THE BRIDGE, REBUILT

New week, new stage. We finally reach The Bridge, the stage we saved for last, and the one that changes the mostthis edition.

It was the last stage still waiting to turn into a 360 setup, while the others made that step last year. Taking on that change pushed us to rethink the whole stage from the ground up, for a full new experience. The booth moves closer to the floor from more angles, for more reasons. Sound gets the same attention: the new orientationimproves it across the whole space.

Musically, The Bridge splits clean across the weekend: trance and hard house on Friday, techno on Saturday. That's also where the new work sits, live sets from FJAAK and Dax J, and the first outing for SECONDS, the duo project between Phara and Setaoc Mass.

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REINVENTED FROM SCRATCH

The Bridge was built from day one for scale, fading into the concrete of the underpass around it. That base stays, but for the first time, everything on top is rebuilt from scratch for a completely different experience. The stage turns into a full 360 setup, the last of the three main stages to make that step.

The back stays smaller than the front, with more directive speakers that keep the sound contained rather than spreading out. The orientation moves too, turned roughly 45 degrees against the pillars carrying the highway overhead, after last year's stage faced those pillars directly and sent sound bouncing back. The new angle clears the sound across the whole floor.

The result feels tighter and more intimate, as architectStan Vrebos brings back the platforms connecting the crowd across the floor, adding elements that break up the open space. A metal structure of tall spikes and relief covers the stage, with Dreamplant lighting worked into it.

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THE SOUND OF THE BRIDGE

Friday and Saturday tell two different stories on The Bridge this year.

Friday runs on trance and hard house, pulled from the sharpest part of both scenes right now. Where Outskirts and Viaduct dig into their genre's roots, The Bridge on Friday stays firmly in the present, built around the artists currently shaping where these two sounds go next.

Saturday turns toward techno, hypnotic and percussive, faster than what came before it. The sound sits close to the 90s records that built the genre, heard through a clearly modern lens. It is also where The Bridge opens up to new work: live sets from FJAAK and Dax J, and the first outing for the duo project between Phara and Setaoc Mass. Together they point toward where techno is heading, making The Bridge on Saturday a stage built for what comes next, not only for what already works.

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DAX J (LIVE)

Dax J built his name the hard way: pirate radio, bedroom decks, records worn down to the grooves, his first tracks made on a PlayStation. Now he plays live, swapping the DJ booth for a hardware set built around the TR 8, Octatrack and a TB-303. The sound stays true to his studio work, dark, raw and post-industrial, drums pushed hard and fast.

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SETAOC MASS and PHARA present SECONDS

SECONDS, a coordinated effort to bring expressive music back to the center stage. The bond behind it already existed since 2020, when Phara put Life of Krumar on Setaoc Mass's label SK_Eleven, and Setaoc Mass answered with a remix of Phara's Great Attractor on Soma Records, later leading to releases on the Fuse label and a b2b together in 2024. That history is what SECONDS grew out of, a friendship that runs deeper than the music itself.

Two sounds that reach past techno's usual limits, layering textures that pull the dancefloor into something more physical, reserved for only a handful of dates this year, XRDS among them.

FJAAK (LIVE)

FJAAK is Felix Wagner and Aaron Röbig, two schoolmates from Spandau who grew into one of Berlin's most recognizable techno acts. They're known as hardware heads, a sound built on drum machines and synths rather than software. Their music draws on acid, UK club sounds and warehouse techno, alongside house and breakbeat.

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