Unscene Berlin

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...

It's March and I'm too tired to stay up all night, aren't you? That's what makes winter & spring such a great time to explore Berlin's afterhour scenes... Same Bitches @ OHM DJ Handmade plays regularly at Same Bitches @ OHM Each time the door cracks open it admits some light, along with a few bodies from the huddle by the cash desk outside. Their shadows quickly dissolve into the dark sound chamber, wading into the music like ducks into water. Tiled walls and low ceilings gleam with damp in the retired bathhouse, making each watery analogy I dream up seem even more appropriate: people don't come here just to listen to the music, they come here to swim in it. The rhythm of the waves is being controlled by DJ Handmade who's playing sublime banging mix of techno, tribal house, hard house, acid techno, acid house... Far from sounding like a mishmash, though, these tunes are lined up with an intuition that makes them all seem part of a single...

Gegen's been going strong for four years now, and guess what?  Yours truly was the first blogger to write about them in English when they debuted at MIKZ club.  There's not much left to say that hasn't already been said by me (or by Gegen - man, do they love to write!) so on the eve of tonight's party, Ass , I'm reposting this piece that I wrote for Alternative Berlin's blog in 2012. Enjoy! Alternative.  What does the word even mean these days?  In its origins, the word alternative was used to label anything that could not be easily categorized or was non-mainstream.  Over time, those un-categorizable tendencies settled into categories of their own, becoming the subcultures that most of us are familiar with: goth, indie, punk, rave, hippy, hip hop and so on.  Every alternative scene starts out nameless and ambiguous but eventually resigns itself to becoming just another label with unspoken rules and codes that everyone in it is expected to obe...

Leaving Berghain last weekend, I saw two bright beams shining through the mist in the pitch black, pre-dawn sky.  They were yellowish white, and looked exactly like a pair of lights from a construction crane. My first thought was, "Shit, they're building another high rise in Friedrichshain??"  But after a while the mist cleared away and I realized that those two orbs in the sky were actually a pair of stars: Venus and Jupiter, in fact.  The veil dropped between the sky and the earth, and suddenly everything seemed like one big extension of the dark dancefloor I'd just left behind, dotted with glimmering lights that stretched all the way to the edges of space. I'm used to leaving a party in the morning and being shocked by the sight of the waking world outside, doing its thing, blissfully oblivious to whatever's been going on inside the clubs and bars.  But this time, the 'world' I was seeing was millions of miles away and it was still close...

There are two reasons why I haven't been blogging regularly about Berlin's party scene lately: one good, one bad.  The good reason is that I've been extremely busy plugging away at a book about the rise and fall (and rise again) of London's underground party scene.  I will be publishing that novel in E-book format this spring, with free excerpts and a special price for all Unscene Berlin readers.  Stay posted for updates! The 'bad' reason is that, to be honest, nothing much has changed in Berlin's party scene in a-g-e-s.  There are still tons of parties in Berlin every weekend, and they are still as cheap and liberal as ever, but the sound hasn't changed.  The DJ's haven't changed.  The venues and party names haven't really changed very much either.  Thrill-seeking novelty-junkies like myself are hard-pressed to find a fix in this town, these days.   I'm not saying there's anything wrong with a bit of consistency, but wh...

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....

Winter is the season when Berlin gets that famous post-apocalyptic look to it:   the streets are empty, the wrecked buildings that people used to work in loom visibly over the more discreet, tidy ones they now live in; everywhere you look, the city's mottled grey shell is exposed by bare branches.   In the streets, nothing seems to move except a few furtive pedestrians, camouflaged in dark clothes that blend in with the post-industrial grime.   The crows and sparrows are silent, saving their energy to keep warm; the pigeons sip spilled beer and peck fallen drugs outside of clubs to blot out their existential despair.   Even the trains seem to have a touch of winter blues as they sluggishly creak their way between stations.  It's a bit bleak, if you get my drift. These weather conditions are perfect for checking out an exhibition like X Lab’s solo show of Ken Plotbot's work , this Saturday the 26th.  The show's “ dark nuclear graphic and post industria...

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...

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...

" 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...

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...