Unscene Berlin

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....

The Weird An increasing number of street artists in Berlin (and worldwide) seem to be putting up designs that are well executed and eye catching, but strangely lacking in meaning.  I'm not really sure why, but I find this unsettling.  Same goes for the many streetart prints that I have seen described as 'a piece for your living room' by decor websites and artists, alike.  Isn't streetart supposed to speak to the world ?  Or is it just there to make the world look more interesting?  I think that the answer is 'both'.  In either case, the living room is the wrong place for it. XOOOOX The relevance of streetart lies not in its aesthetic but in its ability to speak to passers-by via its aesthetic (and by passers-by I mean regular people too, not just art critics).  To do that, it should say something that 'everybody knows' but  they have never seen written or illustrated anywhere else.  Scrawling that view on the outside, underside or...

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...

The terrace at Space in Ibiza: a universe of its own I've just returned from Ibiza, where the peak of dance music history seems to have been permanently etched on the island's landscape, like those erratic, angular hills which crisscross its terrain.  Idealistic impossibilities seems impossibly easy in Ibiza; take, for example, the gravity-defying ease with which its club scene seems to have sustained the idealistic highs of Balearic rave, nearly three decades after the fact.  And that is despite the influx of new blood, new ideas and new music that's flooded it every summer since the original Summer of Love.  That's quite a feat. Everywhere else you go in the world, time seems to move on restlessly, leaving its golden moments in the dust to chase after the possibility of something shinier around the next corner, buying what's newest at the cost of what was best.  Ibiza meanwhile, has found its single idyllic moment and i...

I knew Himmelfahrt, or Ascension day, had begun when I spotted a group of guys dressed as Superman drinking shots from a bar-on-wheels that they'd set up in front of Zoo station, at 10 a.m.  Just after my day finally ended at 10 p.m., I passed a group of crusty left wingers who were being taken on by an aggressive preppie.  (Apparently he thought that they said 'heil Hitler' to him, which is a pretty creative excuse for a punch-up).  Himmelfahrt is a supposedly religious public holiday in Germany.  In other Christian countries its a day for prayer but here, it's a day for getting nowhere on the trains because people keep falling in front of them piss-drunk, and starting fights on the platform; a day when people are spilling drinks on you left right and center, and you have a very high chance of witnessing or getting caught up in a mindless punch-up.  Basically, it's a special holiday set aside for the same tiresome behaviours we see daily on the evening ...

Despite the hipsters in clashing colours, the smoke-drenched greenery, the dance channels choked with urban debris, and soundclashes discharging like incendiary devices on every corner, this May Day was one of the most peaceful yet.  It was also one of the most homogenous, musically-speaking.  Barring a Balkan beats band and a speedcore rig (both of them found so late in the day that it was technically tomorrow already), the tech-house of yesteryear ruled the May Day of yesterday.   But Mindgrrrind, Anuki and Miss E all had a blast meeting, interviewing and photographing the approachable & articulate partiers descending on Kreuzberg for the workers' celebration.  Their comments left us all thinking hard about consumer culture, apathy and the ever-present 'gentrification' and more reports from those discussions are sure to follow. So, does Berlin's May 1st revel still have any rebels to speak of?   You be the judge! ...

  Friday April 27 23:30: After a determinedly lazy day of lounging on the balcony in the sunshine, I head out to meet a friend at an invite-only party organized by her old-school circle of techno friends...  00:00 ...but first, I swing by Magdalena in Ostbahnhof.  I wanna be one of the first people at tonight's Zero 2 Nine party because they're handing out 100 free CD's.  If it's Berliners they're fishing for, they've used the perfect bait: freebies! 00:55 Shiny, new CD in hand, I leave for Kreuzberg where my friend's party is.  It's pouring rain but I'm unfazed; rain is typical weather for London in spring... summer... fall... winter...  It's one thing I can handle it with hardly any drama.  Unfortunately, one can't say the same about your average Berliner.  After being nearly run over thrice by drivers who seem to be hunting down a sacrifice to the weather gods - maybe in the hope that my squashed body will move the heavens to tur...