SEVEN LUNCHMEAT SETS WE ARE LOOKING FORWARD TO

words by GIULIA MARIA SCROCCHI

Prague's underground scene just got a lot louder. Lunchmeat Festival is back for its 17th edition, taking over the National Gallery's Trade Fair Palace and Ankali Club from September 23–27, and the 21-act lineup is one of the most genre-spanning we've seen from the festival yet. The festival features everything from glacial ambient to guaracha-laced club tracks to full-blown audiovisual experiences. And while nowadays quite a few European festivals spotlight “experimental” music — or, as they say at Lunchmeat, “adventurous” music — it is Lunchmeat’s commitment to audiovisual and design practices, and to bringing together not only these disciplines but their respective communities of music and multimedia art, that makes it one of the most compelling events to keep an eye on.

To help you plan your festival, we've picked out a handful of sets, a mix of lead acts and hidden gems, that we're especially excited to catch. See you dancing in Prague!

AUTECHRE

image courtesy of WARP RECORDS

You can't talk about this year's Lunchmeat without starting here. The Warp Records legends are closing out the entire festival, and if past form is anything to go by, expect a set that's dense, disorienting, and pitch-dark — electronic music at its most uncompromising. This is being billed as a once-in-a-lifetime performance, and it's easy to see why: Few acts can command a room the way Autechre still do, decades into their career.

ZORA JONES

photography by ALEX BALLANO

After what feels like a long wait, Zora Jones returns with a vocal-forward, club-infused live set. Her sound has always sat at the intersection of pop instinct and sound-design experimentation, and this comeback slot is shaping up to be one of the emotional high points of the festival. Performances like this one reveal part of Lunchmeat’s identity: right at the point where avant-pop and club music cross paths.

KMRU & NICK VERSTAND — "AS NATURE"

photography by PALMA LLOPIS and courtesy of NICK VERSTAND

Co-commissioned with Barbican and Rewire, this pairing brings together KMRU's tectonic, slow-moving ambient textures with Nick Verstand's kinetic visual work. The piece moves between tranquil silence and seismic intensity, built from field recordings, drones and evolving harmonic structures that blur the line between the familiar and the abstract. Verstand answers with lightweight fabrics set in motion by airflow, LEDs and smoke, while a scent element developed with Mareike Bode adds a third sensory layer, playing on the tension between the natural and the electric. It's less a DJ set than an immersive listening experience — the kind of performance that rewards standing still in the dark and letting it wash over you.

DEBIT + BIANJIE SYSTEMS

image courtesy of DEBIT

Debit brings serious Latin club energy to the lineup, presenting her NAAFI-released album that fuses guaracha with acid and techno; a combination that sounds chaotic on paper and, in her hands, feels completely natural. Visuals come courtesy of Bianjie Systems, adding a striking layer to an already high-octane set.

BUENA TARDE & ZTAA — "RESONANT MASS"

image courtesy of ZTAA and BUENA TARDE

Mexican duo ztaa (Anahy Cabrera) and Buena Tarde (Carlo Filio) bring one of the festival's most conceptually ambitious commissions with Resonant Mass, a world premiere developed across Mexico and Europe. The piece treats brutalist architecture as a living, resonant body rather than a backdrop — concrete textures are captured and run through real-time granular synthesis, turning the buildings themselves into an expanded instrument, while generative visuals respond in kind. Backed by real 3D scanning and field-recording work done on-site at brutalist landmarks, it's a set built for volume and scale, and one of the more research-driven pieces on the bill.

NEXUS (B4MBA & MOOKI6)

image courtesy of NEXUS

Barcelona's Pan-African Jokkoo Collective sends two of its members into the Lunchmeat commission slot with Nexus, the project of Senegalese-Hispanic musician B4mba and Franco-Guadeloupean audiovisual artist Mooki6. Their sound pulls from punk, industrial, dancehall, noise and trap to build something rooted in ancestral rhythm and heavy, dark frequency — less a DJ set than a ritual, built around tension, catharsis and urgency. Reviewers who've caught them live describe a pair with little regard for the boundary between stage and crowd, which tracks with a project explicitly built on chaos and community. At Lunchmeat they team up with artist duo Akyute for a world premiere centred on a world falling apart — expect it to be as physical as it is loud.

MIRIAMA KARDOŠOVÁ — "I TELL HER TO SPEAK"

image courtesy of MIRIAMA KARDOŠOVÁ

At first glance, what makes Lunchmeat such a must-see might be the commissioned performances or the world premieres. But what really sets it apart is the selection of local artists, who bring great prestige by showcasing a rich and extraordinary local scene. This is the case with Miriama Kardošová.

One of the festival's strongest performance-art moments comes from local artist Miriama Kardošová, who blends club music with avant-garde theatre, DIY masks, and touches of cabaret. It's a hybrid show in the truest sense, and exactly the kind of boundary-pushing work Lunchmeat has built its reputation on.