MENT @ Ljubljana, 18-21/02/2026

The MENT lineup features artists who stretch sound beyond genre and expectation. From radical vocal practices and acoustic rituals to modular techno, underground rap, cathartic screamo, and emotionally charged indie songwriting, this year's programme oscillates between intimacy and impact, tradition and speculation, the body and the machine. What unites these projects is a strong sense of authorship: music as a lived, physical act, deeply informed by place, memory, and a resistance to easy categorisation.

The final MENT lineup reveal brings together artists who treat music as an open field. At its most intimate and radical, iT / Irena Tomažin places the human voice at the centre of an intensely physical practice, where gesture, breath, and movement become compositional tools. Her latest album Another Crying Game ventures into avant-garde schlager and experimental folk, marking her most lyrical and accessible release to date. A similarly profound understanding of sound shapes Europa, the multidisciplinary project of Moritz Haas, whose emotionally charged ambient-pop hybrids unfold as precise, immersive environments between concert, installation, and AV performance. From Paris, La Valentina brings a fierce, genre-fluid energy, moving between rap, trap, salsa, and experimental sounds in Spanish and French, while Youniss channels post-punk, hip-hop, noise, and jazz into a visceral live presence shaped by life in the modern city.

Tickets

Dark romanticism and raw emotion run through multiple corners of the lineup. The Turkish duo Ductape fuses 80s post-punk and darkwave with bilingual lyrics and relentless on-stage intensity, while Slovenian rapper Neeko navigates murky beats and hypnotic delivery, balancing control and chaos with stark honesty. Hailing from the Netherlands, Parker Fans inject playful maximalism into the mix, turning drum samples, synths, and basslines into irresistibly catchy, dancefloor-ready pop with a cracked sense of humor. On a more expansive, compositional axis, Polish pianist and composer Hania Derej blurs jazz, chamber, and electronic music into cinematic, exploratory forms, while SUFERI reimagine Polish folk traditions by filtering oberek rhythms through contemporary jazz and electronic sensibilities.

Club culture, sound system heritage, and deep listening are equally present. Warsaw-based DJ and vocalist Hermeneia moves freely between dancehall, dub, halftime, and illbient textures, crafting hybrid sets rooted in underground culture, while Serbia-born, Austria-based Olgica builds long-form, journey-like DJ sets shaped by patience, intuition, and years of community-driven work. On the electronic front, SWAI explore raw modular techno forms that oscillate between open atmospheres and dancefloor pressure, while Kathron brings live modular performance shaped by rhythm, intensity, and emotional depth. Folk traditions take on a mythical, poetic dimension with Nika Prusnik & bratje Poljanec, whose polyphonic songs and acoustic arrangements draw listeners into archetypal landscapes of nature and ritual. Meditative sound realms also define Januš Aleš Luznar, who blends handcrafted acoustic instruments from around the world with contemporary electronic design to create immersive ambient journeys.

The lineup's DIY and guitar-driven edge is carried by Falesia, a Trieste-based screamo quintet delivering raw, emotionally charged hardcore rooted in Italian and Slovenian underground traditions, and Zagreb's kaleido, whose debut album moves from fragile, jazzy passages to explosive walls of sound. Narrative warmth and understated intimacy arrive with the Bulgarian band Mono and the Stereos, blending indie, folk, and country into song-focused storytelling. Crossing into hyperpop and ambient cloud rap, Klara Wodehn merges dreamy bedroom production with lyrical reflections on nature and society. Finally, Pinheiro closes the circle by collapsing film, foley, and acousmatic composition into a live sonic fiction with her performance ASYNCH - an immersive experience of a film that exists only in sound.

promo girl // 14/01/2026