Brno's Pop Messe music festival, which showcases the contemporary foreign and domestic electronic, rap, pop and indie scene, has come up with the first confirmed names for next year's event. For the first time ever, Brno will be hosting dance club legend Orbital, one of the most influential producers of our time Danny L Harle, who has produced albums by Caroline Polachek and written hits for Charli XCX, Dua Lipa, Tommy Cash and Rina Sawayama, as well as Leon Vynehall and Batu, top names on the British DJ scene, and American hyperpop duo Frost Children, Toccororo, the queen of the Spanish club scene, Polish electronic duo Wczasy, the five-member Parisian collective 15 15 aka Quinze Quinze, who mix global underground culture with Tahitian roots, French dance duo Atoem, and Mikuláš Příhoda aka Kewu, whose set will feature the Czech-Slovak ballroom dancers Viktor Velvet and the Kiki Dancers collective.
In total, over sixty bands, musicians and DJs from this country and abroad will play on several outdoor and indoor stages; the programme will offer a Pop Talks conference, a Czech Television cinema stage and discounts and free admission to some of Brno's top sights. The fifth annual Pop Messe will take place from 25 to 27 July 2025, again in and around the Velodrome at the BVV Exhibition Centre.
"After this year's enthusiastic response, we feel a great responsibility towards our visitors - both in terms of the line-up and the entire organisation. Once again we'll be presenting the most interesting contemporary names from many genres - from dance electronica, electro-soul, dub, rap to jazz. And after last year's legendary Leftfield, we can look forward to another big dance name - the Orbital duo," says Tomáš Kelar, the festival's programme director.
The Hartnoll brothers named themselves Orbital after the 'orbital highway', the M25, which was essential for the acidhouse generation fleeing the city for the woods to party at illegal raves. "Orbital grew up to be studio wizards and throughout the 1990s they churned out hits like Are We Here?, Belfast, Halcyon, On+On, Satan, The Box and Saint, and their first four full-length albums are absolute classics of British electronica," says Tomas Kelar. In 2017, they returned to the world's stages for a second time "to get you dancing like it's still rave and 1992."
Danny L Harle was nominated for a Grammy for his production on Caroline Polachek's latest album. "Although the cult label he started on, PC Music, has gone out of business, Harle proudly continues to infect the contemporary mainstream with futurism and pop avant-garde. His only solo record to date, 2021's Harlecore, imagines the club as a dance utopia where dreams of absolute freedom can come true," Kelar adds.
Leon Vynehall and Batu have a lot in common - both have been on the scene for over a decade and both also cross genre boundaries from bass music to techno and house. Vynehall has released his work on Ninja Tune, Batu is the founder of Bristol label Timedance. "Batu has featured in the annual best mix charts of media outlets such as The Guardian, Mixmag has ranked him as one of the top 20 DJs, and he's also been given the chance to record his own BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix," Kelar tells us.
Frost Children, aka siblings Angel and Lulu Prost, offer a frantic version of hyperpop and glitchcore. "Their music, packed with novel ideas, unexpected genre breaks and manic energy, reflects that strange Covid era where anxiety was mingled with a desire for extreme escapism," says Kelar. They've built a strong online community around their music, from extreme music nerds, kids with Pokémon backpacks, to old-school ravers.
Toccororo, the queen of the Spanish club scene, has been working mainly in the Madrid queer scene for the last few years. She mixes contemporary American female rap with contemporary Latino genres such as guaracha and aleteo. Mixmax ranked her set as one of the best of 2022, and she subsequently toured the world and played at NTS.
Polish electronic duo Wczasy consists of Bartłomiej Maczaluk and Jakub Żwirełło and has existed since 2016. "Their music mixes mutant synth-pop with cold wave elements. Their energetic and minimalist hits recall the atmosphere of the Polish state of emergency in the early 1980s, where subdued euphoria combines with decadence and a sense of timelessness," Kelar adds.
The music of 15 15 reflects the free-thinking spirit of Tahiti, an island where artists from around the world have traditionally sought escape and inspiration. "Since 2013 they've been building their own unique style of 'climate music', with the aim of telling the stories of people who usually have no voice in Western pop. The name of each of their records is a word in the traditional language spoken on the islands of Polynesia," says Tomáš Kelar.
Mikuláš Příhoda aka Kewu has been on the Czech club scene since 2012. "He plays genres that we don't hear much about - grime, baile funk, gqom, vogue, and listeners never know what unexpected treats he'll pull out of the bag," says Kelar, with a touch of exaggeration.
Atoem, or Gabriel Renault and Antoine Talon from Rennes, Brittany, France, create raw dance music that references the aesthetics of the eternal 80s. Atoem released their debut album Entropy in 2023. "Translations of song titles such as - Ghosts of the Past, Sinking Ocean, Summer Grave - suggest that the duo is not exactly shaping a beautiful vision of the future with of their analogue and modular synths," concludes Tomáš Kelar.
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