Nuits sonores 2025 through five key performances

Lyon’s forward-thinking dance music festival returned to the city for its first-ever sold-out edition.

In France, 40 days after Easter Sunday, there falls a public holiday called l’Ascension – a commemoration of Jesus’ ascension to heaven. In an almost poetic way, the esteemed French festival Nuits sonores also falls upon this date each year. In a warehouse complex in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes province, you’ll find around 50,000 dancers ascending on one of the most vibrant and celebrated dancefloors in today’s electronic music scene.

This year’s edition saw the main daytime programming return to Les Grandes Locos – a space that housed steam trains for 170 years before becoming a cultural venue in 2024. Its scale evoked a feeling far beyond a typical city festival – arriving at Nuits sonores is like walking into a village. The stages had been slightly reshuffled since last year too, with a new one aptly named Garage in a dingy little corner of one of the many warehouses. It worked perfectly for the more underground acts who had crawled out of early-hours club settings to play in the 5pm Lyon sunshine. Elsewhere in the open air, the Outdoor stage has expanded in its structure. Hosting legends such as Kevin Saunderson, Robert Hood, and an unprecedented b2b between Cassius, Myd and Bambounou across the weekend, the architecture had clearly been considered to match these huge sounds.

Beyond the music, a key part of Nuits sonores’ programming was made up of talks and workshops put together via collaborations with European Lab and TIMES (The Independent Movement for Electronic Scenes). This year’s themes were anchored in tech and AI, including a workshop proposing solutions to free artists from the web giants (a.k.a. the MAGMAs), a discussion about political and ethical issues in the age of artificial intelligence, and a workshop by visual artist, researcher and onomaturge Noura Tafeche literally called ‘The Internet Is a Horrible Place and I’m Here to Make It Worse’.  

Despite these slightly bleak undertones, it was comforting to see a festival truly make space in its own programme for the changes affecting dancefloors right now. Welcoming an open and proactive discourse around artists’ doubts, criticisms and fears made Nuits sonores actually feel like a hub for solution. It was refreshing to walk out of a festival having listened, learned and thought about our own actions in this uncharted territory, and how we can rise above. In that way, Nuits sonores really did harbour the energy of l’Ascension. 

Here are five of our standout performances from this year. 

The Talk

Le Sucrière is a central venue in Lyon’s electronic music scene and the host of Nuits sonores’ eclectic night program. On Wednesday evening, one of its spaces, Le Sucre, was set up for The Talk – a new TIMES-commissioned live audiovisual experimental project. The premiere of this performance, created by multidisciplinary artists James K, Heith, Günseli Yalcinkaya and Andrea Belosi, began with Yalcinkaya taking position as the apparent host of a surreal panel talk. She read a monologue motionlessly from a piece of paper as a camera utilising an AI software interpreted the stage and broadcasted it on the screen behind. James K and Heith soon joined the stage, collaboratively steering the audio segment of the piece. James K’s dreamy vocals were a transcendent experience in their own right, blending seamlessly with live fuzzed-out guitar from Heith. Despite the words being slightly lost in moments of the soundtrack, the fusion of these individual artforms felt uniquely cohesive and impactful.

Lyra Pramuk

Late afternoon on Thursday, bodies moved toward the Garage like they’d been summoned by a siren’s call for Lyra Pramuk’s otherworldly live set. On stage, the artist seamlessly switched between her own voice, various instrumentation and her laptop like a circuit, candidly telling newcomers in the crowd that her performances are a hybrid of the traditional live and club sets – “there’s no stopping”. What followed was an immersive journey through her new album, Hymnal, brought to life with an ethereal precision. It felt like Pramuk was cemented as an artist at the peak of her powers, effortlessly blurring the lines between electronic production and raw, human expression.

Later on that evening, she joined journalist Annie Parker for one of three live conversations Crack Magazine hosted at the Lab stage in collaboration with Nuits sonores Lab and TIMES. It was clear to see the knowledge and curiosity that fuel her music making come from a place of authenticity that feels rarer and rarer to come by these days.

Robert Hood

Closing Thursday’s day programme, we headed to one of many blowout sets this year at the Outdoor stage from techno royalty. Robert Hood once again proved exactly why he’s crowned a master of the form. His set was meticulously crafted and – simply put – everything you want from a headliner. The Underground Resistance legend demonstrated his unparalleled ability to command a crowd with nothing but unadulterated techno and a deep understanding of the dancefloor. It was a performance for the purists, a testament to the enduring power and precision of one of minimal techno’s true pioneers.

O Ghettão

Even with one member down, supergroup O Ghettão made their new project shine on Friday afternoon. This wasn’t your typical high-energy festival performance; instead DJ Nigga Fox and DJ Danifox masterfully sculpted a set based on fluidity, allowing the crowd to sway to a myriad of rhythms. Amongst the techno-driven 2025 line-up, this was a welcomed switch-up. There were moments of blissful respite while an underlying current of excitement swelled. It was a genuine pleasure to witness their synergy on stage and to watch the pair love every second of it, trading ‘fuck yeah’ glances as they wove between batida, house and more, even incorporating a hint of 4/4 and some unexpected MC-ing. As cliché as it sounds, the energy was infectious and the enjoyment that emanated from the stage sent punters off with vibes high for the rest of Friday’s programme.

Rosa Pistola

As the night edged closer on Friday evening, Rosa Pistola was next up. It was the first set of a packed summer tour schedule for the DJ, and she came ready. Moving quickly through pulsating Cumbiaton and Baile Funk rhythms to a locked-in crowd at the Soundsystem stage, it was clear she’d opted for a high-octane selection – perhaps a nod to the festival’s techno-devoted clientele. It was a work out from start to finish, proving why her name is synonymous with some of the most high-energy dancefloors of today.