Unscene Berlin

Truth is like love: putting a price tag on it makes it seem... cheap. EIGHT YEARS' FREE (Scroll to Weekend Picks for the party suggestions) You wanna know one of the main benefits of checking out party recommendations on my blog? (Admittedly, I don't recommend parties as often as I used to, but bear with me please).  I don't get paid one red Euro-cent for the parties that I pick. That means you can rest assured that no cash incentive was involved in me recommending any of the following gigs - and that is a lot more than you can say for most electronic music blogs and websites on the Internet, these days. Some of those sites would probably say that I'm dumb for not capitalising on this space, maximising its traffic potential by renting my words out to hidden advertisers. They're wrong: I'm stubbornly idealistic. I believe that writing about parties is an art form - an end unto itself, not just a vehicle to fuel superstar egos in their aim of re...

Berlin has two zoos, but its more exotic wildlife can be found on the streets in between them... Even when there are bricks all around you, it's easy to forget that you're in a city, in Berlin - animistic figures seem to creep into the background from every angle. Here is a roundup of some of the weirder & more wonderful creatures that have flown, hopped, prowled, slithered and trotted into view over the past few years, as I wandered around the city snapping pics. Feel free to share your own on Twitter @UnsceneBerlin or in the comment box below! The Easter Bunny, as seen through the eyes of streetartist Roa Bikes don't have a rearview mirror, so people have to find a more creative place for their fluffy toys. Seen at a demonstration that had nothing to do with unicorns, whatsoever. Add caption Wild things used to come out of the woodwork at Zapata bar (R.I.P.) The elephant in the room at Brunnen 70 The Berlin Bear ha...

Members of the Big Six assembling outside of the Bundestag to plan our demise.  Just kidding: it's actually the Festival of Lights The skies are grey but colourful events are falling on us like the trees' leaves and brightening the streets of Berlin.  We'll start with the obvious one, the Festival of Lights , a two-week celebration of, well, lights.  It may be a cynical attempt to draw tourists to Berlin for a last minute cash-boost before winter sets in... but, well, it's free .  And it can be quite pretty, as well.  You may not want to say that in front of the Berghain bouncers, though; your street cred will go down the tubes. Check out the website on the link above for a listing of light shows across the city.  On until October 20th. Monsanto is a company that would like to see the world without any leaves, even if they're really pretty autumn leaves.  They are the proud manufacturers of the toxic defoliant Agent Orange, widely used during t...

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...

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...

" Gegen U will turn you inside out only to reveal that your intestines are made of beautiful carnivorous flowers." I ask you, with media packs like these, who needs nightmares to keep them awake at night? Gegen seems to be the David Lynch of the club scene: it scripts both the scenery and the soundtrack that makes our subconscious wanna squelch into the slimelight . To get to their party this Friday, simply follow the chalk sidewalk arrows from S/U Bahnhof Frankfurter Allee and then listen for the sound of boundaries collapsing and intestines... er, blossoming. Unlike the upcoming Souterrain party at Stattbad, most of Berlin's really underground parties don't bother advertising the fact in their name. Check this one out at Scharnweberstr. 38 in Friedrichshain if you love techno and hate to revel without a cause. The Antira benefit features some of those lovely, militant about:blank's DJs too. C.R.A.S.H. is doing techno & dubstep this Saturday...

Read it  Auf Deusche At a club last weekend, I was talking to a Goa fan about some of the stuff we'd lost and found at parties in the past. "One night in the Berghain, I actually lost my shoes," he said. "Yes. One of them fell off on the dancefloor & I could not find it again so I took the other one off. Then that shoe also became lost." You may well ask how someone could lose his shoes on the dancefloor but really, what kind of person finds shoes on the dancefloor and then keeps them? The Goa fan continued: "I was walking the whole night with no shoes in this club and nothing bad happened to me. Then, in the morning, one of the staff from the Berghain saw me and said, 'You cannot be here without shoes.' And he threw me out." Wow. So Berghain really refuses to roll out the red carpet for anyone, even a shoeless Joe who might cut his feet without it! Losing shoes is surprisingly common occurence, though; my friend Katja also l...

Golden Gate A few weekends ago, I got a tweet that said Berghain was no longer one of DJ Magazine's top ten Best Clubs in the World . Needless to say, my reaction was a far cry from OMFG, no way. I mean, we are talking about Berghain: a club that deliberately courts an international audience, yet turns zillions of tourists (and locals) away each year just because it doesn't like their 'mood'. Makes it kinda hard for techno pilgrims to decide whether the venue deserves to be in the top ten or not. (Note: I personally enjoy Berghain and even find many of its staff very sweet.  But anyone who spends a lot of time there has to admit that the security's behaviour is frequently indefensible). Local Berghain fans also seem laissez faire about the club's decline in the polls, and why should they be surprised?   Why believe what the readers of an English dance mag say about a place they see all the time? Back when I could afford to buy DJ magazine, it s...

The cold weather this last weekend definitely put a freeze on my plans for openair exploring but it did not stop me from going out entirely. I dropped into pretty decent happenings in Prenzlauerberg and Wedding as well. Last weekend's snow flurries sent the Easter bunny scampering back to his burrow, but the rest of Berlin's party menagerie chose to take refuge in an altogether different sort of underground: a place as full of talking animals and sideshow acts as the flipside of the looking glass. On Friday, I spotted a lady in a Raggedy-Ann style wig waving midget-sized parasols among the tipsy-turvy masses at a chilly openair in the Wuhleheide side of town. Stumbling hungover to work the next night, I found myself chatting up a charming stilt-walker outside of Dazzle Club before he got sick of me and swept me down the stairs into the vault with his comedy umbrella. The cave-like, subterranean venue was packed with fans of some experimental s...

I haven't really kept this blog up to date for the past couple of weeks but a lot of other new things have been happening in the city. I started a new job, a few new party venues opened, a few new party nights were launched and a few old faces from Berlin's party scene made fresh starts. Even though I haven't been writing about it, I've been running a mad relay race between work, home and club scene as I tried to take it all in. So here is my chaotic summary of everything that's happened in club land in the past three weeks. Read on and you'll reap the benefits of my experience, without any of the hangovers! I visited Royal Wedding at Brunnen 70 at the end of January and it was fun as always. Even the old folks were joining in, as you can see below... A week later on February 3rd, I dropped in to a Canadian disco at the occasional party venue Laden Kino, newly opened in Friedrichshain. The music there was average house but the decor was baroque, and had been...