Pioneering musician, producer and founding member of The Velvet Underground, John Cale has always been a musician of the times, ushering in titanic shifts in sound and culture.

The bleeding edge drones of his Sun Blindness Music opened the path to The Velvet Underground. The frantic rock of Fear and Slow Dazzle, not to mention his production with Patti Smith and the Stooges, framed a half century of punk, post-punk, and art-rock to come. And his curiosity about the way electronics could be more than a gimmick in rock music served as an inspiration to an uncountable number of crucial scenes.

Don’t be fooled by POPtical Illusion, the playful title of John Cale’s ‘24 album and ‘25 tour: He remains angry, still incensed by the willful destruction that unchecked capitalists and unrepentant conmen have hoisted upon the wonders of this world and the goodness of its people. This is the work of someone certainly not ignoring the rage or the reasons for it but, instead, turning toward the future — exactly as he always has.

Revered German electronic musician Wolfgang Voigt presents GAS live — an audiovisual non-stop psychedelic live trip, ranging somewhere between Schoenberg and Kraftwerk, French-Horn and Bassdrum.

Influenced by techno in the early 1990s, Wolfgang Voigt began to experiment with a timbal marching through strongly alienated, free-floating string loops. These seemingly endless tracks with smooth and partly amorphous structure sounded to him like evaporating gas, and thus GAS music was born.

Prepare to become lost in an endless march through the undergrowth — into the disco — of an imaginary, misty, musical, nebulous forest.

From their 2001 founding to the duo’s final shows (and subsequent hiatus) in 2008, Gabriel Mindel Saloman and Pete Swanson AKA Yellow Swans carved an influential path through America’s experimental music underground, at the axis of noise, psychedelia, industrial, drone, and hardcore. During that time they released well over 50 recordings documenting studio experiments, live improvisations, and numerous collaborations. Together they relentlessly toured North America, Europe, and Oceania, performing at numerous international music festivals including Sonar (ES), Open Circuit (BE), and Sonic Protest (FR), and were invited to join Art Council England’s Free Noise Tour in 2007.

After a 15 year break, they have returned to recording and performing. Their music continues to be restless, ragged, and forever in flux, untethered and unresolved.

Moin are a London-based three-piece featuring Tom Halstead and Joe Andrews of the electronic outfit Raime (who will also DJ at Unsound 2025), alongside visionary percussionist Valentina Magaletti.

Moin’s music recontextualizes a range of guitar-based genres — grunge, shoegaze, and post-rock — through an enigmatic reimagining of the traditional band dynamic. Employing both conventional and unique compositional techniques, their sound is marked by a visceral immediacy that comes to life in full force during their live performances. They walk the line between the reassuringly familiar and the unsettlingly inquisitive.

aya is a musician from the Pennine region of the North Atlantic. Her work is primarily concerned with the transfigurative power of experience and memory on the physical body. Melding the sprawling bifurcations of soundsystem culture with delocalised internet scenes and post-hardcore lamentations, she casts stark sculptures in genre alloy. aya’s work has been released with labels such as Hyperdub, Tri Angle, Wisdom Teeth and Astral Plane, and on her own label YCO which she runs with BFTT. aya has scored projects for the BBC, Manchester International Festival, NTS and CTM Festival.

Friday at Lion Arts Factory: aya presents hexed!
Not Unsound Afterparty at Ancient World: aya (DJ Set)

Bolivian-American siblings Chuquimamani-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton present LOS THUTHANKA — a melting pot of queer psychedelia, Andean rhythms and digital noise.

Nídia is an internationally acclaimed Afro-Portuguese electronic producer and DJ, based out of Vale da Amoreira, south bank of River Tagus, across from Lisbon. As part of the Príncipe Discos record label and artistic collective, she has been having a decisive role, both as an individual artist and as within the community, in bringing inspiringly progressive aesthetics and ethics to the contemporary alternative dance infrastructure across the globe, and the kuduro culture in particular.

Multi-instrumentalist Valentina Magaletti and Afro-Portuguese beat-maker and DJ Nídia bring their electrifying dance music album Estradas to life. Together, Nídia & Valentina transcend cultural and showcase their rhythmic expertise and connection through intricate beats and infectious melodies.

Valentina’s inventive approach to percussion, incorporating marimbas, contact microphones, and found objects, allows her to seamlessly traverse alternative and mainstream music landscapes. Her extensive collaborations include artists like Holy T ongue, Vanishing Twins, Jandek, Pat Thomas, Deb Googe, Thurston Moore, Mica Levi, Sampha, Nicolas Jaar, Upsammy, Charles Hayward, Wire’s Graham Lewis, and Thighpaulsandra (Coil).

Nídia, Príncipe affiliate, has significantly influenced the international alternative dance scene with her progressive Kuduro aesthetics. Her collaborations with Fever Ray, Yaeji, and Kelela have earned her international acclaim, including a Grammi in Sweden and an AIM award in the UK. Nídia has performed at London's Southbank Centre, Sónar, Lowlands Festival, Red Bull Music Festivals, and more.

Raime are a London based duo consisting of Joe Andrews and Tom Halstead. For over a decade, they’ve held court at the forefront of the evolving UK underground, splicing sleek new forms out of their DNA of dub-techno, garage, grime and post-hardcore rock-music. The duo continue to innovate with their current band-based project Moin, with Valentina Magaletti, who will also appear at Unsound Adelaide 2025.

DJ PGZ is a Gunai/Kurnai & Yorta Yorta artist, DJ and producer shaping a bold new sound in Australian contemporary dance music. Drawing from underground club cultures worldwide, he forges a forward-thinking sonic identity that honours the Black and brown pioneers of dance music, while paving the way for the next generation of First Nations artists. 

As a DJ, DJ PGZ has become a staple of the national festival circuit, holding strong ground at every major stage from Rising Festival to Meredith Music Festival, Dekmantel Naarm, Now or Never, Boiler Room x Sugar Mountain, Pitch Music & Arts, Sun Cycle, Strawberry Fields, and Mode Festival. Internationally, his sweat-inducing sets have headlined Tuff Club (Singapore) and Savage (Hanoi), while the forerunner he has shared lineups with contemporary electronic music greats such as Bonobo, HAAi, Yasiin Bey, Jamie xx, Bradley Zero, Sleep D, Moktar, Kia, and more.

Chuquimamani-Condori AKA DJ E is a Northern California-based artist and musician belonging to the Pakajaqi nation of Aymara people, who mixes Andean music with digital effects and overwhelming distortion into a binary-smashing collage of ecstatic tones.

Over more than a decade of producing music and touring regularly, Adelaide producer Strict Face has gradually left his mark on the Australian landscape of underground dance music.

After cutting his teeth in the world of instrumental grime during its second wave in the early 10s, he joined Nina Las Vegas on her NLV imprint, resulting in a fruitful working partnership that endures to this very day. His run of releases under the label shift from momentary flirts with pop/R&B production, to heady, no-holds-barred club music, frantic drum programming inspired by the British hardcore continuum, Detroit techno, and early 80s no wave.

Strict Face’s music has gotten the seal of approval from selectors as varied as DJ Plead, Jamz Supernova, Skrillex and Lena Willikens, and the ever-growing list of names he’s shared a DJ booth with — Ben UFO, Chloé Robinson, Eris Drew, Massimiliano Pagliara, Jossy Mitsu, Special Request — speaks to his versatility as a selector.

SKORPION KING is a multidisciplinary artist and DJ based in Adelaide, channeling raw emotion, grief, joy, and trans/queer identity into their deeply expressive sets. Their mixes are less about genre and more about catharsis — a way to scream, sweat, and survive. As co-founder of DEEPTANK alongside Mr. John, they are helping resurrect Adelaide’s underground Dubstep scene with a grass-roots focus on sound-system culture, harm reduction, community-minded events and deep listening. SKORPION KING plays from the gut, turning vulnerability into power on the dancefloor.

Photo by Adam Davies.

At the forefront of the Kaurna underground dance music community and the driving force behind the Nausea parties, Bibbe Zee has established herself as an innovative and exciting DJ, fusing together elements of club, alt rock and electro to deliver high energy experimental mixes.

Hypnotic soundscapes where shadow and light collide. xxxquisite brings a romantic edge to the dancefloor but is not for the faint-hearted.