Arketek

Formed in Sydney/Eora in 2025, Arketek is a live electronic duo crafting minimal, grainy soundscapes from hardware alone. Blending deconstructed krautrock, coldwave, dub and industrial textures with heavy, trance-inflected grooves, they bend techno into decayed, slow-burning forms—built as much for deep listening as for the shadows of the dance floor.

The pair behind Arketek are no strangers to collaboration. Between 2012 and 2015, they performed together in Light Entertainment, a jazz-punk-drone outfit known for its chaotic live shows and genre-bending instrumentation. Their two albums received airplay on Sydney’s 2SER and FBi Radio, showcasing a heady mix of freeform saxophone, abrasive guitar textures and vocal experimentation. That raw, improvisational spirit lives on in arketek—albeit distilled, processed and driven through a sequencer.

Sonically, Arketek draw a throughline from the disorienting, percussive hypnosis of Salon des Amateurs regulars like Lena Willikens, Tolouse Low Trax, Vladimir Ivkovic and Jako Jako, to the heavier, dubwise propulsion of artists like Suba, Front de Cadeaux and Andrew Weatherall. The result is a sound that feels both grounded and hallucinatory—glitching between submerged rhythm and mechanical euphoria.

Although fresh to the scene, Arketek have already begun carving out a place in the local underground. Recent performances include sets at Mothership Marrickville, Lazy Thinking, The Lord Gladstone Hotel, and a private warehouse show staged by the duo themselves. Their live shows favour improvisation and a deep, physical low-end—unfolding on machines rather than laptops. They’ve shared bills with acts including Ideal Lovers, Postponez, Jungist, Corrupted Mutex, Ritmu, Texolotl and more, and were recently featured in a live session on 2SER radio.

With a debut single slated for late 2025 and a full EP scheduled for release in 2026, Arketek are steadily constructing a soundworld all their own—mechanical yet murky, urgent but unhurried. This is techno as architecture: brutal, abstract, and built to endure.