Monday, May 23, 2005

Post-Berlin thoughts

Well, finally back home after my trip to Berlin this weekend and first of all it's time for biggin' up Deutsche Bahn for cuttin' down transfer time from Hamburg to Berlin to only 90 minutes via ICE which is nothing if one remembers times when a train ride from A to B took like three hours or more which is crap for an exhausted artist after a fine and long night out.

Shoutouts as well to Bowman, Eleni and their son Leon, which is a funny and pretty intelligent little guy, and thx to Markus of Smoked Sausage for his flat over the last days.

Playing Hotel Lux on friday was fun although the audience was little due to the local promoter mixing up dates - normally the place is open on thursdays and saturdays only... But it is a nice place anyway, living room style and very loungy, a Vereinsheim kind of location - well, there must be an english expression for that but this time i prefer the german one just 'coze it sounds well - with a good PA compared to other venues with a semi-official character, nice & friendly staff plus open minded people.
There was a lot of Electronica stuff in my set as well as deep Detroit-influenced Techno and weird ElectroPhonk like Marco Passarani's "I House U " - tons of stuff that is a bit tricky to include in a normal club performance. Having places like this to play at is great just for doing eclectic selections and I guess I'll be back there soon - quite soon.
And by the way, they've got good beer at the bar - Rothaus Tannenzäpfle and Augustiner Edelstoff. BO!

The Psychedelic Avengers Space Experience at Insel Berlin was a good experience and a very well organized festival - the promoters did a great job and were keeping everyone informed of timetable changes, they kept close to schedules, had a secure backstage with drinks, a good bunch of lights & deco stuff - all those little things to keep artists happy were taken care of. Due to the massive line up i had no chance to see all artists, but had a chat with the guys from a band called Hypnos 69 which came from Belgium to attend the festival and liked my set after their show which again included trippy electronics from Modesty, Nommo Ogo, Carlito Verde and the likes of. Later I was to play upstairs after Monotekktoni which was the last live act performing that night. This girl describes herself as heavy listening electronic voice core which is a fine definition of what she does. Although her stuff is very rhythmic and includes a lot of distortion and noise it also refers to experimental spoken word / voice experiment kind of music which is more meant to be listened to. Mentioning Bjork as a reference point would be to easy just because Monotekktoni is another female doing weird things with her voice on top of abstract electronic beats but on the other hand it is ok to do for giving a clue what happened there. Mrs. Gudmundsdottir, forgive me for that kind of namedropping.
Anyway, people were willing to dance after her show and started moving slowly to some dub techno kind of stuff I dropped after opening with Stereotyp & St. Paul Hilaire's "Stand Up" on G Stone which once again proved that every quality track has a special place and time it should be played in a set. For me this is the one that's able to break the ice if a crowd like this consisting of electronic dance music headz and Stoner-/Psychedelic-Rock people needs a special command to move on the floor, just due to it's warmth and organic feel. Finally the whole set developed into a quite hypnotic selection of dubby minimal tracks, AcidGrunge and 'troity strings - early Ken Ishii tunes, Jammin Unit's "Alibey" on Djungle Fever, Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia, Donnacha Costello and again Marco Passarani just to name a few - until Berlin based DJ Anais took over a moving crowd at about 3.30 a.m. .
Shoutouts to the pack of PsyTrance-headz accompanying me on my way to S-Bahn Plänterwald, all of us soaking wet from heavy rain but in a happy & positive mood - hope to see ya again once in while, although I forgot to ask for names...

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