Unscene Berlin

"Berlin is a prime destination on the bargain flight trail for now, and so its art scene is booming... for now.  But that boom obviously can't last forever.  The  forces that attract the world to Berlin - cheap oil, low wages, and the low prices they create - are unsustainable.  But so is the alternative: turning Berlin into a relentlessly gentrified enclave for the world's wealthy, where the prices are too high for artists and other people on low incomes to survive.  The city needs a new model if it's going to hang onto what it has here, and with so many creative minds present, there is a brief window of opportunity for the art scene to help create that.  Is the scene making the most of it?" CLICK HERE TO KEEP READING THIS PIECE ==>  

This week, I've been doing a lot of editing work and didn't feel like writing a post, but I have made this very short video about the Hanfparade, the annual weed legalization demo in Berlin.  It happened last Saturday, and all of this footage was shot in Tiergarten. The theme of the parade was medical marijuana and there were some great costumes, stalls and signs to illustrate the value of using marijuana as a medicine, to make fabrics, and to highlight some of the other practical uses that 'the demon weed' has.  But since this blog's focus is on nightlife, the video shows scenes from the street party at the end of the parade, in Brandenburger Tor. Hope you enjoy it :-)

When: August 1, 2015. Where: All around Berlin: in the woods, in an abandoned building and a few other sites. Why: Free Open Airs Day was both a celebration of free open air techno parties in Berlin, and a protest against police repression of open air parties.  For more details about the concept, please see this post.  Who: There were a number of sound systems involved in Free Open Air Day, but this particular party was done by Zuruck Zu Den Wurzeln (Back to the Roots).  They're a popular party crew which draws hundreds of idealistic Berliners (both indigenous and imported) to dance to techno, psytrance, and tech house in the fields.  Their events are very popular because they're well-organized and can easily beat some of the clubs in the city for the quality of their lights, sound and atmosphere.  What: Atmosphere-wise, the party was safe, child-friendly, liberal and had a mix of nationalities, races, genders and ages.  The dancefl...

Illegal open air party under Warschauer Bruecke With all the hype about Zug der Liebe last weekend, I almost forgot that there's another dose of musical mischief happening this weekend.  A collective of open air party sound systems in the capital has decided to declare this Saturday August 1st ' Illegal Open Airs Day '. Illegal open air parties are a vestige of that Berlin free party tradition that started with free techno raves in the early 1990s.   The music has changed over the years, from techno to tech-house, funk, hip hop and sometimes even occasional live acts.  Berline's free open air parties aren't usually very big, loud or obnoxious- or easy to find - but they have always been incredibly popular.  Some of the more intrepid tourists seem to come here just to track them down.  But in the last couple of years, the police became so adept at shutting them down that most of the sound systems have stopped bothering organizing them altogether. ...

"Peace, joy and pancakes!"     ... was the deliriously random tagline for the Berlin Love Parade, back when it started in 1989.  The Love Parade was founded in 1989 to celebrate DJ Dr. Motte 's birthday.  It was originally billed as a protest and had an ambitiously broad range of demands: global disarmament, unity through music and an end to food poverty.  The solution offered to all these problems was simple enough: bring people together to dance, hug and share. Tomorrow, the Zug der Liebe demo & street party will be doing something a bit similar, but it has made some necessary updates to the template that its predecessors created.  At the time when the first Love Parade happened, its organizers had a glaring example of division, corruption and repression sitting right on the doorstep in the form of the German Democratic Republic, lurking darkly behind its Wall.  After people started streaming through that wall that had been controlled by t...

"These past few years have been like that boiling-frog analogy, in reverse. Berlin has gradually crept toward a richer convergence of its various dance music styles, but it's done so in such tiny increments that we didn't even realize it was happening.  It was only when I brought my friend Sisyphos that I suddenly felt the heat.  Finally, Berlin is living up to its hype: this scene is in a full-on boil." CLICK HERE TO KEEP READING THIS POST ==>

Fusion?  Sold out.  Burning Man?  Too far out.  Glastonbury & Melt?  Rip-offs.  Boom Festival?  R.I.P. Even though the European festival circuit keeps expanding year on year, the inspiring and revolutionary events that started the trend seem to be a perpetually endangered species.  In this post, I suggest a few authentic underground festivals in Germany and Europe that are still outstripping their overhyped, overpriced competitors for both style and substance.  Follow this guide, and you may still be able to have fun in a field this summer with nothing but a backpack, some hard work and an open mind... Free teknival crackdown in Czech, 2006 Enter the search terms 'European underground music festival' into Google and you'll get nearly endless results.  So many festivals out there, all claiming to be authentic and eclectic; yet they all seem to blend into one, big generic blur.  They all last three to four days. They all fea...