Actress is the enigmatic British producer Darren Cunningham. One of the most adventurous producers of these times, his ghostly electronics stutter and readily dissipate into unusual forms. Drawing on geometry, mythology and architecture, his deceptive sense of atmospherics provides a platform for heavy phantasmagorical contortions. His live performances symbolise his magnetic approach to the unusual: a performance of illusory forms and altered instrumentation.

Copenhagen-based composer Astrid Sonne uses the occasion of Berlin Atonal 2018 to premiere a special new work entitled Ephemeral. Also featuring Cæcilie Trier (CTM), Xenia Xamanek and Henriette Motzfeldt (0.5 of Smerz), more information about this project will be released in the coming weeks.

London’s Beatrice Dillon is a producer, artist and NTS DJ with acclaimed solo releases, remixes and collaborations across Hessle Audio, The Trilogy Tapes, PAN, Boomkat Editions, Timedance and Where To Now?. Recent performances include MUTEK Montreal, Dekmantel, Documenta Athens, Masåfåt Cairo, Moscow Save, Borealis Norway and Barbican Centre, London. She has collaborated with award-winning visual artists at ICA, Tate, Lisson Gallery, Southbank Centre, Centre d’Art Contemporain Geneva, Nasher Sculpture Dallas and Mona Tasmania amongst others. Dillon was the recipient of Wysing Arts Centre’s artist residency in 2016 and is a resident at Somerset House Studios, London.

British Murder Boys represents the infamous production and DJ collaboration of UK techno figureheads Surgeon and Regis. Aimed at pushing the farthest boundaries of techno, they deliver a pummeling live show, featuring their trademark off-centre industrial sounds layered with cutting-edge rhythmic advancements. Berlin Atonal 2018 hosts their live performance in Germany for the first time in a decade.

Former member of Apeiron Crew, Danish DJ Courtesy is known for her multi-faceted approach to club music - combining the often emotive melodics of the rave with unrelenting sonics of the Copenhagen underground she represents as label owner of Ectotherm. Unafraid to draw in inspirations from jungle and trance, her sound offers a riposte to staid mass-techno and releases the unexpected in thrilling approaches.

Gábor Lázár presents his signature flux of zinging mentasms and affective rhythms with a cyber-mongrel gnash, drawing upon his new album Unfold for The Death Of Rave for a world premiere live A/V performance. With a knowing glance to various revered scenes of techno culture, this celebrated Hungarian artist unleashes his singular forte in syncopation and razor sharp production. This new album represents the elevation of his idiosyncratic syntax of gestural hyper-focus and unexpected emotive relief, firmly establishing Gábor Lázár as one of the more gripping producers of contemporary music.

An explosion of punk at the pulsing heart of techno, duo Giant Swan are a maelstrom of potential energy, bleeding between several sonic movements that both obliterate and invigorate. A manifestation of the rich musical core of Bristol, their live shows are much-revered, exposing a modern retaliation to passivity. Building on a foundation of rhythmic tension and frenzied improvisation, no two performances are the same as the duo re-build and destroy their twisted vision of techno-not-techno.

Japanese duo group A marry droning violin, abstract noise and throbbing repetitions to severe performance art. Their excursions induce a synaptic hyperactivity, through metallic dance constructs and psychotomimetic waves. This performance on the main stage of Berlin Atonal sees them collaborating with mind-bending video producers Dead Slow Ahead to create an A/V performance that demands attention.

Helena Hauff represents a soundworld intense, electrified and futuristic. A former resident at Hamburg's Golden Pudel club, her DJ sets are ever uncompromising, indicating a sense of unpredictability, developed chaos in acid-tinged brute electro. Her soulful machine music has found Hauff a natural home on James Dean Brown's notorious proto-tribal techno Hynobeat project which she has joined since 2013, alongside her solo productions for the likes of PAN, Ninja Tune and Panzerkreuz.

No stranger to manipulating macabre disorientations into enchanting new shapes, Hiro Kone is the New York City musician Nicky Mao, here at Berlin Atonal 2018 presenting her new album “Pure Expenditure” for the first time. A long-time collaborator of Drew McDowell, her music exposes the unsettling and sublime. Her cascades of twisted field recordings find an inherent partner in the effervescent current of synthesis and forge new terrains that respond to the precariousness of humanity.

above K'AN THE ABYSMAL, WATER below CHêN THE AROUSING, THUNDER The 3rd hexagram of the I-Ching relays how heaven and earth bring forth individual beings, with difficulty present in the beginning as a form of chaotic profusion. Iona Fortune is a composer from Glasgow embarking on an investigation of Eastern philosophy, building an 8-part series of releases exploring the hexagrams of the I-Ching. Using the Guzheng, Gamelan and EMS Synthi AKS to submit the audience to her extraordinary atmospheres and rattling rhythms, she represents the new cadre of artists linked with Jon Hassell's “Fourth World” concept.

Kolorit is a collaborative project between Workshop records stalwarts Lowtec & Kassem Mosse that sees them engage in live dialogue somewhere beyond the frayed edges of techno music. As producers they are known for their mesmerising abstractions tugging at the confines of house and techno, a textured rhythmic identity rarely unearthed. Their debut double EP will be released by Workshop records in 2018 while Berlin Atonal hosts the world premiere live outing of the project.

LABOUR is a new collaborative project which seeks to contribute towards a space of nonconforming social practices and identities, and recasts the nature of work as a potentially transformative activity. This performance for Berlin Atonal marks the launch of the project. Their sonic intents locate themselves on multiple temporalities— from microsounds and stochastic synthesis to rhythmic cycles to acknowledging that which propels beyond. LABOUR disregards notions of regulated time via processes of disruption. Meshing instability within drums, electronic signals and customized lights, the output is a sound both hybrid and hardcore.

Lanark Artefax is Scottish producer Calum MacRae whose pared down sonic palette continues to be broken off into new fractures. His live A/V show configures semiotics and linguistics in the visual realm, forming a cross-pollination with his coarsely stuttering choral samples and sculptural techno rhythms. Often cinematic and unceasingly intense, MacRae deploys a deeper thinking that persuades of an all-encompassing approach to the art form.

Berlin-based Colombian musician Lucrecia Dalt draws on a vast range of influences to provoke her essential, telluric sounds. Synclines is a site-specific live work designed to complement her recent Anticlines release. Anticlines is a volume of bodily and geological substrates within poetic theory and sound. It is a place where skins and minerals dissolve and commingle, where gaseous subterranean leaks inflate lungs, where brain cavities echo interplanetary waves bent from passing through atmospheres.

Ora Iso is the duo Kathleen Malay and Jason Kudo, formed in New York City but now based in Indonesia and New Hampshire respectively. Their ever-present rhythmic dirge from mechanical drums is met by sombre rituals of distortion and Stoic apocalypses. Newly released on Regis' label Downwards their album “Image Certifies” navigates the ruptured fringes of acerbic abstraction and provides a distinct annihilation for which their world is designed.

Outer Space is the project of John Elliot and Andrew Veres. Their arpeggiated tones and analogue strings are reminiscent of kosmiche pioneers such as Laurie Spiegel and Tangerine Dream, a coiling mass of vintage synth-electronica and relentless polyrhythmic workouts. The duo exploit a modern techno essence for accumulating tension towards an eventual release that uncontrollably spirals into the tripped-out distance. Organic Dial is a world premiere presentation of the next chapter in their musical story.

Samuel Kerridge is known for his powerful waves of explosive noise layered over disfigured stop-start rhythms. His DJ set promises to be provocative and retaliatory, pushing the audience in uncompromising revolutions. This aggressive physicality is mirrored in his productions, a recoiling, shivering and screaming approach to noise-techno. Vexed monotony brings forth mirage-like overtones and agitating melodies.

Skee Mask echoes the relationship between music and our technologies, a near-cinematic investigation of advancements and organic emotionality. Steering breakbeats away from navel-gazing nostalgia and into fresh terrain for the Munich-based label Ilian Tape, Skee Mask excites the additive particles of raw youth. His new album “Compro” embeds him as a standout producer of modern electronica with an array of precisely unravelling ambient techno and forward-leaning sample manipulation.

Veronica Vasicka can almost be considered an institution unto herself judging by her contribution to electronic music. Founder of Minimal Wave Records, she is one of a small group of true specialists to have re-introduced underground 80s machine music with a new focus. Her influence can be felt as new productions reflect the thumping EBM, darkwave and techno beats that she has been promoting for more than a decade.

The second announcement with further projects and day divisions will be released at the end of June (when individual day tickets will also go on sale). Final announcement with the full contingent of over 100 artists and the conclusive schedule will follow at the end of July.