Sound as research, selection and a living archive.
01 / PortraitIceland, 2017
OriginPanevėžys, Lithuania
PracticeSound / Curation / Visual art
ArchiveSecret Thirteen / Since 2010
Publications252
01 / Biography
Sound as archive, matter and memory.
DJ S13 is the artistic identity of Justinas Mikulskis (b. 1986), founder and editor of Secret Thirteen, an independent music journal established in 2010. His work as a DJ, sound artist and curator operates between audio archaeology, journalism and visual art.
01
Origins & atmosphere
The sonic identity of S13 was formed in the post-industrial landscape of Panevėžys. Brutalist factories, material decay and the quiet pressure of a post-Soviet city sharpened an early sensitivity to texture and darker sound. At ten, with help from his engineer grandfather, he constructed his first DJ mixer. An uncle’s record collection — black metal, punk and 1970s rock — opened a route toward anarchism, philosophy, science fiction and a life built outside conventional cultural structures.
02
The evolution of sound
Early roots in jungle and drum’n’bass, including productions for Liquid V and Vampire, quickly expanded into a more abstract language. S13 sets move between industrial rhythm, ethnographic field recordings, new wave, drone and academic composition. Each performance is treated as research: material is not repeated, but reorganised into a new narrative of pressure, space and time.
03
Performance & curation
S13 has appeared at Berlin Atonal, Arma17, Norbergfestival and Unsound events, sharing programmes with Mika Vainio, Esplendor Geométrico, Demdike Stare, The Soft Moon and Fennesz. Mix commissions include Electronic Explorations, Headphone Commute, Seek Sick Sound, Cashmere Radio and other independent platforms.
04
Across disciplines
Mikulskis approaches sound as both a physical and visual entity. His wider practice includes abstract industrial assemblages made from metal waste, lectures on musical narrative and industry context, and sonic installations such as The Energy System of the Užutrakis Manor Orangery as a Sonic Negative. He continues to build Secret Thirteen as a durable resource for future listeners.
02 / On stage
In the room.
Performance footage and selected posters from the archive.
Audra Festival / Kaunas, 2022Photo by Vytenis Sidabras
Digital Tsunami / rotating frameSūpynės Festival / filmed performance, 2019
Berlin Atonal / 2014Holotone Showcase / Berlin, 2016Space Love / Arma17, 2014Polar Inertia / KablysUMBRA / Kablys, 2014Undogmatisch / Berlin, 2015Audra Festival / 2022Sūpynės Festival / 2019Digital Tsunami Camp / 2022
03 / Personal archive
External transmissions
Documented mixes and radio shows, 2008—2024. Recent recordings open a listening page; earlier recordings remain in the original download archive.
Justinas Mikulskis as a guest: conversations about making music, listening and building Secret Thirteen. DJ sets and his own editorial work are archived separately.
The Moscow designer on abstract cuts, high-tech materials and the ideas that become clothes. Geometry, science fiction and music meet in Lisa Shahno’s playful working process.
Orchestral tension, film dialogue and abrasive electronics converge in an uneasy collage inspired by opposing summer and winter holidays, with layered voices turning familiar spaces strange.
Sound poetry, processed speech and fragments of everyday conversation form a cinematic sentence, using pauses, noise and shifting rhythms to explore forgotten texts and the landscape of memory.
A radioplay built from sampled lectures, field recordings and fractured voices explores perception, death and social change, hiding its narrative within the subharmonic depths of a continuous collage.
Electroacoustic composition, fractured techno and unreleased sketches are stretched, cut and layered into a dense sonic fabric, where several records at once dissolve into a single shifting texture.
The Life Detuner turns early electronics, German underground pop and mechanical rhythms into a surreal soundtrack, imagining everyday objects retuned to the impulses of an eccentric inner orchestra.
Early electronic experiments, industrial music and post-punk trace a shared fascination with machines, moving from tape composition to abrasive rhythm through records that shaped the duo’s sound.
Rebetiko, contemporary composition and electronic abstraction pass through hardware processing, binding distant recordings into an uneasy cinematic sequence of low frequencies and shifting textures.
Ritual tension runs through industrial noise, neofolk and gothic song, as distorted guitars, raw voices and insistent percussion turn a sequence of formative records into a stark meditation on mortality.
Japanese experimentation and everyday field recordings meet in a patient flow of acoustic detail, birdsong and electronic atmosphere, with unreleased pieces opening small windows onto an impermanent world.
More than two hours of noise, house and ambient music unfold with the intimacy of records shared between friends, placing abrasive sound experiments beside melodic discoveries and slow-burning dub.
