MURMURS festival asks the world to lean in

No, you didn’t miss a breaking news report. But visit Lukiškių prison, skulk around its eerie cells, and you’ll be given a helluva jumpscare when you poke your head into the one housing a life-sized cut-out of the Russian warmonger, staring daggers from his rightful home.

During the USSR’s reign over Lithuania, Lukiškių incarcerated anti-Soviet freedom fighters and was notorious for overcrowding, next to no daylight, torture – you name it. After two locals won the lease in 2021 and reopened the gates, the prison was transformed into a cultural oasis, a space to make and share art. Lukiškių 2.0, they called it. Aesthetically, the prison still resembles, well, a terrifying prison. The blood-red numbers painted on the dirty bricks, the chipped bathroom-tile walls, the heavy green cell doors – these remain sources of shivers, but new life is being piped into this place every day. The courtyard – which cosplays as a Russian gulag in Stranger Things 4 – hosts concerts, including big-ticket acts from abroad. Cell blocks have been repurposed as galleries. Over 250 artists and musicians maintain studios on-site. Lukiškių 2.0 is an incredible example of radical reinvention, of pain sharply pivoting towards progress.

Vilnius has always been progressive and bravely out of step. Before Lithuania’s Soviet incorporation during the Second World War, the city was known by the nickname New Babylon on account of its surprisingly harmonious integration of many different ethnicities and religions. Lithuania was the first country to break from the Soviet Union, declaring independence in March 1990 and sparking a bloody year of confrontations that eventually resulted in Moscow’s capitulation.

A few years later, in 1997, a collective of local artists cordoned off a portion of the city’s old town. The independent Republic of Užupis, as it was to be known, had its own constitution, national anthem, flag, even an 11-man army. The reason: why not? That rhetorical question is the Lithuanian people’s declaration of freedom, a local tour guide tells me, a mantra that continues to drive their approach to culture and progress. Incorporated on April Fools Day, the micronation was intended to be a tad ironic: part statement, part actuality. But the community nevertheless helped Lithuanians to think for themselves and unshackle their inner creativity after the State-mandated collective-consciousness approach of the last few generations. Today, there remains a ‘recharging station’ down by the Vilnia river, near a swing bench, across from a sculpture of a mermaid wearing a red cape. It’s where you go to reconnect with yourself, apparently. To awaken your latent iconoclast.

There’s another place in Vilnius where you can do this, and that’s MURMURS. Showcasing the country’s brightest, boldest starting lineup of rising acts, the two-day festival is set in a former social club for railroad workers called Kablys (‘hook’). The monolithic, columned palace was named for the giant iron hook sculpture on its front facade – a temporary replacement of the Soviet emblem when the place reopened as a gig venue in the ‘90s, and representing the concept of Lithuania unhooking itself from oppression. Kablys has two halls running shows one after another, so you can pogo between the two all night and not miss a single note. This contrasts other showcases where you frantically ping pong around an unfamiliar city and usually miss several bands on your list.

Though 2026 is technically the inaugural edition of MURMURS, it mutated out of a similar event called What’s Next in Music and, before that, Vilnius Music Week. Programme manager Vilma Dzienaite tells me that she and her team had been mulling over the change for some years. “‘What’s Next in Music’ sounds a bit pretentious maybe, that you need to always lead the way and show what’s next,” she says. “We thought maybe we need something totally different.”

The name MURMURS flips the showy declaration into more of a sultry invitation – as in, you’ll need to lean in if you want to hear what’s going on over here. They also reduced the event’s scale – prioritising quality over quantity. The mission, Vilma explains, is, on one hand, to showcase Lithuania’s music scene to foreign delegates – helping their acts get a leg up overseas – and at the same time remind locals how much bold and interesting music they have in their back garden. “This is why we kept the ticket price so low: to show them there are so many acts that are great,” Vilma says. “You don’t have to check only one – your favourite – act. Maybe you will also like the one that is playing before or after them.” That tactic has seemingly paid off in the past: Solo Ansamblis performed their sad dance music at an older iteration of the festival a few years back and went on to sell out arenas.

But below that level, underground bands in the city are bumping up against a surplus of talent and a deficit of attendees. “Too many good bands, too little people interested.” That’s how Victoria, who plays in many of those bands, puts it. You’ll find her in the electronic-ambient project Lazy Dolphin, the jazzy ‘homecore’ stylings of Homechestra, and a “dubby reggae singy band” called Ministry of Echology – to name, like, less than half of them. “I play in my heart,” she says. “My heart is invested, so I would never call myself a session player.”

Only one of her bands is at MURMURS: Shishi, a surf-trash force that melds riot grrrl spit with the detached, laidback cool of beach-bums like La Luz and Los Bitchos. Victoria is the only original member of the “power girl trio,” which shuffled its lineup before settling into its current formation: she’s on bass, Teresa on guitar, Benadetta on drums. They go by fake first names. (Why not?)

The three members generously tolerate the below-zero wind chill on the front steps of Kablys to tell me that one solution is to play abroad. Around 70% of their shows are overseas, says Benadetta, who maintains a studio in the revamped prison. “Maybe it’s easier for us to play outside Lithuania because here there’s not too many people but too many bands. And everyone is hustling, where to go and where not to go.” They suggest that there are maybe 200 concertgoers who are involved in the city’s DIY music community – underneath the more robust mainstream level – and only two or three venues catering to them. One is a club called Skylė, attached to Kablys. A hardcore night is underway during our conversation, literally right underneath Kablys’ main stage.

This seems like a nice problem to have. At least, you’d rather too many good bands than too few, or than loads of shit bands. But it means career musicians have to get creative to make it sustainable, like, in Victoria’s case, having a hundred different projects. Similarly, Benadetta teaches drums, and sessions for various other acts. Teresa, the guitarist, adds, “Vilnius, I think it’s the best city in the world.” She’s from here but has resided in Belgium the entire time she’s played in Shishi. “It’s just that it’s very small and for a musician this is very difficult. In Brussels, for example, I also have a solo project and I can do three gigs in one month in the same city and people will come. Here, it would be impossible.”

Shishi has the distinction of being the first ever Lithuanian band to play at SXSW in Austin, Texas. They’re also signed to a Canadian label, Birthday Cake Records. Their export is well underway. Vilma, MURMURS’s programme manager, later tells me that they have all the pieces needed to go far. It’s not just the team and the credentials. It’s the nigglingly catchy snark of their songs (“I cannot believe / I cannot believe / I cannot believe this shit” is one of their most uproariously received choruses). It’s friendships built on respect and space. It’s their say-it-like-it-is politics. One song is introduced with the requisite barks of “fuck Trump, fuck Putin, fuck Netanyahu,” for instance. Living in the Baltics, they explain, you have no choice but to be political. “Even if you don’t try to get into the political side of things, it’s very difficult. We have Russia two steps away,” Teresa says. “Breathing down our necks,” Benadetta commiserates in agreement.

Mėlyna are another buzzy guitar band, but they’re tidier and more family friendly, kind of like The Killers for girls. They won the 2020 Baltic Music Competition ‘Novus’ while still in their teens, and a big blob of student-age fans smushes into the venue for their set. Besides the mosh pit during Friday night headliners AKLI, it’s Mėlyna who froths up the most energy, and you can barely hear the band as the crowd chants back every line of their punchy choruses. They’re led by the give-it-all stage presence of Beata Beatričė Šiuikaitė, who is so lost in the hubbub that she slams the microphone into her tooth and chips it – apparently it’s the second time this has happened.

Plié has an almost paralysing effect on listeners. “Every time I see them I end up standing in the first line. I keep staring at them with my mouth wide open. It’s so intense, so impressive, and so special,” Vilma tells me of the Lithuanian Music Awards’ rock band of the year nominees. I follow suit as the six-piece’s anxious, atom-splitting noise rock is matched by epileptic black-and-white visuals behind them on screen. Matas Linkauskas has the ardent holler of a hardcore vocalist, arguing with malevolent shocks of saxophone that are reminiscent of a crying crow. The guitars, meanwhile, gather up and unleash one formidable storm cloud after another. It all sounds so fucking dangerous – an animalistic performance that leaves you in need of some water and a sit down.

Defiant, high-energy guitar music definitely stands out as a theme at MURMURS, but there’s a revolving door of everything else you could possibly desire to help recalibrate. Petunija’s folkloric ethno-rave bops cue some seriously bewitched dancers, who are puppeted by her haywire synths. The sounds made by Superkoloritas are sleek, sci-fi, and funky, like Stereolab driving a car made of coconuts on a Pacific island, or Confidence Man piloting a flower-powered spaceship to the moon, with wobbly latin rhythms possessing people’s feet underneath elevator-music chord progressions. Vilma tells me the duo is getting well-deserved attention abroad. “People really love them. Everywhere they go. And I see why – their music is super fun, super colourful; they’re two special characters.”

There are even some Brits on the bill. Both, coincidentally, are from Nottingham (maybe time for the two cities to be twinned). There’s the engaging girl-boy indie rock of Vona Vella, celebrating the release of their agile, singalong-packed new album Carnival, and the Enaudi-meets-Mogwai dream drones of Eyre Llew, regulars on the global touring circuit. They even have a song that Sam Heaton sings in Korean – a small course correction for the privilege Brits have when exporting their music.

But if you add one MURMURS act to your listening library, it has to be Alina Orlova. The Lithuanian singer is fairly well-established, but recently reinvented herself for her latest record, Nakties Atvirukai (‘Night Catalogue’), Vilma tells me. Her music is like a long-lost gem from the back of your parents’ record collection, a forgotten legend from the fabled Chelsea Hotel arts scene circa 1969. Her set drifts from dreamy and mysterious to warm and lucid. The tension is very carefully earned throughout, the songs never erupting but finding force in the quiet. At times, she sounds like PJ Harvey in her world-weary storytelling, in both English and Lithuanian. Other songs have a lightly cowboyish, spaghetti-western feel, perhaps a result of the Baltic folk influence and harmonic minor tonality. Others settle atop a sea of hammond organ and welcome groove after groove. It’s hard to pin down or put into words the scope of what she does, as it is with any truly great, singular songwriter. One thing’s for sure: it’s her voice, above all else, that pauses you, its timeless starpower freezing the scene forever in between two infinities (to borrow one of her lyrics).

MURMURS also hosts an important, constructive conference programme at an out-of-town centre called LITEXPO, backdropped by billowing smokestacks and the syringed spike of the Vilnius TV Tower, the country’s tallest structure. The talks – on the role of music journalism across the Baltics, on ‘sick bands’ becoming ‘sick brands’ – happen concurrently with the annual Vilnius Book Fair, which has a musical twin in the music hall. Organised by AGATA, the non-profit Lithuanian Neighbouring rights association, Muzikos salė is a fresher’s fair-style series of pop-ups that gives artists, record stores, and other music businesses the chance to showcase their work, chat with fans and delegates, sell merchandise. You can pick up a pair of headphones and take a listen to their record, or walk away with pilfered stickers and sweets.

Whether it’s at LITEXPO or Kablys, MURMURS feels relaxed, communal, and welcoming throughout – even when Plié yells in your face over hellish punk explosions. Jausmė, a solo artist from the nearby islands who makes wistful pinchpot folk, says she feels comfortable enough to tune the 29 strings of her Kanklės onstage without needing to fill the silence. The bing-bong-dong of the harp-like instrument’s tuning becomes a kind of sound poem itself. Jausmė tells us that the title of her closing tune means ‘homeward’ in an archaic Lithuanian language. “I invite you to think about where home is to you,” she says, “and if we’re at home within ourselves, then everywhere is home.”

It speaks to MURMURS’s two-part mission: to nurture forward-thinking music here, at home, within, and to spread that magic to the rest of the world. The day after the music finishes, the sun comes out and the temperature finally ticks above zero. Great, grey icebergs continue to line the streets, but the rooftop snow – having iced the rhubarb and custard-coloured buildings since the start of the year – starts to melt. The gutters bleed water. A puffy rumbling sound cues mini avalanches that cascade from above, and Vilma repeatedly reminds me to walk in the centre of the street so I don’t end up in the hospital. The timing is apt: two days filled with powerful, purposeful music at MURMURS has moved the needle at home. What will happen when the rest of the world leans in?