.VRIL & Wata Igarashi present Phantom Circuits Live @ Tillatec - ADE 2025

Some collaborations are engineered in studios, others fall together mid-flight. For .VRIL and Wata Igarashi, Phantom Circuits began somewhere between New York, Los Angeles and Toronto in early 2024. Long hours in transit turned into long conversations - about improvisation, momentum and whether two very different approaches to techno could be wired into one.

The answer came this May at Berlin’s Zenner, where the duo shared a booth for the first time. Across three hours they traced a slow-burn, yet exciting arc: beginning in beatless warmth, building through shifting pulses, and climaxing in a kind of cosmic drama that neither could have written alone. The response in the room confirmed:  this wasn’t a one-night experiment.

“We’re from completely different parts of the world,” Igarashi says. “But our sounds really complement each other. Those differences keep surprising us and pushing the music in new directions.”

.VRIL agrees: “Our sound ideas complement each other very well. That makes it fun, and the crowd can feel it. Wata has a real talent for the momentum of the music.”

That balance - .VRIL’s instinct for propulsion, Igarashi’s ear for hypnotic detail - forms the circuitry of the project. The name itself gestures to the hidden inner wiring of their machines, but also to the invisible current linking them: a shared instinct to let the music write itself.

For Amsterdam Dance Event, Phantom Circuits premieres in the Netherlands with a three-hour improvised set at TILLATEC on Thursday 23 October. The format remains loose, but the intention is clear: to distill their shared language into something unmistakably theirs.

Live collaboration isn’t foreign to either of them. .VRIL has joined different setups over the years, like Circle of Live, WSNWG and Stoor, while Igarashi just recently teamed up with Kuniyuki for the esteemed Draaimolen Festival. Phantom Circuits grows out of that shared appetite for dialogue, taking it further by stripping away plans and leaning fully into the impromptu.

“It’s completely improvised dance music,” .VRIL explains. “We’ll react to the energy in the room.” Igarashi adds: “We want to show the range of colors we can create - from the subtle textures of ambient to the full-on intensity of techno. But it’s all improvisation, so we’ll just see how the story unfolds.”

The day-to-night slot only amplifies the possibilities. “When we start, it’s already quite dark outside,” .VRIL says. “First a kind of get-together, then leading into a party.” Igarashi sees it like a natural build: “Maybe starting with something atmospheric to bring people together, then gradually taking the energy higher into night mode. But again, we don’t plan out the story, so something completely different may happen.”

What’s certain is that Phantom Circuits isn’t a fleeting “live B2B” or “just another live impro”. Studio time is booked, and a European tour is already mapped for January 2026, with dates in Paris, Milan, Lisbon and Barcelona. If Zenner was the spark, Amsterdam is the next live chapter in a project building itself in real time.

Phantom Circuits doesn’t chase spectacle or heavy-handed branding. Its pull lies in the unpredictability: two artists letting their machines and instincts converse, until somewhere between warm chords and arpeggiated psychedelia, a new terrain reveals itself.