Unscene Berlin

Cube Club I just love this time of year: Hallowe'en, Guy Fawkes, roasting chestnuts, bonfires and fallen leaves painting the pavement yellow; it's as if the last sunlight of the year is being combusted all at once, in a flare of brilliance.  From the start of December  it's lights out in the Northern Hemisphere for a couple of months, so we better enjoy these burnished last days when we can be outside without thinking of nothing else except how to get back inside.  Here are some tips for doing that in the coming weeks. Tonight, Friday October 26th is Switch Technique at Subland a night  of no-skool techno and more.  "Serenading the undead with dissonant offense until the early hours of the morning is what Skank, Ugly Funk and Subland do best" so dust off Orpheus' lyre and get down there, already. Also tonight Oct. 26 there's a party at Heroes in Neukölln .  If you join the Facebook event page you get into this 2 room party for 3 euros.  Room...

"English voices are good for something other than singing football chants and ordering overpriced menu items.  English brains are good for thinking about more than what advertisers tell them to think about.  And the English presence in Berlin has more than just a monetary value.  Anybody who believes this can make different choices to change the German misconception that being English is just a neverending spending spree. But first, they have to decide whether they believe it themselves ." My latest entry on Fleeting Reams has some tips that will apply to readers of this blog, as they can help Englishers to track down alternative arts and activist events in Berlin.  Check it out here  

In Berlin, I've noticed that there are a lot more references to 'acid' going around the club scene, lately... and we're not just talking about the lick n' stick party favours.  Acid is a key ingredient of musical chemi stry as well as body chem istry .  The word refers to the looping analogue riff generated by a Roland TB-303, and it's present in many styles of music , not just those with the word 'acid' in the name. In Berlin today, you're most likely to hear the 303 sound in techhouse or psytrance but plenty of other per mutations have danced their way out of the primordial soup of acid house , the sound that rerouted youth cultur es of the late 1980s and took them in a radical new direction .  Even Prodigy, a band that people don't usually think of when they're talking about acid, has also laid down distinctive and uncategorizable 303 tunes , like Claustrophic Sting .     Another name that is not usually linked to...

Monster Kabinett pic courtesy of Trip Advisor This week, I really started noticing how short the days are.  There is a certain amount of sadness (especially  for those of you with Seasonal Affective Disorder) that comes with knowing the summer's finished but, in Berlin, there is a certain amount of playful madness to go with it.  Take, for example, the fact that   BumBum Techno  (that's pronounced 'Boom-Boom' for all you English readers) have suddenly reappeared to do a party.  Yey!  You've just gotta love any crew with the chutzpah to do a Christmas party in April , like these guys have.  Not only that, but these Hamburgers play techno that's good enough to eat, even if you're a vegetarian.  If you're a fan of the unexpected and in Prenzlauer Berg this Saturday, then I recommend trying out their free party at Saarbrucker Strasse 23.  I haven't the foggiest idea what kind of highjinx they're up to this time - god knows their websi...

" A journey thru techno, techhouse, minimal noize and industrial techdub... " When I get to M-Bia on Sunday morning it's late by yesterday's standards, and early by today's.   Half a dozen door staff are sitting outside, smiling tiredly and ushering me past the door, out of the chilly sunshine.  A very different reception than you'd get at Berghain, Kater Holzig, Salon Zur Wilden Renate. Like the inside of an industrial air vent, everything's warm, dark and metallic on the other side of that golden door.  Aside from the warmth, the darkness and the odd metallic gleam, no other features are visible till my eyes adjust.  Even the faces behind the decks are spectral half-visages, silhouetted from beneath by a smouldering orange glow. The dancefloor has black tiles, black tables, dark risers, dark walls, and the only light comes in gaseous spumes, descending like inverted flames from a dozen mini-spots that are dotted around the ceiling.  I don...

The DJ in this photo is male but females are VERY welcome to apply! Club Alien has a vacancy for the role of Musical Chaos Co-ordinator, beginning on a randomly-designated date in Spring 2013. Duration of contract will be 2 hours. Salary according to experience (this is NOT an unpaid internship!) The Role: You will be joining a team of Acid Ambassadors from London who possess a solid track record of inciting disordered euphoria at a range of vacant & derelict locations. Working alongside them, you will deliver a set of trippy rhythmic techno / breakbeats to a open-minded, wide-eyed dance floor in Berlin. The Candidate: *Will be an unpretentious, Germany-based DJ that doesn't carry any minimal tunes in her/his record bag and wouldn't wear drainpipe jeans. Ever. *Will be a coinesseur of techno, street parties, graffiti, and radical thinking. *Should ideally have been to/played at free parties before and have connections within the Berlin techno scene. *Sh...

Acid techno fan models his new ensemble The other day, I had a yearning for some new acid techno and started checking out various sites that have those kinds of tunes.  On one of them, I came across this line:  “Acid techno: a way of life, not a fashion statement!” For a horrible moment I imagined this meant that, somewhere in this world, legions of hipsters were actually donning acid techno costumes they'd bought at Primark and posting pics of themselves in Facebook groups, without ever having set foot in a squat party.   And maybe there are, but the above statement wasn't referring to them.  What it was referring to was the fact that the U.K. acid techno scene has always been style-free, and has stayed that way, despite the neverending growth of the fashion industry and its commodification of every other aspect of mainstream life.  (Admittedly, "it's not a fashion statement it's a lifestyle" rolls off the tongue much more easily than all tha...