Borderline Festival 2026 at Onassis Ready: Two Days, Two Stages, 25 Artists from the International and Greek Scene

The past, the present, and the future of experimental electronic music merge into an explosive sonic mix. Borderline 2026, the Onassis Stegi’s longest-running music festival, returns for a second year at Onassis Ready: two days and two stages, with 25 names from the international and local scene in the industrial setting of the Onassis Stegi’s “factory of experiences” in Renti.

The techno legend Jeff Mills meets the 90s legacy of The Sabres of Paradise; J Spaceman of Spiritualized and Spacemen 3; one of the most influential DJs in contemporary British electronic music, Ben UFO; and the rising project by Indonesian composer J. “Mo’ong” Santoso Pribadi and DJ Scotch Rollex, Takkak Takkak, with fragile polyrhythms and drones.

Live performances and DJ sets once again push beyond the limits of electronic music

Borderline 2026 takes us into a parallel universe and invites us to get lost somewhere between the stages, the rhythm, and the lights. But this year’s lineup will not be short on unexpected encounters either, as this April, Borderline will be at the core of STAGES A/LIVE, filming the next digital concert of the inexhaustible psychedelia of J Spaceman (aka Jason Pierce, of Spiritualized and Spacemen 3) in the project they first presented at the Barbican Gallery ten years ago. A live soundtrack with the simultaneous screening of the film “Stranded in Canton” by William Eggleston. Another parallel project of the festival will be the audiovisual performance by 25AV, created especially for Borderline 2026.

Internationally acclaimed and emerging electronic music artists meet the multi-talented and multifaceted creativity of Athens’ experimental scene and its key representatives of club culture. Through her genre-crushing experimental music, aya brings to the foreground the impact of experience and memory on the physical body, as she explores on themes of identity, addiction, and disconnection. Afrorack presents Uganda’s first DIY modular sound system through ecstatic sounds. The lineup also features many more acts, from the electro acoustic sound of Panos Alexiadis, the field recordings and synth of Savvas Metaxas (in collaboration with Kevin Peter He of Onassis ONX), the house, disco, and indie dance of mint++, the eclectic selections of Chris OD, and one of the most important acts of the Athenian post punk and indie rock scene, Victory Collapse, to the golden boy of local clubbing, Poor J’Darr, and the techno, jungle, footwork, and experimental club of STEGI.RADIO producer pink.wav, Sofia Stergiou with her blended jerky beats, Black Athena, IO, POLYXENE, and DJ NOT I.

Day 1 | Line-up

Friday, April 3

GROUND LEVEL

20:00—20:50 | newt
21:00—22:00 | J Spaceman & John Coxon – “Music for William Eggleston’s ‘Stranded in Canton’”
22:15—23:00 | Victory Collapse
23:00—01:00 | Chris OD
01:00—03:00 | mint + +

BASEMENT

20:30—21:30 | DJ NOT I
21:30—22:30 | Afrorack
22:45—23:45 | aya w/ MFO
00:00—01:00 | Poor J’Darr b2b pink.wav
01:00—03:00 | Ben UFO

Day 2 | Line-up

Saturday, April 4

GROUND LEVEL

20:00—20:45 | Kevin Peter He feat. Savvas Metaxas
21:00—21:40 | Panos Alexiadis
22:00—22:45 | Lucia Nijdam / Margarita Maximova / Artun Alaska Arasli
23:00—01:00 | IO
01:00—03:00 | Sofia Stergiou

BASEMENT

20:30—21:45 | Black Athena
21:45—22:45 | The Sabres οf Paradise
23:00—23:55 | Takkak Takkak
00:00—01:00 | POLYXENE
01:00—03:00 | Jeff Mills

About the artists

Afrorack

Brian Bamanya is the first person to build DIY modular synth setups in Africa, hence his alias Afrorack. The 30-year-old engineering wizard started his musical journey by playing guitar and creating his own instruments, until he dove into the world of modular synths.

Based on his own experimentations and online findings, Brian developed an extensive home-built modular synth setup on which he’s been performing for the last two years during dazzling improvised live sets, mixing African rhythms, techno, and acid house.

aya

aya is a human musician from the Pennine region of the North Atlantic. Her work is primarily concerned with the transfigurative power of experience and memory on the physical body. Melding the sprawling bifurcations of soundsystem culture with delocalized internet scenes and post-hardcore lamentations, she casts stark sculptures in genre alloy.

Her work has been released with labels such as Hyperdub, YCO, Tri Angle, Wisdom Teeth, and Astral Plane Recordings; not to mention her work as a remix gun-for-hire.

Ben UFO

Over the past five years, Ben UFO has acquired a deserved reputation as one of contemporary dance music’s most daring and wide-ranging selectors, with his keen ear and razor-sharp technical abilities enabling him to cut between eras, lineages, and mixing styles with dazzling ease and fluidity.

Having cut his teeth in early dubstep and drum ’n’ bass, his roots lie in UK rave culture, yet his selections cast the net wider, drawing new mutations of this culture into the orbit of house, techno, and other global dancefloor sounds. In the club, his sets somehow manage to be simultaneously considered and raucous, sliding from sidewinding broken rhythms into an irresistible four-to-the-floor groove, or broadsiding you with unexpected tangents, old favorites, and bizarre secret weapons.

From their early years in Leeds, Ben UFO and Hessle Audio have evolved into core figures in an increasingly globally connected dance music scene. Having provided an early platform for music from kindred innovative spirits such as Blawan, Peverelist, Untold, and Joe, the label continues to release new music from both its founders and emerging new artists. This openness marks the cornerstone of Ben’s approach: drawing connections, exploring new ideas, and feeding some of Hessle Audio’s energy and enthusiasm back into the musical communities of which they are an integral part.

Chris OD

Chris OD is the selector-mode moniker of Christos Karras, a music aficionado from Athens, Greece, with a lifelong passion for eclectic and off-the-radar sounds. Active across DIY publications and events, national and independent media, radio, and DJ sets, he has written, curated, collected, promoted, and connected—driven by a belief in music’s power to bring people together and build lasting communities. He currently hosts the monthly “oddcast” show on STEGI.RADIO.

J Spaceman & John Coxon

Spiritualized’s J Spaceman & John Coxon present “Music for William Eggleston’s ‘Stranded in Canton,’” an instrumental score of Eggleston’s 1970s art film.

“Stranded in Canton” is a black-and-white film portrait of Memphis in 1974, shot in bars and on street corners, showing Eggleston’s friends carousing, playing music, and firing pistols into the night sky. It is raw, greasy, Quaalude-y, and hot. Jagged and intimate, the film is a handheld window into a different world; “Hogarth on Beale Street,” as writer Richard Williams describes it in the album’s liner notes.

The tones Spaceman and Coxon came up with mirror the ragged nature of the film perfectly. Riffs written under flickering light bulbs, hypnotic tremolo, boozy romances, some barroom boogie, and the blues. The characters of “Stranded in Canton” dance around the music, living their best Memphis lives by any means necessary.

mint + +

mint + + is an avid vinyl collector with heavy gender-bending sensibilities and ties to experimental, UK bass, and psychedelic techno sounds.

His sets focus on expansive narratives paced throughout the bpm range guided by his grasp of tonality and sound frequency.

He is responsible for the S.O.T.S. parties and holds residency in both STEGI.RADIO’s webwaves with his “Planetary Showers” series, and in Fade Radio with his “ypogeiadiavasi66” radio show series.

newt

newt is an Athens-based DJ. His sets consist mostly of ambient and field recordings, evoking the themes of memory, decay, nature, death, and rebirth.

DJ NOT I

Giannis Galiatsos is a DJ, translator, and writer living and working in Athens.

Poor J’Darr

Poor J’Darr is a producer and DJ from Athens. He has spent four years shaping the city’s underground music scene.

A regular at Romantso and STEGI.RADIO and an architect of the city’s ever-evolving musical landscape, he’s been an instrumental figure in strengthening the Greco-UK connection through his deep-rooted love of UK bass music. Following his debut release on Madam X’s imprint KAIZEN, his second EP, “Over the Top,” was released last November on Not Now Records.

pink.wav

pink.wav (she/her) is a Greek, Athens-based DJ and creative, exploring sound as a path to shared experience. She has been an active member of the scene for the past few years and has performed alongside renowned artists at events and festivals across Greece and abroad, including NLC, Reworks, Qreclaim, and more. Her genre-blurring sets fuse bass, mesmerizing vocals, intricate breaks, and seductive percussions-offering a sonic reflection of human complexity. pink’s mixes have aired on platforms such as NTS, Kiosk Radio, Komrad, and more, and she currently hosts her own radio show titled “time:stamps” on STEGI.RADIO.

Victory Collapse

Victory Collapse is a band from Athens known for their urban sound, repetitive, austere rhythms, and new wave, psychedelic sounds. They have released two LPS, “Convenience Has Poisoned Our Souls” (2012) and “Atlas” (2015), and performed alongside artists such as Liars, The Fall, Gang of Four, Savage Republic, Momus, Wire, and more. Their new album, titled “Non Player Characters,” will be released soon via Inner Ear Records.

Jeff Mills

Deeply inhabited by science fiction, DJ, producer, and artist Jeff Mills adopts its ideas, concepts, stories, and aesthetics from the outset. For him, space is an obsession, and his music almost becomes a musical science fiction. Conquering space, his music embodies the future while both respecting the past and remaining well into the present. When he founded his own record label, Axis, in 1992-with a logo consisting of four triangles pointing to an invisible center-Mills took the rotating principle of the solar system as aesthetics, concept, and model for creativity.

Mills keeps on fusing his love for music and image. In 2004, he reframed his extraordinary DJing skills with “Exhibitionist,” a real-time, unedited film capturing Mills in creative DJ motions. A multi-angle filmed collection of DJ sets, allowing him to approach video production while beautifully complementing his art form on the turntables.

Almost ten years after the successful “Exhibitionist,“ Jeff Mills revealed “Exhibitionist 2“ in September 2015, in which he goes even deeper into the artform to display, not only how he uniquely mixes music, but how he thinks in real time to create and work spontaneously like a musician playing an acoustic instrument or a soloist thinking of rhythms off-the-fly.

The Sabres of Paradise

The Sabres of Paradise were formed in London, England, in 1992. Andrew Weatherall formed the group with engineers Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns and became responsible for the Sabresonic warehouse raves. The group’s debut studio album, “Sabresonic,” was released in 1993. NME named it the 23rd best album of 1993. The group released “Haunted Dancehall” in 1994. It was included on the list of “1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.” The group dissolved in 1995. Weatherall went on to form Two Lone Swordsmen with Keith Tenniswood, while Kooner and Burns carried on working together with The Aloof. Andrew Weatherall died in 2020. In October 2024, the Sabres of Paradise announced their reunion as a live outfit.

Takkak Takkak

Takkak Takkak is a new duo project by the Berlin-based Japanese screwball producer Shigeru Ishihara (aka DJ Scotch Egg, waqwaq kingdom, scotch rolex) and the Vilnius-based Indonesian junk multi-instrumentalist J. Mo’ong Santoso Pribadi (one half of Raja Kirik). Each artist is known and loved for their solo, idiosyncratic productions. Together, they fuse their joyous and challenging sound worlds through a strong mutual interest in each other’s artistic expression.

The name Takkak Takkak is a nod to onomatopoeias in drum cultures and vocal percussion found throughout Asian cultures. It echoes the artists’ love of polyrhythms and explosive trance-inducing dance music, which they slather with unabashed doses of low-end beats, screaming vocals, and wild energy—with a good joke brewing underneath. Gleefully subverting instruments from DIY junk instruments to slapdash electronic hacks, they bend notions of the traditional and the contemporary by pulling from their knowledge of Asian traditional and underground music, multiplying these with inspirations the world over to create passport-free music that you feel like you might have heard before, but can’t tell where and when.

Kevin Peter He & Savvas Metaxas

Kevin Peter He is a Brooklyn-based, Shanghai-raised artist whose work spans movement, sculptural interfaces, and real-time technologies. He creates live cinematic narratives that explore systems of control, perception, and human agency.

Savvas Metaxas is a Greek musician and sound artist whose work explores the boundaries of experimental music through field recordings, modular synthesis, and electroacoustic practices. His compositions often reflect a deep interest in texture, atmosphere, and spatial perception. Over the years, his music has been released on a wide array of respected international labels, including LINE, Glistening Examples, More Mars, Phinery, Superpang, Flaming Pines, The Tapeworm, Coherent States, Falt, and his own imprint, Granny Records.

In Borderline 2026, they will present “Passage” (AV Live Cinema).

“As human activity reshapes the planet beyond distinction, the boundary between the natural and the artificial dissolves. ‘Passage’ is an audiovisual journey through the day-night cycle of a forest ecosystem shaped by machines. Beginning in the underground root system and ending in the mountains at sunrise, the artist constructs a single continuous film live using a sculptural camera controller, while a collaborating musician composes the score in real time in response to shifts in light, weather, and the altered life that emerges along the way.”

Panos Alexiadis

Panos Alexiadis is a sound artist based in Athens. He has composed music for installations, contemporary dance, cinema, and video games. His latest album, “Cestrum Nocturnum,” has been released via B.A.A.D.M.

Io

Io is an audiovisual artist, graphic designer, and music enthusiast based in Athens, Greece. Juggling image and sound, she explores the endless game of sampling in her collages, DJ sets, music productions, and visual work.

Sofia Stergiou

Sofia is a resident artist on STEGI.RADIO, hosting the monthly show “Fondly Treated.” Her lane is electronica/IDM with UK influence. Broken rhythms, low-end, balanced by detail, space, and atmosphere.

She’s into sound with information, like small glitches, edits that aren’t hidden, textures that hint at digital wear or an analog imprint.

Lucia Nijdam, Margarita Maximova, & Artun Alaska Arasli

Lucia Nijdam is an artist and musician based in Amsterdam. Her work spans video, installation, text, and sound, and examines temporality and structures of meaning. She occasionally performs under the name Zeta Lys and holds an MA from the Sandberg Instituut.

Margarita Maximova has an audiovisual-based practice. Throughout her work, she considers the many ways in which contemporary image-making technologies and their indivisible link to communication, sociability, and memory-creating operate. She has presented her work internationally through screenings, readings, and exhibitions at S.M.A.K. (Ghent), Science Gallery (Venice), Beursschouwburg (Brussels), Galerie Thomas Schulte (Berlin), Grazer Kunstverein (Austria), and FRAC Bretagne (France), among others.

Artun Alaska Arasli is a writer and artist based in Amsterdam. He is a graduate of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam; the Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main; and the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht. In 2024, together with Joachim Robbrecht, he co-founded Amsterdam Poet’s Theater, for which he has written and co-directed four new plays between March 2024 and April 2025. Artun has exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam; Wilfried Lentz, Rotterdam; Kantine, Brussels; and Fondazione Baruchello, Rome, amongst others.

POLYXENE

POLYXENE is a dynamic, prolific DJ, cherished in Vienna but hailing from Athens. With a sound engineering background, an insatiable digging habit, and a sublime dancing energy, she knows how to raise eyebrows and to ignite the dancefloors. She usually spins a mix of electro, acid, and breaks, but can’t help to spice things up with exciting new bass and leftfield techno.

Black Athena

Online, in print, on air, and at the decks, Black Athena specialize in bringing the upfront outergalactic funk, futuristic soul, floating beats, abstract hip-hop, vintage boogie, bass business, and more joyful noise!

Whether it’s at their own concept nights (Cloud City), their twice weekly FM broadcasts (Athens International Radio), or their contribution to friends and family’s efforts in the Greek capital, the duo can be relied upon to bring their eclectic fusion to the mix.