SONICA 2025 | Rafael Toral, Antonina Nowacka, Stamor

The opening night of SONICA 2025 includes three singular artists, builders of captivating and immersive soundscapes that operate at the intersection of electroacoustic and experimental music

Portuguese guitar trailblazer Rafael Toral is returning to Ljubljana with one of the most critically acclaimed albums of 2024, Spectral Evolution (Drag City Records, 2024), which landed on the AOTY lists of outlets such as The Wire, Pitchfork, The Quietus and Bandcamp Daily. No surprise, as his music sounds as if it were populated by fantastic creatures from the phantasmagorias of the master Hieronymus Bosch!
Polish SHAPE+ platform protégé, vocalist, sound artist and composer Antonina Nowacka is inviting us into her fantastic sonic realms that grow from new age and neoclassical traditions. Her elfin vocals and the ethereal timbres of various instruments (zither, harp, ocarina and others) wrap listeners in a blanket of fresh flowers and transport them to a mesmerising dreamworld. 
While Slovenian musician and producer Jan Bajc Funa aka .čunfa is premiering his new project Stamor, an enthralling blend of dark ambient, ritualistic dungeon synths and black metal-via-doom riffs.

Rafael Toral (PT)
“We often talk of visionary albums, but Spectral Evolution should be celebrated for how visual it is, cracking open the listener’s mind’s eye to reveal an animated landscape populated by rare and exotic creatures.”
Jennifer Lucy Allan, The Guardian 

Producer, composer and performer Rafael Toral is one of the most singular experimental guitarists of our age, involved with rock, ambient, electronic music and free jazz. He pioneered a blend of ambient and rock, recording acclaimed albums such as Wave Field (1998). In 2004, he launched the alien-sounding Space Program, an ambitious long-term project exploring electronic music based on silence and inspired by post-free jazz. The resulting music, “melodic without notes, rhythmic with no beat, familiar but strange, meticulous but radically free – riddled with paradox but full of clarity and space”, has been described as “a brand of electronic music far more visceral and emotive than that of his cerebral peers”. Toral practices an understanding of silence as “space” with a clear function in music creation. The release of Moon Field LP (2017) marked the beginning of new creative trajectories with the Space Quartet. Returning to the electric guitar with a renewed interest in harmony, Toral synthesized all of the above on the masterpiece Spectral Evolution (2024), which landed on many AOTY lists. He has toured around the globe and collaborated with Jim O’Rourke, Evan Parker, Phill Niblock and Sonic Youth, to mention a few.
 

Antonina Nowacka (SHAPE+, PL)
“Nowacka has such a distinctive voice and way of singing that makes me feel she is singing from beyond a threshold. She opens a small portal to a world not quite the same as this one.”
Jennifer Lucy Allan, The Quietus 

Antonina Nowacka is a vocalist, sound artist and composer with a background in visual arts. Through years of sonic explorations in natural environments, studies of various music traditions and voice peculiarities, she has developed a deeply relaxing and hypnotic voice quality reminiscent of a theremin. Through her subtle soundscapes, she takes listeners on emotional imaginative journeys inspired by nature, space, dreams and otherworldly happenings. Her collaborators include names such as Agnieszka Polska, Nicolas Jaar and Sofie Birch. She performs all around the world in prestigious concert spaces, museums, art galleries and theatres such as Lincoln Centre (New York), Barbican Centre (London), Silent Green (Berlin), Centro National de las Artes (Mexico City) and Bourse de Commerce (Paris). She is an artist of the SHAPE+ platform for the season 2024/25.
 

Stamor (SI)
Live premiere of the album The Absurd (self-released, 2024)
“The album [...] leaves a great impression for its sophisticated, multi-layered production and well-thought-out dramaturgy. Its truly heavy mood plunges the listener into a black cloud of melancholy even on the sunniest summer's day. A soundtrack that doesn't require a film!”
Gregor Kocijančič, Mladina 

Stamor is a new ambient project by Slovenian musician and producer Jan Bajc Funa aka .čunfa, whose debut album The Absurd (self-released, 2024) is described as “a homage to Albert Camus and his absurdism”. Bajc has channeled his love for minor-key riffs and ominous metal ambience into The Stamor project. It seems as if instrumental parts usually used as introductions or interludes on a post-metal record represent the essence of his expression. The pensive guitar tones are not followed by blast beats, downtuned riffage and unholy growls, but rather they are expanded with synthesised bass lines, ritualistic percussion, gothic synths and hypnotic field recordings. His expression is reminiscent of Burzum’s dungeon synth releases, Earth’s cosmic drones and, at times, Muslimgauze’s mystical chants. The Stamor project is marked by a sincere desire to grasp the poetics of the absurd.

Bajc will be joined on stage by Manuel Brajnik (guitar, electronics) and Rok Babič (guitar, sampler) from the band Spiral Mind.

SONICA 2025: -STREAM
15 - 18 April 2025
www.sonica.si

Co-produced by MoTA - Museum of Transitory Art, SONICA Festival Institute and Cankarjev dom. Supported by the Ministry of culture RS and the Municipality of Ljubljana - Department of Culture. Antonina Nowacka is an artist of the SHAPE+ platform for innovative music and interdisciplinary art, co-funded by the European Union and Pro Helvetia.
www.sonica.si