Unscene Berlin

Review: Seismograph @ Alte Fleischerei. New venues are sprouting from Berlin's old buildings. Last weekend I was persuaded to escort one of my fellow guides to a new venue, Alte Fleischerei, in a neglected industrial sector of east Berlin. My colleague had filled me with visions of a free party full of people, which was the only reason why we made the trek to Joseph Orlopp Strasse - a road which is only reachable by cab or by foot. After climbing through a building site fence and stumbling down a long, gravel path that had been turned to mud by the rain, we entered the Alte Fleischerei's courtyard. Its walls seemed to glower groggily at the blue light coming from within, like a wino awakened from his stupor by a siren. Indeed, the venue is so new that it seems to be taken by surprise at its new incarnation as a club...

Last weekend, Stattbad Wedding proved that a winter club-opening in Berlin can be every bit as dramatic as a summer club-opening in Ibiza. Stattbad is definitely a special venue for special nights. A 100 year-old city bath, it has been in temporary usage since 2009, when it was bought by the Quantum Real Estate and Project Development Company. While it languishes in Quantum's pre-development purgatory, an artistic group called RIOTarts have been using the building as an arts and music venue. As the building's fate will ultimately be decided by somebody other than themselves, RIOTarts have made a virtue of the pool's existing features instead of adding new ones. The result is a typical fusion of the industrial and the artistic, where a temporary and improvized structure has been elevated to new heights by the creative minds occupying it. At Stattbad's various exhibitions and parties, the pool's hygienic white background has served as a minimal canvas fo...

If you are reading this in the hopes of finding some hot tips on Berlin Music Week or BMW for short (cute acronym) then I am afraid that you have come to the wrong place. My reasons for ignoring such a huge event are practical: this blog is based on my personal experience and I could not attend half of the offical BMW parties myself, not even if I was magically bestowed with the stamina of a 20-something and an unlimited supply of drugs and cash. There are many other websites covering the festival though, if that's what you're into. On with the preview, then! Above: Stattbad Wedding by Celine Gaulke . The event that I am looking forward to the most this weekend is the Re-opening of Stattbad Wedding . I have never been there before but its reputation precedes it. I'm eager to verify the rumours and continue exploring the fresh sights and sounds which are emerging from Wedding.

R.I.P. Revaler Strasse 99. I visited Revaler Strasse 99 last week and found that it has now become home to a jaw-droppingly tacky chain of openair fast food joints. For those of you who have not been there before, Revaler Strasse 99 is a slice of old school Friedrichshain counterculture; a street that is home to musicians studios, art projects, underground clubs, at least one theatre and more graffiti than you can shake a stick at. Like Tacheles , many of the Revaler Strasse projects are (or used to be) independently run on a non-profit basis. Recent years have seen the introduction of increasingly featureless and profit-oriented ventures in the street, such as the Revalution Bar and Astra Kulturhaus . And it seems that the agenda to turn Revaler Strasse into the next Simon Dach has taken several strides forward in the past few weeks. Over-lit new doner joints drew an over-dressed, over-intoxicated crowd to its once-blissful dark last Saturday night, when I visited the area. Mean...