Routes by job · 12 picks · Thu to Sun
Twelve sets for the 25th C2C, from Robyn and Arca to a noon show in a theatre.
C2C started in Turin as Club To Club. Twenty-five editions later, it's the festival where avant-pop and deep club music share one night. It opens and closes in OGR, old railway workshops in the centre. Friday and Saturday happen in Lingotto's former Fiat halls, on two stages that run side by side. It's also Turin's contemporary-art week, so half the crowd comes from galleries and half from clubs. These are the sets we'd build a weekend around.
The Avalanches: a whole record shop cut into party songs.
Since I Left You came out in 2000 and made sample collage sound like pop. The Melbourne band built it from hundreds of borrowed fragments: old soul, film dialogue, crackly strings. Live, they switch between playing and DJ-style sequencing, so the set can go from dreamy montage to straight party. The warmest hour of the weekend, and the easiest set to love.
For fans of Jamie xx, DJ Shadow
Shygirl: South London club-pop, all bass and attitude.
Club-pop that sounds like a dare: grime, hip-house and industrial drums under a deadpan, filthy delivery. She co-founded NUXXE and came up working with Arca and SOPHIE. Fashion's favourite rapper and still very much a club artist. She takes OGR after midnight, and it's the moment C2C turns from a concert into a party.
Oklou: pop with the lights turned down.
Her debut album, choke enough, was the record of last year for a lot of people in this crowd. The songs are airy and soft-focus. Her voice is bent by machines, there's a lot of empty space, and the club beats are a colour rather than a drop. If that record soundtracked your last year, get close to the front early.
Robyn: crying on the dancefloor, the original.
Before every pop star made sad songs you could dance to, there was Body Talk. Robyn wrote the template: a broken heart over a hard kick, with the chorus doing the work of the drop. Her ninth album, Sexistential, came out in March, and she calls it the most ecstatic record she's made. It's her only Italian show this year, and the singalong of the weekend: everyone knows the words, even the techno heads.
Arca: tender one bar, brutal the next.
To many of the queer and trans kids at C2C, Arca is simply mother. She has also shaped sounds for Björk and FKA twigs. Her sets pull from her own songs and edits. They swing from a bare voice to shattered digital drums and back, sometimes within a minute. Back in Turin after two years, for the most intense hour of the weekend.
Theo Parrish: house music the long way round.
For club heads, Parrish is a living link between house and the longer story of Black music: soul, jazz, gospel, disco. He moved into Detroit's record shops and clubs in the 1990s, DJed for thirteen years before anyone paid him, and still runs his own label. Here he plays the Dazed Stage from 21:00 until about 04:00. He starts slow and lets the joins show. Then he builds to rough, swinging house, lets it fall, and climbs again. Leave for Arca if you must. He'll still be going when you come back.
Smerz: girly existentialism, in an 18th-century theatre.
Choir harmonies, laptop glitches and deadpan songs about being bored and in love: girly existentialism, as they put it. The Norwegian duo moved from XL to Copenhagen's Escho, the same circle as FINE and Elias Rønnenfelt. They play Teatro Carignano, a historic theatre in the centre, on Saturday at 12:00. It's sold out, but the festival runs a waiting list. A morning show for people who went to bed late.
Kelela: R&B with the club left in.
Kelela is one of the voices that tied R&B to experimental club music, where the beat breaks apart around the singing. Raven, from 2023, is the record to know. Her voice is clear and taut; the drums leave a lot of air. Her first C2C since 2014. Expect floating vocals over bass that hits your ribs.
Yung Lean & Bladee: the sad boys, together.
This crowd grew up inside the look these two made on SoundCloud in the early 2010s: autotuned rap, icy synths, bruised melodies. Yung Lean led Sad Boys; Bladee came with the Drain Gang crew. They only made a full album together in 2024. Psykos is greyer and closer to post-punk. Expect their songs to blur into one foggy run of hooks. It's their first joint show in Italy. Bring the bucket hat you wore in 2014.
Kode9 & RP Boo: London bass meets Chicago footwork.
Kode9 started Hyperdub as a webzine and turned it into the label that gave the world Burial; he also wrote the book on sound as a weapon. RP Boo is one of the people who invented footwork on Chicago's battle circuits. Skittering 160 drums, sub-bass pressure, sudden left turns: a conversation between two of club music's most restless traditions, for the people who dance with their eyes closed.
Grouper: songs heard through fog.
Guitar, voice and tape hiss so soft they feel like the memory of a song, made alone since 2005 out of the Pacific Northwest's DIY world. Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill is one of the most loved ambient-folk records of the century, and she rarely plays live. In OGR's old railway hall this will be the most silent big room in Europe. Phones away.
Lorenzo Senni: trance with the drop taken out.
Senni plays only the build of a trance record: the arpeggios, the rising tension, the second before release. He grew up drumming in Rimini's straight-edge hardcore scene and became the first Italian on Warp. His new album, All Ages, comes out in November and adds vocals for the first time; he calls it a turn to something more direct. The festival's last set, and probably its loudest cheer.
Times, lineups and tickets are on each event's C2C Festival programme page. Songpot is independent of the festival.
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