Silent Disco King is one of the world’s leading silent disco producers, delivering large-scale headphone dance events at major festivals including Reading & Leeds.

When the company wanted to elevate the audience experience around its shows, they asked ON THE SLY to develop a series of audio moments designed to build anticipation before the silent disco began each night.

The brief centred on two elements: a set of ‘test transmission’ audio sequences that would play through festival headsets ahead of the show, and a ten-minute countdown soundtrack designed to lead audiences directly into the opening track of the silent disco.

For the test transmissions, ON THE SLY created a series of playful and unexpected audio sequences built from across our music catalogue and sound design library. Music fragments, test tones, engineer chatter, nature sounds, voice moments and experimental drops were combined into shifting soundscapes that felt part pirate broadcast, part late-night radio and part immersive audio experiment — turning the waiting period into an experience in its own right.

The countdown sequence then took over, building momentum towards the start of the show. A continuous ten-minute mix of electronic music, voiceovers, filters, delays and sound design gradually intensified, guiding thousands of headphone listeners towards the moment the silent disco opened each night.

The result was a pre-show audio environment that transformed the build-up into part of the spectacle itself, helping prime festival audiences before the first track dropped across the silent disco floor.

This project was awarded Silver for Best Sonic Brand Activation at the Transform Awards Europe 2025.