Cover Image: Tone List presents Audible Edge 26′. Image supplied.

Tone List’s Audible Edge – international festival for exploratory music, began as an improvised music festival and has expanded into an internationally attended counter-cultural experience. 

“Tone List builds our space as a community, and Audible Edge provides an opportunity for people outside the scene to experience something meaningful and fun,” says festival co-director Josten Myburgh. “Our scope transcends traditional divisions and brings everyone together, making the music — and the audience — more interesting.” 

Audible Edge welcomes unconventional sound and features an array of musical styles, from weird experimental pop to quasi-theatrical soap-opera sets. “We program a lot of unusual and experimental artists with unique creative processes. We’re trying to make a space to listen to more obscure, diverse music.” 

Audible Edge culture is grounded in respect and fun, balancing warm quirkiness with deep appreciation. Everyone creates the experience together, sharing ownership of the festival culture.  

“It might be aphoristic to say, but we are in an environment of increased cultural flattening. Netflix and Spotify are sanding down the experience of creating art. We aim to maintain a space of unlimited permission to create outside the limits of mainstream commercial viability.” 

This year, the entire Audible Edge program will take place in a single venue — Victoria Hall in Walyalup/Fremantle — across the first three days of May. 

“It’s a perfect venue because it’s a blank slate with different rooms,” says Myburgh, who plans to make use of the entire space. “Acoustics are important, and this venue enables us to customise the space for the music.” 

Immersive sets in the main hall, participatory sessions in the courtyard, and dimly lit dance sessions in the back gallery will be complemented by separate spaces for launch events, artist merch, an audience-operated bamboo organ sculpture, and an experimental pop-bar with a performance-art twist. 

^{Workshops to combine movement and sound with Make-Shift. Image STRUT Dance.}

“We try to support people to come and see the whole program: dinner, workshops, everything. I know a lot of people in the scene, and you get a sense of who comes to these things. You want it to be a celebration of the community and the culture.” 

This year’s program includes the dark, atmospheric songwriting of Jonnine (half of cult icons HTRK), who will be presenting a rare solo set of skeletal, atmospheric songs. 

There will also be an extended set from legendary Naarm underground DJ Emelyne, and a mythical pop-opera spin on the myth of Gráinne from Irish musician Cal Folger Day.

Chamber music duo Simon Charles and John Kinsella will present atmospheric renderings of Ballardong country, and internationally renowned local musician DVJRGL will merge Mongolian folk traditions with noise and drone. 

Late Night Pure Rave — a collective with a manifesto — will embody the sense of pushing music culture with its hybridised hard techno/improvised noise. 

Other program highlights include book and CD launches: TL10Y (a publication celebrating the forthcoming ten-year anniversary of Tone List) and an album of avant-garde saxophone improvisation from Mark Cain. 

Audible Edge festival passes are only $120, which isn’t bad for a whole weekend of heartfelt weirdness, unusual music, and the opportunity to experience counter-cultural creativity. 

The festival in one sentence: “It’s a warm, accessible, and friendly context in which to listen deeply to unusual music.” 

Audible Edge ’26 — a festival of exploratory music 

DATES: Friday, 1 May, 6 pm through to Sunday, 3 May, 9 pm AWST 

VENUE: Victoria Hall, Fremantle WA, Australia 

Audible Edge 2026 is supported by the WA government, the City of Fremantle, Liquid
Architecture, the Audio Foundation, Culture Ireland and Fremantle Small Projects