Unscene Berlin

The terrace at Space in Ibiza: a universe of its own I've just returned from Ibiza, where the peak of dance music history seems to have been permanently etched on the island's landscape, like those erratic, angular hills which crisscross its terrain.  Idealistic impossibilities seems impossibly easy in Ibiza; take, for example, the gravity-defying ease with which its club scene seems to have sustained the idealistic highs of Balearic rave, nearly three decades after the fact.  And that is despite the influx of new blood, new ideas and new music that's flooded it every summer since the original Summer of Love.  That's quite a feat. Everywhere else you go in the world, time seems to move on restlessly, leaving its golden moments in the dust to chase after the possibility of something shinier around the next corner, buying what's newest at the cost of what was best.  Ibiza meanwhile, has found its single idyllic moment and is content to stay stuck in it forever. 

I knew Himmelfahrt, or Ascension day, had begun when I spotted a group of guys dressed as Superman drinking shots from a bar-on-wheels that they'd set up in front of Zoo station, at 10 a.m.  Just after my day finally ended at 10 p.m., I passed a group of crusty left wingers who were being taken on by an aggressive preppie.  (Apparently he thought that they said 'heil Hitler' to him, which is a pretty creative excuse for a punch-up).  Himmelfahrt is a supposedly religious public holiday in Germany.  In other Christian countries its a day for prayer but here, it's a day for getting nowhere on the trains because people keep falling in front of them piss-drunk, and starting fights on the platform; a day when people are spilling drinks on you left right and center, and you have a very high chance of witnessing or getting caught up in a mindless punch-up.  Basically, it's a special holiday set aside for the same tiresome behaviours we see daily on the evening news

Despite the hipsters in clashing colours, the smoke-drenched greenery, the dance channels choked with urban debris, and soundclashes discharging like incendiary devices on every corner, this May Day was one of the most peaceful yet.  It was also one of the most homogenous, musically-speaking.  Barring a Balkan beats band and a speedcore rig (both of them found so late in the day that it was technically tomorrow already), the tech-house of yesteryear ruled the May Day of yesterday.   But Mindgrrrind, Anuki and Miss E all had a blast meeting, interviewing and photographing the approachable & articulate partiers descending on Kreuzberg for the workers' celebration.  Their comments left us all thinking hard about consumer culture, apathy and the ever-present 'gentrification' and more reports from those discussions are sure to follow. So, does Berlin's May 1st revel still have any rebels to speak of?   You be the judge!