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, ...

Photo via Manic Panic Website You know it's full-on summertime in Berlin when every weekend is suddenly exploding at the seams with hotly-anticipated events.  Even if you're picky (like yours truly) you may feel the need to create a few clones of yourself in order to keep up with it all! But there's no need to get burned as you pursue the heat of the action : just read our shortlist to find the hottest places to go manic or fight the summertime panic in the coming weeks. Christopher Street Day (CSD - Saturday July 23rd   Why is it manic?  Well it's the largest gay pride march in Europe, and it's happening in one of its most liberal cities , so Berlin CSD is massive, mad and saucy fun. And this year's motto ('Thanks for Nothing' ) is sufficiently tough and timely to appeal to our surly alter egos, too. Tresor's 25th birthday party - Friday July 22 to Monday July 2 5  This will be a marathon of mania,...

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 ...

So: you're new in Berlin, or just visiting for New Year's Eve?  Welcome... and good luck! Foto by: fuckyeahanarchopunk.tumblr.com New Year's Eve in Berlin can be an overrated and overpriced experience, but only if you read too much into it. As in most cities, there are lesser-known parties which turn out to be amazing while many of the massively overhyped parties fall short of the value suggested by their price tag.  In this post, I aim to help you decide which is which. But, before I get around to talking about the actual parties, here are a few general tips on doing New Year's Eve in Berlin.   Don't Get Bombed In this city, the end of the year party always goes off with a bang... just maybe not in the way you were hoping for.  If having fireworks aimed at your face by a laughing Chav who's swinging a bottle of peppermint schnapps in his free hand sounds like fun, you'll venture out into the streets between 11:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. on December...

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...

Right now Berlin's party-hardy dissidents have their focus trained on the slow and painful, piece by piece dissection of Tacheles. So I guess it's almost understandable that they have forgotten all about other art squats in town that are facing exactly the same fate: Landsberger 54, for instance. This late 19th century Friedrichshain brewery has served as a haven for disaffected, uncommercial but friendly artists since 1990. It was officially closed down a few months ago to make way for yet another apartment complex. The artists evacuated, leaving a stunning array of mural and graffiti art stranded upon the building's inner walls when they did. But the place still has a pulse and it can sometimes be heard when you're passing by it late at night: faint and fast like the heartbeat of a shock victim. Klick club (formerly the Villa) may be dark, derelict and reclusive but that is exactly what makes this haunting venue a perfect recreation of Berlin's squat scen...

Published August 17th 2010 Couchsurfing. During the first few weeks that I stayed in Berlin, I was a guest of the city's couchsurfing community. You may not realize it, but Berlin has a lot of places to couchsurf. In fact, it may well have one of the biggest couchsurfing scenes in the world. The way that couchsurfing works is that you create a profile on the couchsurfing.com website, register your address/ID and then begin collecting references from other people on the site whom you have stayed with or hosted. That way, others can decide whether they want to stay with or host you. Participation in the site is entirely free and voluntary, and it operates on a trust system. It is also quite safe for single female travelers to use, as I have found from first-hand experience. As always, one must take basic safety precautions: check references, stay with verified users and above all, listen to your gut instincts - but the couchsurfing project has a very good track record, thanks ...