Heard In Berlin

Heard In Berlin

7 September, 2009 | 5.12AM

• Written by: Terry Church
• Filed under: Music News: dj charts, heard in berlin

The first rule of Berghain is, you do not take photos. The second rule of Berghain is, you do not take photos. For in this field of freedom, an old power plant on the border between Berlin’s Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain districts, you can do anything else.

Eat, drink, sleep, have sex with a stranger, smoke, dance, cross dress, fist somebody. You can even get pissed on, if that’s your thing, but take a photo and you’ll be in a whole lot of shit.

It’s a strange feeling, to be free, and many who step foot inside this imposing block of concrete, soon leave. Because when there are no rules, we see only ourselves, and some do not like what they find.

Electronic music fans will discover plenty to admire though, because this building is considered by many to be the world capital of techno, a temple for hardcore dance music and neverending DJ sets.

The music in the main room of Berghain perfectly matches its authoritative decor: serious, functional, dark, and hard. Marcel Dettmann spins bold, futuristic, and tough techno. It’s relentless and unsympathetic.

In the pounding monotony arrives Dettmann’s remix of Mikkel Metal’s ‘Kenton’, but it comes and goes unnoticed, for his set is not designed for highlight moments. It keeps chugging, like a well-oiled machine, hour after hour.

The circus upstairs in Panorama Bar could not be more different. Dinky spins soulful and deep house to a few hundred smiling punters.

Giant Wolfgang Tillmans’ photographs hang from the walls, including one of a vagina, and sweaty fashionistas prop up the bar swigging on espressos and beers.

Matthew Styles takes over and lays down a plethora of rich and warm house records including JC Freaks’ brilliant Phonica outing ‘Dub Praise’, Roska’s UK funky-tinted house cut ‘The Sheppard’, and DJ Sneak’s bubbly ‘Shut Up’.

Time for a break. There are plenty of places to rest up at Berghain and in the cubby holes and corners, couples fumble in the darkness, and shadows sleep in foetal positions.

The mixed sex bathrooms offer a rare area of colour in the building, as the rising sun covers the walls in red and orange, its light filtered through stained glass windows.

Dettmman’s eerie bleeps float their way into the toilets, creating a perplexing parallel between the beauty of the shifting natural light and the threatening darkness of downstairs.

Opposites exist in tandem quite happily in this building, which was never designed to see so much life.

Back in Panorama Bar, resident DJ Cassy drops Motor City Drum Ensemble’s ‘Raw Cuts #6’, and as the delicate female vocals flow back into a rolling disco groove, the blinds to the outside world open, letting in rays of yellow sunshine straight onto the dancefloor. Believe it, or not, when Panorama Bar’s lighting man wants to hit the gas, he just opens the blinds.

It’s another profound challenge to the senses, a window not just to the world outside, but a reminder of the frailty of here and now. In winter, when the snow is thick on the ground, it’s a handy way to dissaude people from leaving the club.

The music gets jazzy with David Labeij’s ‘Aha’ maintaining a tribal edge.

At around midday on Sunday, Panorama Bar finally begins to empty out. With Berlin’s infamous Bar25 due to close forever on Tuesday, it may be the last time to experience the wonders of this surreal space on the banks of the River Spree.

Bar25 is difficult to describe to those that have not visited it. Like Berghain, Bar25 stands for borderless freedom, but that has led to a very different set of circumstances. Artistic freedom is celebrated here, and those that turn up at the venue dressed in anything that looks suspiciously “normal” run the risk of being turned away for being boring.

Inside is a playground of wooden huts, circus performances, hippies, and bizarre experiences, and it changes from week to week, based on who happens to be living and working there at the time (yes, people actually live at Bar25).

Today there are trampolines, tiny shacks with disco DJs, a strobe-light shower, camp fires, and a competition for the ‘world’s saddest song’.

As usual, dance music plays a significant role, but it’s more about the party than the DJs. The sound is not great, but the people are.

Sven Von Thülen from Zander VT spins perfect house music in the Crazy Paradise hut, which is full of social deviants.

Hardrive ‘Deep Inside’ and LoSoul ‘Open Door’ give his set an old skool vibe.

A clock hangs above the chaotic DJ booth, counting down the seconds till Bar25’s death, like an executioner sharpening his axe the night before. A man holding a smoke machine blasts the crowd with clouds every so often.

Santos ‘Hold Home’ comes on, which goes down triumphantly with the excitable crowd.

The simple dub techno loop of Wax ‘Untitled’ (the first track on the mysterious producer’s new EP) takes the vibe back to basics, with its repetitive techno synths and housey bass.

A man with no shoes and no shirt, dances with his eyes closed outside the hut. His dirty feet suggest he has been here for a very long time, and as a Berlin tourist boat ferries past carrying grey-haired couples with cameras, you can’t but smile at the thought of an enthusiastic guide saying through the public address system, “And to your left, are a bunch of lunatics.”

A constant stream of vibrantly decorated people flows through Bar25, like a carnival of colour, each individual adding yet another tone, another viewpoint, to the mix.

As the day shuttles past in a flurry of hilarious moments and unexpected musical trips - at one point, a band played a montage of cancan friendly jigs - the song ‘Bad Guys’ from the 1976 musical ‘Bugsy Malone’ seems to come to mind, and continues to reverberate through the streets of Berlin long after leaving Bar25.

Maybe it’s because the lyrics could be written on the walls of this great city:

We could’ve been anything that we wanted to be, and it’s not too late to change.

Video: ‘Bad Guys’, Bugsy Malone

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