Preview: Trick or Beats?

-
What a shame that Halloween falls on a Thursday this year.  Because it's right in the middle of the week, hardly any venues are doing silly theme parties.  That means I can't go overboard making naff puns about them like I've done in years gone by. 

 Actually, most of this week's party picks fall on Day of the Dead so they mostly have a deadly-serious tone to them: Gegen's Death party, Slaughterhouse, Burn the Machine and Dia de los Muertos. 

Gegen Death. Kit Kat Club, Friday Nov. 2nd
The name says it all: this month's Gegen will take Berlin back to the roots of Halloween by hosting a party on All Saint's night.  It's the moment in the season when everything in nature is both living and dead: live trees are shedding their leaves, living crops are getting the chop for harvest, and live Berliners bar-hopping and clubbing although their brains have shut down for winter; trawling the streets like so many trick-or-treaters in a candy-induced daze.   But will that stop the Gegen crew from shocking them back to their senses with stormy techno, dark arts and magical acts?  Of corpse not!

Also on Day of the Dead (November 2nd) Berlin's gutsy open-air crusaders Sounds for Berlin and Zuruck zu den Wurzlen will be doing a really gutsy party called Slaughterhouse at the Kulturfabrik in Pankow.  They won't try and take an arm and a leg from you on the door, though, because it's only 5 Euros to get in.  Just try not to get too mangled on the cheap drinks! 

Halloween night through to All Souls' Day (Oct. 31-Nov. 2) have been reclaimed by the Burn the Machine Festival.  This festival started off in 2011 as a German tribute to Guy Fawkes night.  Guy Fawkes night often sees effigies of hated public figures being burned in Guy Fawkes' stead.  Because, let's face it: Fawkes just doesn't seem as horrifying as, say, the current British PM. During his time in Parliament, David Cameron's certainly made more lethal cuts than your average slasher-movie villain has.   

Burn the Machine takes place at Subland and is dedicated to such incendiary underground styles as "Hard drum’n'bass, breakcore, left-of-center techno, drones and experimental noise."  Personally, I'd like to be there when DAVE the Drummer (Hydraulix Records) is playing.  Although he is not scary in any way, his twisted rhythmic beats have a way of making people dance until they start to look quite macabre.
  
And on Saturday, everybody's favourite streetart haunt, Urbanspree, will be doing a Dia de los Muertos record release party in its hipster-friendly dungeon. But the main attraction as always, will be the scarily-good murals that surround it.

Have a wicked week!


Please help me improve this post by ranking the quality of its puns. Were they: a) Stu-pun-dous b) Pun-of-the-mill or c) Pun-derwhelming ?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Preview: It's "Garbicz", Not Garbage!

-
Image
"Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide." I just found out that I am going to be working at the Garbicz festival this year. This is good news! I've heard a fair few people around town whinging that it's too expensive / fancy / hippy / slow mo [delete as appropriate] but I found it to be a very experiential and grown up Bacchanal. By which I mean, it focusses whatever it's good at into a high intensity beam that illuminates a very personal, but alluring vision of what openair raving could be.  It's at a really lovely location on an ancient Polish river, with azure waters that look like something from Neolithic times... or a backdrop for a Neolithic fashion shoot, if you will. There are some very decked out modern primitives in this wilderness, as my dusty photos from last year suggest.  The place has a brilliant energy that feels right for working magic of whatever kind: dancing, delirious, holistic chaos magick, but without sacri
Read more

Review: Gegen 8ternity @ KitKat Club

-
Image
Gegen 8ternity flyer. (Artwork copyright: Gegen Berlin) Saturday January 5th,  2:00 a.m. "They have new rooms now, down in the basement," says my wide-eyed friend Rene in a husky voice, before taking me by the hand and leading me down the steps into KitKat's apparently infinite cellar. (My balance is a bit off, it must be whatever I drank earlier). We trace a wavy path through the rambling subterranean hallways, around translucent pennants that hang on alternating sides of the hall, printed with tasteful nudes doing tasteless things, undulating fluidly in the body temperature air.  The hall opens out into a bar, which opens out into a fakeshift hospital ward. We pass doubled-over bodies getting whipped & spanked; protruding buttocks scarred with lashes and splattered with red wax. There are hips rolling on gurneys, glistening bald heads and tossing manes, camp laughter and almost inaudible moans. And then that room opens on to Gegentanz: a wide
Read more

Demo Diary: Black Lives Matter, Everywhere. Period.

-
Image
Last weekend does seem far away already, doesn't it? So much has happened, since then: Minneapolis disbanding its police force, owing to its highly visible brutality and social toxicity. A Temporary Autonomous Zone was set up in Seattle, with the mayor's blessing. And in other news, racist monuments were being toppled all over the place, by cheering crowds playing Enya. I've gotta be honest: I was off of social media for the last couple of days because I was hammering away frantically to finish an article about how the news media force feeds us depressing myths about humanity. Logging back on, though, I've found a 180 degree turn on that policy. There is now such a critical mass of humanity-validating events happening at once that I wonder if my article won't be redundant soon... Ah, well, it'd be worth it. But getting back to last weekend. The Black Lives Matter solidarity demo in Berlin on 06.06.2020 happened under favourable weather conditions, w
Read more