SFEMF celebrates 25 years of groundbreaking electronic music Sept. 24-26. Presented in co-production with The Lab and with support from the Italian Cultural Institute and InterMusic SF, the festival features three nights of live electronic performances by an exceptional roster of internationally acclaimed and emerging artists.

Spanning a remarkable breadth of contemporary practice, this year's program explores electronic sound as science-fiction fantasy, sonic ecosystems, technologically realized fugues, acousmatic dramaturgy, patient listening, sonic theater, and deeply liberating ritual.

The festival opens on Thursday, September 24, with Blevin Blectum (Bevin Kelley), whose vibrant audiovisual performance creates a technicolor sonic fever dream. IDHAZ & Emily Bouton follow with a hybrid of scored and improvised music for harp, violin, voice, and visuals that invites openness, flight, and spontaneous self-expression. The evening concludes with Rrose's Helicopter Mass, an immersive work exploring the intersection of hypnotic techno, experimental composition, and psychoacoustic phenomena with meticulous precision.

Doors 7:30 pm, Show 8:00 pm

Tickets $23, festival pass $60

Ticket link: https://dice.fm/bundles/san-francisco-electronic-music-festival-2026-589l

More info: https://www.sfemf.org/
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SFEMF celebrates 25 years of groundbreaking electronic music Sept. 24-26. Presented in co-production with The Lab and with support from the Italian Cultural Institute and InterMusic SF, the festival features three nights of live electronic performances by an exceptional roster of internationally acclaimed and emerging artists.

Spanning a remarkable breadth of contemporary practice, this year's program explores electronic sound as science-fiction fantasy, sonic ecosystems, technologically realized fugues, acousmatic dramaturgy, patient listening, sonic theater, and deeply liberating ritual.

Friday's program begins with Albert Yeh, who presents four voice fugues performed using MIDI and modular synthesizers, demonstrating timeless musical processes realized through contemporary technology. Stefano Pilia follows with solo performances from his recent works Spiralis Aurea and Lacinia, adapted for electric guitar and electronics to create an acousmatic dramaturgy suspended between logos and chaos. The Gleaners—Laetitia Sonami and Matt Robidoux—continue the evening, combining Sonami's pioneering electronic instruments with Robidoux's distinctive "corn synth" practice to create immersive performances that blur the boundaries between composition, installation, and sonic theater. Friday concludes with Paul DeMarinis, whose experiments with sound objects and electronics transform performance into a ritualistic theatrical experience.

Doors 7:30 pm, Show 8:00 pm

Tickets $23, festival pass $60

Ticket link: https://dice.fm/bundles/san-francisco-electronic-music-festival-2026-589l

More info: https://www.sfemf.org/
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SFEMF celebrates 25 years of groundbreaking electronic music Sept. 24-26. Presented in co-production with The Lab and with support from the Italian Cultural Institute and InterMusic SF, the festival features three nights of live electronic performances by an exceptional roster of internationally acclaimed and emerging artists.

Spanning a remarkable breadth of contemporary practice, this year's program explores electronic sound as science-fiction fantasy, sonic ecosystems, technologically realized fugues, acousmatic dramaturgy, patient listening, sonic theater, and deeply liberating ritual.

The festival concludes on Saturday with Thomas Carnacki (Gregory Scharpen, Cheryl Leonard, and Gregory Hagan), who conjure dreamlike sonic environments from found sounds and unconventional materials, including rocks, glass vessels, and even live scorpions. Seth Cluett follows with quiet, patiently unfolding music that explores the liminal space between the senses through an acute attention to perception. Closing the festival is Moor Mother (Camae Ayewa), whose powerful performances fuse free jazz, noise, hip-hop, and Afrofuturism to examine memory, displacement, Black histories, and alternative futures through sound, text, and performance.

Doors 7:30 pm, Show 8:00 pm

Tickets: $23 single night, $60 festival pass

Ticket link: https://dice.fm/bundles/san-francisco-electronic-music-festival-2026-589l

More info: https://www.sfemf.org/
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The Tenses + MSHR + Sung Kim

Doors 8pm / Show 8:30pm
$17 / free or discounted for members

The Tenses—comprised of Ju Suk Reet Meate and Oblivia from Smegma, the legendary “band without musicians” founded in 1973—held a tradition of weekly jam sessions with MSHR (Brenna Murphy & Birch Cooper) beginning in 2012. The jam room AKA Smegma’s studios AKA “purple planet room,” was a longtime anchor of the Portland underground music scene with a rotating cast of weirdos and noise musicians coming through over the decades. Lifelong archivists, The Tenses would record and catalog every session, occasionally releasing highlights on labels such as their own Pigface Records, including a collaborative release with MSHR in 2015.

The two duos converge for a rare west coast tour, with The Tenses’ collection of cassette recorders, plastic water jugs, pocket trumpet, Ciat-Lonbarde synths, and occasional surf rock riffs. MSHR initiates "Negative Flower," a new system for live improvisation with virtual acoustic feedback and sculptural patterning. Wind is blowing through a garden of stones. Sung Kim joins for an opening set with his expertly crafted handmade musical constructions drawing on kotos, lap steel, and various other stringed instruments.
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Hana Stretton + Phipps Pt

Doors 8pm / Show 8:30pm
$27 adv / $29 door / free or discounted for members

Hana Stretton is a British/Australian composer, singer and producer known for her remarkably warm production style and uniquely spacious songform. In 2023, her debut album, Soon, earned a beloved status among discerning listeners around the globe. This stunning work caught the ear of one Phil Elverum, who lovingly reissued Soon through his own label in 2024, furthering the album’s reach and deepening its reputation. In the press, Elverum said: “I hear an artist who has entered completely into the stream where creation originates […] Hana Stretton has truly recorded the deep flourishing sound of a quiet listening mind in full blossom.” A fitting testament to a young artist rooted in the stillness of nature. From the dusty Australian bushland on Soon, Stretton transports the listener to the Pacific Ocean on her new album, tiarn (set to be released summer 2026). Shifting gradually like a shoreline, her new compositions reveal welcomed hints of classical and electronic flourishes.

Phipps Pt. is the duo project of songwriter and artist Lovage Sharrock and electronic musician Jon Leidecker (Wobbly, Negativland). Falling somewhere between precise songcraft and free improvisation, acid folk and ambient electronics, the music they create is an ongoing conversation between two singular artists and longtime friends listening and responding to one another with care and curiosity.
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Marisa Anderson + Camellia Boutros

Doors 8pm / Show 8:30pm
$27 adv / $29 door / free or discounted for members

Marisa Anderson's music transcends borders. The topography of her work interrogates the intersections of artistry and expression with form and tradition. A singular guitarist and voracious musical collaborator, Anderson crafts pieces bursting with equal parts reverence and curiosity, contouring familiar shapes into work that is wholly her own.

The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music is a collection of nearly one thousand songs culled from the private record collection of the late Harry Smith. Assembled by Anderson after a chance encounter led to an opportunity to study and explore this treasure trove of music, the Anthology focuses on music from places that the United States has been in conflict with since 1970: Southeast Asia, the USSR and the Arabic and Islamic regions of the world. In Volume 1 Anderson presents her own deeply personal iterations of nine songs from the Anthology. Composed, transcribed and arranged through a process of trial and error, deep listening and research, Anderson charts a musical course from Afghanistan to Vietnam via Yemen, Cambodia and Turkmenistan.
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Cherub Dream Records x The Lab: Tricky FM "Twin Star Fantasy" + Edgar + Tugboyz

Doors 8pm / Show 8:30pm
$17 / free or discounted for members

Tricky FM is the music project and "electronica star" alter ego of Hana Freed. Based out of San Francisco, she self produces all her own music, while being a staple in clubs, venues and punk bars throughout the Bay Area and beyond. On stage, Tricky FM is known for her energetic and almost performance-art interpretation of the 'pop star'. At home, behind her computer, she's crafted her own brand of euphoric sounding electronica. Her work centers on the complex terrain of navigating contemporary womanhood: trust, intimacy, fulfillment and ultimately the relationship with the self. Her 2023 debut Peace, Love, Unity, Rave (Cherub Dream Records) arrived from a place of urgency and anger—a sampled-based Ableton-coded reckoning with the ways misogyny runs through every facet of life. This album led her to share stages with Alice Glass, Molly Nilsson, Mechatok, Otha, Spellling, Salami Rose Joe Louis and more.

Her forthcoming album Twin Star Fantasy finds Tricky FM on the other side of this reckoning. Where PLUR was forged in chaos, Twin Star Fantasy was built in stillness. What fantastical things can be brought forth from the seemingly everyday and mundane? This album weaves reflections on stability and the relationships that shaped her—an homage to the past, a document of the present, and a prayer for the future. It shows an artist at the fullness of her potential, stepping into a sound that she has been perfecting on her own. Hana produced Twin Star Fantasy herself, and it was mixed/mastered by her friend Taylor Bivens. The record drops September 2026 via Cherub Dream Records.
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