Unscene Berlin

Last Friday, my friend Julian and I went to Atonal experimental music festival, which is starting to become an annual tradition. We saw about seven acts there. The whole night was amazing but just the first act alone cast a long shadow over the rest of what we saw. A duo called Belief Defect was just starting when we walked into that cavern of sound, a venue hewn out of the disused energy plant in Koepernickerstrasse that also houses Tresor. The soaring ceilings of Kraftwerk and the muted air had left some unsettling vestiges of a cathedral behind, but with the aid of intense visuals, the place was transformed into something more like a mystic temple. Their performance was designed to elude description with words, but I'll try! The music was a layering of ambient and industrial sounds, agitating people like molecules in the petri dish to shift and bounce. Flickering red interference patterns blended with the ambient smoke. Rorschach faces shifted in the wind. Eventually, ...

Apparently there's a part of your mind that doesn't register time, only experiences.  Its point of view is recorded in pure emotion... a state where people seem frozen in time with sounds drawn out for eternity.  I feel like that's the part of my mind that comes out to play whenever I'm at a party, so this entry is going to be dedicated to places where it would feel at home, this weekend.  Tonight, there's The Long Now , an Atonal-inspired 30-hour closing party at Kraftwerk Berlin (which is the big industrial hall space above Tresor ). The blurb for the event describes this as "a place for the enduring present. A space in which time itself can unfold, where the sense of time can take uncharted paths and even depart".  Well, having been to the last Atonal , I can confirm that it is a pretty apt description of the type of music that they play there.  It's a bit like watching a Bill Viola video through your ears.  You'll want to wear ...

August 20th: always a laugh-riot for Unscene Berlin. What's the most exciting moment that you've ever had on your birthday?  Unscene Berlin's birthday has been marked by some truly exciting moments, good and bad.  Every year at this time, I read about some unexpected, dramatic upheaval happening somewhere in the world - usually my own.  My favourite anniversary experience to date was about a decade ago and involved a squatted Dalston primary school, riot police, edible fungus, a gun, and lots of crayon drawings. The friends I was with made it all seem kind of fun, though.  Isn't that just what friends are for? Glancing at Wikipedia's entry for this date I am wearily unsurprised to see that it has always been a time for random acts of aggression, both good and bad.  Revolutions, riots, coups, assassinations, you name it.   The war of Spanish succession started on this day... Trotsky was murdered on this day... even when people are just talking, it see...