Kurdish psychedelia from Slovenia, Danish hardcore pop, old Balkan tales in noisy ecstasy and other highlights from this year’s edition one of our favourite showcase festivals.
“MENT doesn’t feel transational,” noted Darek Mazzone from KEXP, who was visiting Slovenian showcase festival MENT Ljubljana (Feb 18-21) for the first time. He was spot on. While, like every showcase, MENT offers a space to do business and build networks, it wants you to enjoy the music and meet friends first and foremost.
MENT’s meticulous curation means that you can’t really go wrong with your festival choices – but also that you will keep regretting everything you’re missing (which is also true of the conference part). Yet here are our highlights from this year’s excellent 12th edition.
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Grunt (Slovenia)
With singer Metka Knap switching between Turkish and Kurdish, and her three bandmates recreating the trancier side of Eastern psychedelia, Grunt was a spectacular first Slovenian act to play at MENT.
The venue filled immediately and a welcome (if you’re in the band) queue lined up at the doors – and that’s for a band with just one single on Spotify at the time of writing. After the show, Grunt reportedly received a number of offers, and they earned them.
ComMENT from Grunt:
“MENT gave us the opportunity to present different, often forgotten cultures in a contemporary way. We also grabbed this opportunity to present our own vision with our own songs. It was nice! Over the years, the festival has overgrown itself – there was a huge crowd outside waiting to enter. Cheers to that!”
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J. Ludvig III (Denmark)
J. Ludvig III is the solo project of Jonathan Jull Ludvigsen – a singer, drummer and producer known from the acclaimed Danish jazz trio Athletic Progression. Live on stage he might seem like someone still looking for his ultimate sound, but actually not wanting to ever find it.
In just a couple of minutes, he would go from ambientish musings that could bring both David Sylvian and James Blake’s structural freedom to your mind, to frantic emo/hardcore explosions – always with some twists reminding you about J. Ludvig III’s jazz background. And all of that ultra-catchy.
ComMENT from J. Ludvig III:
“I’d been sick with the flu for a week leading up to the festival, so we hardly had time to prepare for the show. We were happy with how it went and how attentive the audience was. We set the bar really high and are all perfectionists, so it takes very little for us to be disappointed with our own performance.”
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Gordan (Serbia / Austria / Germany)
Consisting of charismatic Serbian singer and stage wizard Svetlana Spajić, Austrian drummer Andi Stecher and German bass/electronics player Guido Möbius, Gordan combine Balkan village folk with rigorous intensity of krautrock, electronic music and noise.
Setting their show against the backdrop of Ljubljana’s old power station helped to turn it into a spiritual ceremony and a collective therapy at the same time, with Spajić’s all-seeing eyes staring straight at you wherever you were standing. Her banter between songs was a bonus.
ComMENT from Gordan:
“We very much enjoyed the show, the audience was engaged and the venue was very fitting for us. Showcase festivals are not always easy to play due to very tight schedules and short changeover times, but we did our best and also the MENT team was very professional. We thoroughly enjoyed playing there and also received good feedback from the audience after the show. Thank you!”
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Heinali and Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko (Ukraine)
In the project called “Гільдеґарда” (Hildegard in Ukrainian), the modular synthesizer master Heinali (Oleh Shpudeiko) and exceptional singer Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko bring the works of 12th-century composer and mystic Hildegard von Bingen into the third millennium.
She reinterprets original Hildegard’s compositions drawing on Ukrainian traditional singing, while Shpudeiko offers her an electronic equivalent of a bourdon – continuous bass note known from early music. Each compositions ended with his improvisations that seemed like manipulations of Saienko’s singing. A mesmerizing set that made the audience as quiet as it can get.
ComMENT from the duo:
“Гільдеґарда recontextualises historical sacred music to address contemporary trauma and contradictions. Hildegard von Bingen’s work is set within a body experiencing war, utilising traditional Ukrainian singing and modular synthesiser extending performance to a sub-bass register. This highlights the somatic quality of her visions and music writing, creating a resonant territory where Ukrainian identity is renegotiated on our own terms.”
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zbrucz (Slovenia)
Slovenian (post)hardcore quartet zbrucz first appeared on beehype in our selection of the Best Albums of 2024 (check out our Best of 2025 selection by the way). It’s the live environment though that’s the most appropriate to fully absorb their stage rage.
Showing their backs to the audience (except for the drummer) seems to be their way of focusing and fully articulate what initially seems like raw anger, but in fact is a rigorous delivery of their vision.
ComMENT from zbrucz:
“We played in Gromka [club] a few times already but this time was different because of the whole vibe of the festival. We really enjoyed ourselves on the stage and were really happy that we were able to show our music to a mostly fresh crowd of music enjoyers. For that we have to thank MENT and all the people who came to see us!”
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Other discoveries from MENT Ljubljana:
• Gaia Banfi (Italy). Exploratory pop with the widest range of emotions and a guaranteed catharsis at the end of every song.
• Suferi (Poland). Polish folk turbocharged with avant-garde jazz, electronic textures and hip-hop beats. It really works!
• Hana Fatur (Slovenia). An intimate set of a young but already proficient singer-songwriter, looking forward to getting her debut album.
• Dunjaluk (Croatia). A both meditative and intriguing take on the sevdah tradition – folk music stemming from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
• DUNYHA (Hungary). From Transylvanian folk to rock, punk, metal, doom – and back. And that trombone.
• iT / Irena Tomažin (Slovenia). With her open-minded take on folk tradition, iT’s subtlety perfectly suited the chapel of Ljubljana Castle.
• Youniss (Belgium). The vocals, the attitude, the groove – he has it all. Ardent pop with both European and African influences.
• Madra Salach (Ireland). A familiar yet fresh take on Irish folk-rock for fans of this lineage, and a compelling invitation for newcomers.
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Visual treatMENT: Lifecutter (Slovenia)
The last evening of the festival, called CE/MENT, is a relatively new part of MENT focusing on electronic music. This year’s night was opened by Lifecutter, an acclaimed Slovenian ambient / drone / electronic producer who performed his latest project “Deluge”.
Throughout the whole show, his music was accompanied by AI visuals that were a still-rare example of using this technology right – although some might rather say it’s the visuals that were accompanied by music.
There were some interesting discussions on whether Lifecutter shifted the balance a bit too far towards the AI and therefore away from the sound, but clearly everyone had their own answer and for many it was this audiovisual mix that made them stay in the room until the end.
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Couldn’t make it to Ljubljana? Check out MENT’s official playlist on Spotify.
Photo credits: Katja Goljat, Lenart Lukšič, Maša Pirc, Saša Krajnc, Matjaž Rust, Marcel Obal.
