At Stone Techno Festival 2026, Amotik played b2b with Lea Occhi, bringing a track they had made together in a single afternoon to a crowd hearing it for the first time. For someone who has spent the past decade working largely alone, it felt like a small departure from the system he had built around himself: his own label, his own release schedule, sets stripped to five or six sounds. A technical constraint became a method, then a philosophy. Through AMTK+, he eventually opened that system outward, becoming a curator of other people’s music too. Anil Chawla has spent his career protecting a very particular part of the process: the moment when the music still belongs entirely to him, before it has to become anything for anyone else.

In the heart of Essen, amidst the remnants of an industrial past and the vibrant energy of the present, Stone Techno Festival organised by The Third Room collective took place. This event is more than just music; it’s a collective ritual blending history, technology, and underground culture. Three intense days in a place steeped in memory, where every beat tells a story and every sound becomes part of a unique experience

Twenty years in and the name changed back. ANTIPOP is what Neopop was called when it started in 2006. Pereira changed it in 2009, when the project took a different shape. Bringing it back now — one edition, no ambiguity — is the festival saying out loud what every choice it's made has been saying quietly for years.