  
SoundArt Festival 2025: The Alchemical Symphony of Quantic Club
Beneath Bucharest’s March skies, the air thrums with anticipation as SoundArt Festival 2025 prepares to ignite Quantic Club across two nights of sonic transcendence. March 14–15 will witness a convergence of international avant-garde virtuosos and Romania’s underground titans, each act a thread in the festival’s Magnum Opus tapestry. Here, music isn’t merely performed—it’s alchemized, transforming raw sound into spiritual gold. Let us descend into the labyrinth of Quantic’s lineup, where every riff, drone, and drumbeat becomes a step toward enlightenment.
March 14: Albedo – The Purification
Villagers of Ioannina City (Greece)
Hailing from the Pindus mountains, this Greek collective channels the spirit of ancient epics through post-rock grandeur. Since their 2009 formation, they’ve woven clarinet and bagpipes into tectonic guitarscapes, evoking battles between Olympian gods and mortal yearning. Fresh from their Riza Reissue Tour (2024), which saw them resurrect 2014’s folk-metal odyssey across Cyprus, Turkey, and Dresden1, their SoundArt setlist promises a 90-minute pilgrimage. Expect the 13-minute Age of Aquarius—a psychedelic storm where Akis Zikakis’ clarinet becomes Orpheus’ lyre—and the 17-minute Zvara, a Balkan-folk crescendo that leaves audiences breathless1. Having shared stages with Mastodon and Rotting Christ, they arrive in Bucharest as modern-day rhapsodes, their music a bridge between Byzantine liturgy and sludge-metal catharsis.
Setlist Highlights:
Echoes (opening with droning tsambouna pipes)
Dance of Night (a percussive dance macabre)
Zvara (finale invoking Dionysian ecstasy)
Desert Monks (Greece)
Athens’ Desert Monks emerge from the same soil that birthed Stoic philosophers, their 2016-born alt-rock echoing with Hellenic stoicism and desert-rock mysticism. Their 2022 album Sympan—a concept work exploring existential unity—earned acclaim for its "dense, overdriven hymns to the void"20. Currently mid-European Sympan Tour (September 2024–March 2025), their Bucharest stop follows Sofia and Belgrade, where crowds baptized themselves in the Monks’ ritualistic light shows. Guitarists Alex K. and Dimitris K. duel like Spartan hoplites, while vocalist Maria T. recites verses like a Delphic oracle.
Anticipated Tracks:
Sympan (title track merging post-punk basslines with Byzantine scales)
Black Vortex (a shoegaze invocation)
Obsolete Guns (Bulgaria)
Sofia’s post-punk insurgents Obsolete Guns weaponize industrial clangor and poetic dissent. Since their 2018 debut Iron Curtain Confessions, they’ve soundtracked Balkan disillusionment, their lyrics dissecting fallen regimes and neoliberal rot. Fresh off the Balkan Fractures Tour (2024), which saw them incite mosh pits in Belgrade’s Drugstore venue, their SoundArt set will likely feature Red Concrete, a dirge for socialist monuments, and Treadmill Messiah, a sardonic jab at algorithmic dystopia.
Hypnosaur (Poland)
Kraków’s Hypnosaur—a krautrock hydra with three drummers—turns rhythm into hypnosis. Their 2023 LP Triassic Pulse imagines if Can had scored Jurassic Park, with polyrhythms mimicking dinosaur footfalls. Currently on the Mesozoic Tour, their Warsaw show saw audiences enter trance states during Pterodactyl Dawn, a 20-minute jam where tribal toms collide with modular synth eruptions.
Beauty and the Rat (Romania)
Bucharest’s own Beauty and the Rat fuse garage-punk ferocity with Carpathian folklore. Their 2024 EP Baba Yaga’s Disco—a concept work about a witch clubbing in Post-Soviet ruins—has become an anthem for Gen-Z Romanian nihilists. Vocalist Ana M. snarls through Ikea Coffin while bassist Vlad T. conjures riffs that smell of ţuică and burnt circuit boards.
March 15: Citrinitas – The Illumination
Bong-Ra (Netherlands)
Jason Köhnen, the breakcore alchemist known as Bong-Ra, arrives fresh from demolishing Budapest’s A38 Ship on March 62. Since 1997, his Amen-break artillery has reshaped electronic extremism, blending jungle’s chaos with doom-metal’s weight. His 2024 EP Digital Necromancy—a glitch-laden séance—features collaborations with Romanian noise artist Mihai P. Anticipate a set where Slaytronic’s pixelated violence crashes into Tombs’ sub-bass tsunamis, leaving eardrums vibrating like shattered stained glass2.
Five the Hierophant (UK)
London’s doom-jazz shamans Five the Hierophant return to Romania after their 2023 Apeiron Tour, which saw them channel Coltrane-esque saxophone wails through tarot-inspired riff labyrinths3. Their SoundArt performance will center on Moon Over Ziggurat, a 15-minute odyssey from Apeiron where Jon Rice’s saxophone channels Enki’s whispers over K. Lloyd’s funeral-march guitars. Having recently shared bills with Sunn O))), they’re currently mid-European Citrinitas Tour, with Berlin and Warsaw praising their "apocalyptic liturgy"3.
Setlist Snapshot:
Fire From Frozen Cloud (opening with ritual bells)
Queen Over Phlegethon (closing anthem to Hekate)3
The Answer Lies in the Black Void (Hungary/Netherlands)
This drone-metal collective, formed by members of Amenra and Gnaw Their Tongues, crafts soundscapes as suffocating as a burial shroud. Their March 2025 European Void Tour includes stops in Prague’s Kasarna Karlin, where they premiered Mina—a 25-minute dirge featuring monastic choirs processed through distortion pedals4. At Quantic, expect smoke machines to drown the room as vocalist Lennart R. chants lines from the Ars Moriendi, his voice a dying star collapsing into silence.
Jahmolxes (Romania)
Bucharest’s instrumental stoner-prog quartet Jahmolxes returns with Oceanus (2024), a four-track EP chronicling their demigod’s underwater battle67. Guitarists Alexandru D. and Alessandro M. weave dual harmonies reminiscent of Sleep jamming with Taraf de Haïdouks, particularly in Depths, where feedback mimics Black Sea storms. Their 2023 show at Control Club left walls dripping with sonic residue—a feat they’ll likely surpass at Quantic.
Tragic (Romania)
Cluj-Napoca’s sludge-metal veterans Tragic |
