical record. Or with trap. Or a poem. Perhaps with harsh noise?

The project Mhm, Mhm, created between Amsterdam and New York, operates at the intersection of music, performance and sound installation. Since the release of the EP CALLING FOR A PEOPLE TO COME (2022) on Klein’s label Parkwuud Enterprises, Mhm, Mhm has been crafting a fragile, multi-layered sound language: bluesy guitar lines meet minimal rhythms, vocal fragments meet textural silence. The music itself remains elusive. At times it seems to almost disappear, at others it expands into the meditative. It follows less a dramaturgy than an inner movement.

Mhm, Mhm’s performances often take place not in classical concert situations, but in interstitial spaces: museums, galleries, studios, temporary stages. Mhm, Mhm is currently working on a new album and deepening its exploration of sound as ephemeral sculpture.

The eight-piece London collective caroline was founded in 2017 by Jasper Llewellyn, Casper Hughes and Mike O’Malley and developed from weekly improvisation sessions into a permanent fixture on the experimental rock scene. Their debut album caroline (2022) was considered a sensitive, atmospheric milestone and laid the foundation for their collective sound vision.

With caroline 2, recently released on Rough Trade Records, the band is now making a bold statement. Over 18 months, they created a work that combines organic improvisation and digital precision. Recurring motifs, dynamic contrasts and emotional depth dominate, supported by Auto-Tune effects and surprising tempo changes. Even before its release, Total Euphoria and Tell Me I Never Knew That (feat. Caroline Polachek) were strong precursors to the album. The collaboration with Polachek began with a spontaneous studio jam and ended in a hypnotic duet in which Polachek provided hours of vocal takes.

Live, caroline unleashes its great collective energy: eight musicians who create homogeneous soundscapes while allowing individual voices to shine through.

Studio Mondial is a monthly show on Radio Bollwerk presented by Trillion Tapeman, Heiko, Kia Mann and NIKKO. Music as a source of pure joy, fuelled by curiosity, and driven by the pursuit of perfect aesthetics despite the contradictions it presents. Researching the unconventional, embracing niche realms and defying boundaries are not merely a requirement, but an attitude. The concept lies in transcending and surpassing boundaries, making each performance a thrilling and enticing playground where the unexpected takes centre stage.