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Dweller, New York City’s beloved Black electronic music festival/post-Drexciya speculative fiction project, returns for 2026 after a yearlong hiatus. For more than half a decade now, every February, the festival has functioned less like a traditional event series than as a kind of temporary institution, treating Black electronic music as a living, unfolding archive rather than a closed canon.
Past lineups have moved deliberately between foundational figures like Jeff Mills, Theo Parrish, and Robert Hood and contemporary instigators, including LSDXOXO, Slauson Malone 1, HiTech, Keiyaa, and Evilgiane. That tension between lineage and disruption remains one of the most compelling things about Dweller, which briefly transforms a handful of Brooklyn and Queens venues into the American Mecca for Black Counter Culture.
This year’s program is sprawling, but its strongest moments feel carefully argued. A Guy Called Gerald’s inclusion gestures back toward the diasporic roots of acid and UK techno, while a Nowadays night pairing DJ Travella with Juliana Huxtable b2b Bobby Beethoven and Slugo foregrounds rhythm as both local language and global export. One of the heaviest Pioneer Works bills I’ve ever seen — 454, Anysia Kim, dj blackpower, GIGGS, and Junglepussy — reads less like a genre exercise than a stress test, collapsing rap, club, noise, and performance into a deliberate overload.
Past lineups have moved deliberately between foundational figures like Jeff Mills, Theo Parrish, and Robert Hood and contemporary instigators, including LSDXOXO, Slauson Malone 1, HiTech, Keiyaa, and Evilgiane. That tension between lineage and disruption remains one of the most compelling things about Dweller, which briefly transforms a handful of Brooklyn and Queens venues into the American Mecca for Black Counter Culture.
This year’s program is sprawling, but its strongest moments feel carefully argued. A Guy Called Gerald’s inclusion gestures back toward the diasporic roots of acid and UK techno, while a Nowadays night pairing DJ Travella with Juliana Huxtable b2b Bobby Beethoven and Slugo foregrounds rhythm as both local language and global export. One of the heaviest Pioneer Works bills I’ve ever seen — 454, Anysia Kim, dj blackpower, GIGGS, and Junglepussy — reads less like a genre exercise than a stress test, collapsing rap, club, noise, and performance into a deliberate overload.
Feb 5, 2026