Yaka Berger – a composer, producer, percussionist, and media artist – and his industrial glitch hop

The creative biography of Jako Berger resembles a clew of projects and collaborations, and it's a music lover's quest to unravele it. Berger producer (DUF) crosses clever asymmetry with dancefloor irony; Berger drummer balances between insinuating free jazz (Virtaranta Okuda Berger trio) and creepy psychedelia (Darla Smoking); Berger visual artist creates self-playing sound mechanisms and collaborates with environmental sounds; Berger composer – records tributes to Morton Feldmann and scores eccentric theatrical performances.

Sometimes the lines between the artist's roles become muddled. Yaka, for example, can incorporate modular synths into a percussion set and deconstruct it with a variety of items, transforming shows into "live" sound sculptures. While the quirky visual pictures in the DUF and Darla Smoking videos provide complete absorption in music even for those unfamiliar with avant-garde electronics.

At Fields RS Yaka will showcase the electronic project DUF, the one which is the closest to pop culture. His tracks blend sticky industrial hip-hop and dub with boiling synthesized bass and glitch. Unlike many other projects, DUF skips concepts and interpretations, instead focusing on two vague acronym expansions: Dead Underground Future and Designated Ugly Friend. We recommend that you search for your own meaning on the dance floor because both meanings smell a bit like of absurd.

Slovenian multi-instrumentalist Iztok Koren and Polish guitarist Raphael Rogiński were brought together by a shared interest in folklore, though each arrived at it by a very different route. A member of the trio Širom and a collector of rare instruments, Iztok works with what might be called “imaginary folklore” — invented folk music shaped from the sounds of the gembri, balafon, morin khuur, steel drum and other unusual instruments. Raphael, by contrast, approaches tradition as both ethnographer and musician: classically and jazz-trained, he draws on Bedouin, Kurdish, Georgian, Armenian, Persian and other musical cultures. Their duet is both a declaration of love for polyphony and an attempt to find harmony through difference.

II/III is a Sloveninan duo of harpist and composer Urška Preis and audiovisual artist Tine Vrabič formed in 2016. Together musicians create a mesmerizing deep atmospheric sound somewhere in between thoughtful electronics, aerie cinematic ambient, futuristic neoclassical music and catchy IDM.

The musicians decipher the mysterious name of the project as “Two Out Of Three”, indeed sometimes it feels like there is the third invisible member in the music of the duet. Maybe it's the cloudy environment inherent in their music. The best description of monochrome moods and conceptual components of the duo’s music is the name of the their debut mini-album "It could be paradise". Sad, tender and disappearing beyond the horizons, the moans of Urška’s harp are drowned in the electronic rhythms of Tin – this is how Paradise could sound if you could approach it for a while and fly at high speed over its inaccessible majestic clouds.

Each member of the band creates equally impressive music as the duo. Tin Vrabik’s alias Nitz explores the properties of electro-acoustics along with its hum, subtle crackle and unpredictable sound synthesis. In her solo project rouge-ah Urska Pris is looking for harmonies in non-objective ambient and reversed field recordings, to which she mixes in a somewhat otherworldly harp playing.

Founded in 1994, Tapan is one of the most remarkable phenomena on the Serbian electronic scene. Over the decades, the project of Goran Simonoski and Nebojša Bogdanović has lived through events of historical scale: from the emergence of the Belgrade rave scene to the breakup of Yugoslavia, from the country’s cultural boycott to Belgrade’s transformation into one of Europe’s cultural capitals. Over the years, the duo’s music has also changed dramatically: sequencer symmetry has grown more elastic, while instrumental and vocal samples have been replaced by live collaborators, including the iconic guitarist Vukašin Đelić, saxophonist Jamal Al Kiswani, and percussionist Fedja Franklin. Today, their music is an intoxicating blend of thick dub, psychedelic rock, jazz, and Oriental influences, while their live performances combine meditative experience with dancefloor ecstasy.

High-pitched pop tunes laced with 1990s nostalgia and reinforced with UK bass and hardcore

Ushko is the stage name of singer and producer Dasha Korotkova. For some, her songs ooze with nostalgic guilty pleasure evoked by the 90s pop music, like "Virus" and "Kraski" (in her interview with Fields, Ushko admitted that she indulges in that kind of music herself, putting it on from time to time "just for kicks"). Other listeners are attracted by the rough energy of 4/4 beat, while still others like her somewhat hysterical and ironic lyrics about opiates, anguish, and a gun in the jockey box.

Ushko's greatest strength lies in refusing to choose any particular niche. She is equally at home in stretched, purposefully raw lo-fi pop and model trance performed in a duet with Moa Pillar, who produced her most recent album, WET_HITS.

"When emotions fill you to the brim and feelings seep through; when the glass is so full that it overflows. This is a state of excitement, hysteria, like an episode of cystitis in the cold rain," – said Dasha about her new album, which deals with autobiographical narratives about school bullying and glorifies the children of the indigo generation. The record's sound framework matches the anguish conveyed in the lyrics: unlike the nostalgic Silver Hits, Ushko’s new LP produces an incinerating effect, as if searing through you with auto-tune lasers and dazzling bass lines.

Eccentric slovenian duo manifesting their freedom from social constructs through sharp post-club bangers

Destruction and melody, deconstruction and broken rhythms — Warrego Valles create a radical tapestry of music from patches of many genres. Social resistance and underground creative activity are woven into their character.

Their polarized music combines viscous bass, abstract voice samples, a constantly changing techno pulsar, and synthetic abstractions. Their social engagement is geared at building safe spaces and resists misogyny, cis- and heteronormativity.

Nina Hudej and Nina Kodrič are one of the most prominent figures in Slovenia's and the Balkans' experimental club scene. Their diverse activities include curating Grounded Festival, Pritličje venue, and electronic events in Club Monokel with their queer group Ustanova.

The soundtrack to your own vacation as a reason to revive new age music

Between tranquil palm-fringed shores and the edge of our galaxy, there is a shortcut: the music of X.Y.R. Excessively romanticized, this statement serves only to outline the range of X.Y.R.'s musical palette, encompassing oriental new age, tropical Balearic, and azure ambient.

Transliterated from Cyrillic, the acronym stands for Temple of Secluded Reflection. This word combination was used by Manilov, a character of Nikolai Gogol's novel "Dead Souls", to describe a simple gazebo set up on his estate. This poetic metaphor was used as a pseudonym by Vladimir Karpov, an ascetic and recluse who decided to move from the concrete jungle of St. Petersburg to a small rural house. It is there that X.Y.R. produces measured and intricate soundscapes that set a contemplative mood, put listeners in a state of hypnosis, or even lull them to sleep.

X.Y.R.'s releases have appeared on California-based label Not Not Fun, NY-based Quiet Time Tapes, and Oakland-based Constellation Tatsu. His debut album, "Robinson Crusoe", initially written as a soundtrack for X.Y.R.'s own vacation, is about to be reissued by an Italian label Mixed Up.

Starting out with the band Glintshake, Katya Shilonosova has tried on many different personas: from art-rock diva to icon of nostalgic pop, from sound artist with Japonisme-tinged motifs to performer of contemporary academic music inspired by Kandinsky and Cardew. In each of these roles, Kate NV is equally convincing: her ambient performances captivate with their fragile atmosphere, while her concerts inspire genuinely naive dancing. Very much in tune with the spirit of Fields, Katya playfully and effortlessly narrows the gap between pop culture and the avant-garde.

A mesmerizing and unpredictable folk tale inspired by dense Slovenian forests, minimalistic rituals, and collectors' instruments

Once upon a time, three Slovenian musicians, Iztok Koren, Ana Kravanja, and Samo Kutin went to a workshop on how to make a balafon, a quaint percussion instrument resembling an African version of marimba. Having assembled the instrument, musicians conducted an impromptu performance together, which turned out to be a starting point for a new transcendental folk trio, Širom.

Full of wonders and folk material, the music of Širom sounds as if it imbibed the majestic charm of Slovenia's nature and grew on its fertile soils without any human agency.
Širom’s live performances resemble alchemical experiments and produce an impression similar to that of observing a watermill at work: listeners are fascinated by sheer mechanical beauty, which we but rarely see in our everyday life. Among other factors, this effect can be attributed to an abundance of inventive means of expression: from lutes and lyres to DIY resonators and instruments you probably didn't even know existed (gimbri, ribab, mizmar, tampura brač and ocarina – give yourself a pat on the back for each instrument you've heard about before).

Širom came into existence only in the mid-2010s, and in a short time managed to conquer, if not the musical Olympus, then at least the Julian Alps: at this point, they deserve the unofficial title of the most eminent avant-garde music project from Slovenia and define the national music scene abroad. It is not by chance that the trio publishes their releases on a multicultural label Glitterbeat that served as a stepping stone for the projects such as Altın Gün, YĪN YĪN, and Lucidvox.
Širom’s most recent album, "The Liquified Throne of Simplicity", hit the 11th place in the Quietus Albums of the Year 2022 chart, while The Guardian compared the band with the 20th century avant-garde legends Steve Reich and Art Ensemble of Chicago.

Refined cross-genre electronica that uncovers the enormous potential of modular synthesizers

"A slap in the face for naysayers who claim that all modular techno acts sound the same," says a press release presenting the music of a slovenian artist Shekuza. Structural intricacies and clear-cut music textures that underlie Shekuza's music immediately convince listeners in the validity of this statement. This is one of those exceptional cases when modular synths conjure up distinct images in the minds of listeners: each track incessantly moves as the music undergoes one transformation after another.

The person behind this project is Miha Šajina, an artist who embraces electronic music in all its appearances instead of trying to grasp at specific genre patterns. For Šajina, a 4x4 beat does not necessarily entail techno; sometimes it forms a strong core that underlies multi-layered cross-genre meanderings. Some songs of Shekuza's contain a rhythmic frame of electro, which is counter-intuitively decorated with mawkishly shimmering string lights, while others flash bare industrial dub that oozes with electric impulses and forces the dancefloor into a measured, mechanical movement.

Hélène Vogelsinger is a French artist, composer, and sound designer from the southwest of France, working at the intersection of ambient music, modular electronics, and visual art. At the heart of her practice lies a dialogue with space: her works often emerge in abandoned buildings, historic monuments, and striking natural locations, later transforming into cinematic video pieces. In her latest series, Forgotten Futures, Hélène embarked on an epic journey across the Balkans, filming performances at monuments dedicated to the Partisan resistance of World War II — at Petrova Gora in Croatia, the Memorial Ossuary of Fallen Fighters in Kavadarci, the Kosmaj Monument on Mount Kosmaj, and beyond. These works carry a sense of tragic grandeur and heroism, a memory of a monumental past, and an unsettling vision of the near future.

Mi Croevkhas is a sample folklorist. Collecting obscure tapes, cartoon fragments and YouTube mumbling, he builds mechanical collages between ambient, glitch and outsider techno. His roots grow from the dub continuum: layers of delay, heavy sound system bass and the cult of the off-beat. This engineer-dub fusion gives rise to his singular style — pulsating, awkward, thoughtful yet relaxed.

Techno is often imagined as a kind of perpetual engine or cyclical mechanism: gears, repetition, hum, inertia. British musician and inventor Graham Dunning quite literally brings that fantasy to life, turning a stack of modified vinyl records, percussion elements, and mechanical triggers into a living rhythmic machine. Even ping-pong balls come into play. This is one of those rare cases where techno can quite literally be seen — and almost touched. If techno has always seemed a little static or abstract to you, this is the perfect chance to experience it from a new angle: the sheer scale of the engineering imagination behind it is hard to ignore.

Mystic folk songs for introverted dancefloors

Violetta Shabash's lyrical character is a forest enchantress who hides deep in the thicket of a birch grove, looking over river otters and occasionally taking a beastly appearance herself, releasing claws and exposing fangs. A bedroom producer currently based in St. Petersburg, Violetta presents her musical mythology in the form of dance songs where the dimmed groove of lo-fi electronics intertwines with sprawling folk lyrics.

Soft Blade’s music palette is dominated by various shades of gray, a mixture of gloomy British electronics and primeval Russian chthonian motifs. This cultural symbiosis was greatly facilitated by the highly contrasted musical expirience of Violetta: having sang in church choirs, she later took on the role of a techno DJ.

Violetta is constantly in search for her own musical identity. For a long time, she shied away from live performances and ascetically composed music at home with a simple MIDI keyboard and a phone to record her voice. At some point she even decided to put an end to her music career and switch to office work. Luckily for us, she secured the backing of her fans and recorded the album "Softic", which ended up winning over the hearts of musical introverts.

With Belgrade duo Skier & Yeti, everything is quite literal: on stage, there is a skier and Yetti. Their musical arsenal would be hard to imagine even for the boldest inventors — and linguists, for that matter: skitar (a guitar made from a ski), basski (a bass guitar made from a ski), skimburica (a ski-built hybrid of guitar and tamburica), and a hybrid drum setup combining acoustic and electronic percussion. Beneath the outward absurdity, however, lies everything we love about the Serbian underground: feral acid rock, frantic breakbeat, hypnotic kraut and wiry techno-pop. Their live shows sound as if you’ve already mounted an avalanche and are hurtling downhill with it.

Split between London and Tbilisi, Russian duo Отваал reunite at Fields. Dmitry Gudnichev (formerly half of IlyaMazo) and Vlad Stepanov blend absurdist humor with melodicism, abstract hip-hop with Russian romance, folk chants with bass electronics, grotesque with beauty. “Avant-garde” hardly fits them — their vision feels destined to linger in pop culture history.

A master of turntablism and polako-scratching, Ljuban handles his source material with equal parts tenderness and irreverence. In the track “Žeka Peka,” for example, you can feel his genuine affection for the original — a children’s song by Yugoslav musician Boris Bizetić, remembered across generations. Running familiar tunes through effects and layering them with stumbling rhythms, Ljuban creates heartfelt bangers that move between hip-hop, breakbeat, bastard pop, and mutated surf rock. Every time, he does it with a warm smile, a prankster’s agility, and unmistakable Balkan swagger.

“Premium sax honker Ben Vince is bringing sexy back in 2026 (sort of)” — opens The Quietus review of Street Druid. Before that, Vince was known for long-form ambient built around sax and looper, and collaborations with Joy Orbison, Gigi Masin, Valentina Magaletti and Oscar-nominated Mica Levi. The new album takes a sharp turn: the sax glows with neon tenderness, club rhythms suddenly appear, and long pieces give way to concise tracks. At Fields, Vince arrives in this new form — part new-age druid, part master of streetwise grooves.

Bedroom-pop artist Milibri works in the overlapping territory of songwriting and electronic music. Her tracks feel like a meeting point between the worlds of Kranky and 100% Silk: misty trip-hop and ambient pop, crackling breakbeats wrapped in reverb and delay, and lo-fi techno humanised by warm, folk-tinged vocal lines. Still, the artist herself opts for a more compact tag — electro shoegaze — and it captures the atmosphere of her music with striking precision.

A punk rock trio from Belgrade that blends jazz improvisations into guitar sound

Crno Dete sound like a fusion of noise rock, jazz, punk, and folk. Fluid, psychedelic, and fully instrumental, to an untrained ear this Belgrade-brewed music can come across as an accidentally recorded jam session. However, this is not entirely the case. Crno Dete do indeed build up from and get inspired by the improvisational vibe, but their musical background includes underground projects, many of which were punky in spirit.

The project appeared in 2011 and at first existed as a one-man band. After a while, Crno Dete became a duet, and then a trio. Nowadays, the band consists of a guitarist Damjan Brkić, drummer Milan Bukejlović, and saxophonist Tomislav Marjanović.

Along the way, Crno Dete recorded 4 full-scale albums: "Riffs" (2012), "Dževad" (2014), "Zlatne Stvari" (2016), and "Neponovljivo" (2017). Their fifth album, "Sv. Prompt", сame out this May; the social media posts that preceded the release were generated by a chatbot similar to ChatGPT. As with all their previous works, Crno Dete's "Sv. Prompt" is a real brain-twister of an album!

Vocal experiments from the main keepers of the Serbian song tradition

Svetlana Spajič's creative biography reflects the evolution of contemporary Serbian folk. An indefatigable explorer of the local culture, Spajič worked for decades to search for hidden gems of Balkan ethnographic music and breathe new life into her findings.

The heart and mind of the local folk scene, Svetlana Spajič launched her music career back in the early 90s under the gentle guidance of highly experienced researchers of folklore. Spajič painstakingly transferred this obscure knowledge into the modern era, expanding her creative reach to other regions of the world. Spajić's artistic journey includes performing at the WOMEX festival, collaborating with Zeiktratzer, a radical academic ensemble from Germany, recording in a duo with Anohni and William Basinski, exploring Balkan sexuality in a project by Marina Abramovič called “Balkan Erotic Epic”, and deep diving into ethno-electronic deviations with Guido Möbius as part of the Gordon project. To a great extent, it was thanks to Svetlana's passion and dedication that Serbian folk music achieved worldwide popularity.

The traditional polyphony of the Svetlana Spajić Group project is based on aural materials painstakingly collected during their numerous expeditions to rural localities. Their performances are characterized by the maximum authenticity and developped a truly timeless quality. The acapella vocal quartet comprised of Spajić herself, her students and colleagues bridges generations and continues the vivid tradition of the unique Serbian culture.

Jelena Stanković is a key figure of the Balkan club scene — DJ, promoter, label owner and producer. In the mid-2010s, Chorbika brought artists like Simple Symmetry, Red Axes and Jacques to Belgrade. Her love for dancefloor eclecticism — disco with IDM, synth-pop with sharp tribal rhythms — shapes both her style and her name. For Jelena, a DJ set is like cooking soup: there’s room for many ingredients — the trick is knowing what to add, and when.

Playful brain teasers for inquiring minds from the mastermind of the Berlin's electronic scene

The ingenious electronic music of Guido Möbius encapsulates the very best of the German underground scene of the last decades. It absorbed the frantic absurdism of "Geniale Dilletanten", hypnotic qualities characteristic of krautrock pioneers, perversive sensibility of electropunk, accessible complexity of the Cologne scene, and humorous romanticism of CDs from the 2000s. With releases on such labels as Karaoke Kalk, Dekorder, and Shitkatapult, Möbius created his own unique sound that turns subtle musical nuances into lucid concepts. He frames dissonances in funky vibes, builds up melodies from glitch sounds, and puts electroacoustic passages under the microscope to discover elements of pop music. An experienced PR agent, Guido Möbius diligently informs the press and the listeners about a wide range of new music, from Faust to the CTM festival. At the same time, he is very passionate about his own projects and builds intimate and trusting relationships with the audience.

Guido Möbius's music is a complex constructor kit, which is put together and reassembled all over again at each of his performances. In plain view of the audience, the straightforward sounds produced by a guitar, trumpet, or microphone flow through an entire orchestra made up of pedals and samplers. The shouts from the crowd, hiking songs, accidental extraneous signals, and other sounds transform in real time, turning the delicate pop-psychedelia into a frenetic rave ruled by the audience itself.

Adventurous saxophone improviser Sergei Khramtcevich gets personal

Saxophone wizard Sergei Khramtcevich is probably the busiest instrumentalist on Russia's independent music scene — even after he arrived in Belgrade. He has left his instantly recognizable touch on dozens of recordings – from experimental rock to postmodernist takes on Russian chanson. However, with his latest album “Five Colours of Experience” Sergei takes a break from collaborations and dives deeper into the world of his innermost feelings and intimate meditations.

Over the course of five compositions he takes us through a rollercoaster of emotions – the raw anxiety of Yellow, the lurking danger of Grey, the loneliness and inner emptiness of Black, the cathartic unpredictability of textures in Orange and the sense of hope in Green. Sergei lets his saxophone speak the pure language of his heart and takes us on a journey filled with wild melodies, abrasive timbres and adventurous spirit of improvisation.

Future jazz visionaries DYW will take you to another galaxy

What happens if you combine snaky saxophone lines, quirky electronic FX and textures and drumming that switches from hypnotic to frenetic? DYW’s futuristic jazz is the best answer to this question. The band is not afraid to tread stylistically diverse territories, being equally comfortable with muscular jazz rock, sophisticated avant-jazz and meditative minimalism.

DYW’s influences range from Sun Ra’s cosmogonic philosophy to Shabaka Hutchings’s uncompromised artistic bravery. The band’s live shows have been compared to intergalactiс expeditions, scientific experiments and even shamanistic trips. This time DYW will join forces with the drummer from fellow jazz experimentalists Džezbollah, whose approach combines deepness and passion with humour.

Future jazz visionaries DYW will take you to another galaxy

What happens if you combine snaky saxophone lines, quirky electronic FX and textures and drumming that switches from hypnotic to frenetic? DYW’s futuristic jazz is the best answer to this question. The band is not afraid to tread stylistically diverse territories, being equally comfortable with muscular jazz rock, sophisticated avant-jazz and meditative minimalism.

DYW’s influences range from Sun Ra’s cosmogonic philosophy to Shabaka Hutchings’s uncompromised artistic bravery. The band’s live shows have been compared to intergalactiс expeditions, scientific experiments and even shamanistic trips. This time DYW will join forces with the drummer from fellow jazz experimentalists Džezbollah, whose approach combines deepness and passion with humour.

A sonic alchemist seamlessly blending outsider electronics and atmospheric bass into a pulsating techno odyssey

SAUD is the papa snare of the SUTRA rave circuit, which over the time has hosted many eminent artists at Belgrade venues, including Batu, Aisha Devi, Abadir, Aya, Lee Gamble, Minor Science, Aquarian, and Peder Mannerfelt.

Prepare to be captivated by SAUD's transcendent DJ set where disparate sonic worlds collide in a mesmerizing fusion. Drawing inspiration from the intriguing universe of outsider electronics found on Nyege Nyege tapes, he intertwines it with the atmospheric bass production reminiscent of Skee Mask, creating an exhilarating sonic journey. With a touch of audacity, SAUD effortlessly accelerates and achieves an extraordinary speed together with Atrice, while maintaining a sublime uneven glow that permeates the air for hours. Brace yourself for a whirlwind of eclectic techno vibes, where pulsating rhythms and ethereal textures intertwine.

Deeply immersed in his craft, SAUD has ventured far and wide, leaving sonic imprints across global landscapes. From the bustling streets of New York City to the labyrinthine alleys of Berlin, from the serene landscapes of Belgium to the sun-kissed shores of Italy, his melodies have excited the souls of many. The Balkans have danced to his sound's irresistible cadence, as SAUD's sonic whispers have become an intrinsic part of their musical tapestry.

SAUD, the luminary of SUTRA, awaits your presence at Fields RS. Be advised that the unexpected is to be expected.

A solo project of Isabel Candia, s0.any combines the fragilily and tenderness of the entire world that screams with the power of the wind itself. Isabel’s music can best be described as ‘sharp as a needle’: a thready lo-fi sound that hides the scintillation of a thunderstorm behind it, as well as the crumbling of volcanic rocks and memories, and the responsiveless of birds' voices to a person who took refuge in the wild of the forest. The impressions of the natural world and a deep love for it are reflected in the dancing electronic sounds alloyed with wind and traditional plucked instruments, guitar loops, and field recordings. This music is breathing, crying, and rejoicing at the contemplation of natural processes as if joining in with the artist to ask the question – what piece of memory shall it become next? Isabel was born and raised in Peru, and her childhood recollections take the form of either Nazca Lines amid the desert sands or the magical deviations of time shaped as the selva forest.

The Fields festival of inventive music is coming back to Belgrade.
April 16-18. Various venues across Belgrade. More TBA soon.