Unscene Berlin

Berlin's leaders want us to believe that the closure of its clubs is an inevitable consequence of economic success. Is it just me, or is there something wrong with this logic? via GIPHY When the specials wrote Ghost Town in 1981, England was in the grips of an unprecedented recession. That economic decline resulted in a situation where, "all the clubs are being closed down" - so run the lyrics of the song.   In Berlin in the present day, clubs are being closed down, too - only now, we are expected to believe that the scene is dying for the opposite reason: the city is a too much of a success . Apparently, the wave of new speculators coming here to invest in our property is just so overwhelming that the city cannot afford to set aside land for the businesses that are already here.  To quote Will Ferrell in Zoolander, "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!" Since when is being too much of an economic success an excuse for closing down local busine...

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...

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...

I could feel that something wasn't right.  Even though it was a crowded dancefloor, someone was bumping into me a little too regularly in time with the music, as if they were mirroring my moves. But I still wasn't prepared for what I saw when I turned my head: a little troll of a man, grinding his pelvis as close to my ass as he could get without committing an assault. But actually, he had already crossed that line a few times; it was just that the intentional nature of that assault had been camouflaged by the general mayhem happening around us. The smarmy expression on his face made it pretty clear that this wasn't just an accident, though, as did the fact that he didn't back away once he was caught - not until I 'assisted' him with a sharp shove and the suggestion to stay well the fuck away. He vanished, and I thought the message had been received.  But then, a few minutes later and just a few feet away, I saw him rubbing up against yet another woman in...

Vote for the wrong party in this election and your party might be over - for good! If you live in Berlin, hail from the EU and are registered at your home address, you will have received a funny little orange and white voting form, recently. It's one of the little upsides of all the bureaucracy in this city: they remember to include you in things like the municipal elections without you having to beg for it. Lots has been written about the conventional party choices - SPD, CDU, Linke - so I won't be covering those in this piece.  Besides, it's not only fair but also kind of the mandate of this whole blog to talk about the counter-cultural and left wing issues that are facing Berlin voters this Sunday. So here are the key buzzwords to look out for, and what they mean: A100: Going Nowhere Fast. The A100 is a new highway that will run through Treptower Park, across the Molecule Man bridge, straight down Afterhours Alley (think Else, Magadalena, Wilden Renate ...

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...

Abyss is the watchword for this weekend, it seems.  I blame the seasons, or rather the single season of winter which seems to have settled permanently in Berlin.  These last six weeks have illustrated exactly why the idea of global warming should leave us all cold: because, according to climatologist predictions , it's only going to warm places that don't need it - e.g. India, South America and Australia - while making Northern Europe and America colder than ever. In the face of unreliable seasonal warmth on the surface of Berlin, people seem to be instinctively retreating and burrowing deeper into the city's party abyss - maybe to search out more steady sources of thermal warmth.  (That almost sounds like a metaphor to explain why people move from mainstream to underground culture in the first place.) On Friday, Robot Army Meets Abyss mal @ About Blank.  Although I've slated its door staff on, oh, just about every single occasion that I've encountered them...

While stranded in the party desert of London, where I have been for the past week, I have been keeping one beady eye trained on the Berlin party scene and building up a lather of anticipation in advance of my return. To this end, I've been earmarking ideal venues for celebrating one's reunion with her favourite city in the world in a suitably cheap and decadent style. I wanted to start by checking out Whiskey Tango Foxtrot at Renate this Thursday but it has doubled in price in the six weeks since I first went there, from 2 to 5 euros. For a single-floor affair with two DJs on the bill that's quite pricey, especially on a sunny afternoon with a range of excellent free, open air options to choose from in nearby Treptow Park and Rummelsburg. Speaking of which, the new beach venue of Rummelsburg Berlin sounds like it is really coming into its own with a promising two-floor Burlesque Musique & Style Rockets extravaganza planned for this Saturday the 16th. It starts at 12.0...

East of Ostkreuz and south of Frankfurter Allee lies a white-washed shanty-town of factories, cobblestone streets and rubble-strewn sidewalks. It's a blank spot on the map, sandwiched between Friedrichshain, Lichtenberg and Rummelsberg. Lately I’ve been trying to think of a new name to fill in that blank: Ostenberg? Frankenkreuz? The area might not have quite the same exotic catchet as Kreuzkolln (another trendy Berlin borderland) but it does have its own niche to pull in the crowds: after-hours clubs. Frankfurter Allee and Ostkreuz S-bahn stations mark the eastern boundaries of Friedrichshain. They are the last exits to clubland for partiers who simply cannot face going home yet... and if the solid afterhours scene in this area is anything to go by, there are more people who can't face it than there are who can. Salon Zur Wilden Renate (which I have already covered here ) ://about blank, KILI Lounge, K-Pax and a few more ad hoc venues are located a few minutes' ...