First We Take Berlin

Various Venues, Berlin | 4-5 September

It’s difficult to know how it’s taken so long for an event like First We Take Berlin to arrive in the German capital. After all, the city’s myriad music venues and copious resident talent make it a perfect choice for the multi-location, micro festival format that is so common elsewhere in the world. Still, at some point the stars finally aligned and, after a successful inaugural edition last year, FWTB has returned for a second bite of the cherry, determined to prove the first wasn’t a complete fluke.

As before, the main focus is on the bars and clubs of Kreuzberg’s Schlesisches Tor, an area that will no-doubt be familiar to any tourist who’s visited Berlin in the past. This time, however, the pool of venues has been expanded to include clubs over in the former East, making a bicycle even more necessary. That’s generally not a problem in Berlin, but the new sprawling layout does feel a little at odds with the number of 30-minute performance slots that fill the line-up.

Due to some confusion surrounding wristbands we’re forced to miss both Sivu and Phox (two acts we had been looking forward to), so Thursday night’s first show comes courtesy of Londoners Tropics. When Chris Ward first started making waves in blog-land some four years ago, the chillwave scene was at its insipid height. Full credit to him, then, that he’s managed to surf through that particular zeitgeist swell and remain relevant long after many contemporaries have drifted out to sea.

Tonight, he and his band serve up their tight mix of soul-inflected house, proto-funk and smooth-voiced electronica to the baying crowd at riverside venue Fluxbau. Classics like Home & Consonance and Popup Cinema reap predictable excitement, but when the debuting of new material goes down equally well it’s proof (if any were needed) that Ward still has many miles left to sail before running this particular musical boat aground.

Sticking around at Fluxbau, next up are Macclesfield’s Racing Glaciers – a band about as dissimilar to Tropics as you could ask for. Cramming an improbable three guitars, one keyboard and a drummer onto the cosy stage, they produce a noisy barrage of anthemic, Biffy Clyro-esque indie rock of the type that feels destined for venues far bigger than this one. Whether they ever make it to stadium shows remains to be seen, but it’s clear their bombastic songwriting has a level of radio palatability that could easily take them in that direction.

A bike ride over the river Spree, and we arrive just in time for the headline set from Sudanese-American singer Sinkane at the much larger Postbahnhof. The gig is the first of his forthcoming tour (timed to promote his recent third album), and his longstanding relationship with record label City Slang is indicative of his self-confessed affection for Berlin.Laced with funk, reggae and built on a bedrock of traditional West African highlife music, Sinkane’s sound is unlike most others on the market right now. Backed by a charismatic band – all wry smiles and knowing winks – he treats the crowd to a lively run through of old and new material, complete with several extended jam-sessions. Warm Spell and Runnin’, in particular, are highlights.

Riding high on an African tip, at this point it seems only sensible to close the night with a set from Oy – a Swiss-Ghanaian singer of such idiosyncratic brilliance it’s difficult to put her into words. Taking to the stage in a melange of colourful streetwear, she’s accompanied by a drummer and the pair proceed to deliver 50 minutes of the most beguiling music we see all festival. Often abstract, electronic-informed, with hints of hip-hop, R’n’B, house, beat poetry and traditional Ghanaian sounds, it’s like watching an avant-garde Erykah Badu. In short, it has to be seen to be believed.

Friday promises an impressive line-up, but a cancellation by Glass Animals who apparently missed their flight (poor show, chaps) is an early disappointment. It’s left up to local band Ωracles to entertain the crowd at Astra, which they do very capably with an energy-packed set of shimmering shoegaze psychedelia a la Tame Impala or Hookworms.

Heading over to Tante Emma we manage to catch a quick 20 minutes of Norway’s Aurora Aksnes, whose haunting vocals are reminiscent of a young Agnes Obel or Ane Brun. The frequency with which Scandinavia manages to produce singers of this calibre is incredible, and we make a mental note to marry a girl from that region at the earliest available opportunity.

Meanwhile, over the road in BiNuu, Brighton’s hotly-tipped Phoria are just warming up the stage. Much has been made of this quintet in recent months, and its clear they’ve benefitted from the recent success of acts like Jamie xx, Mount Kimbie and James Blake in the current popularity of their male-fronted electronica. Despite some unfortunate sound issues, their mix of melancholic balladry and searing drum and synth-work makes for a compelling performance that the crowd clearly felt was over too soon.

Finally, with the Jaegermeister flowing thick in our veins, we head back over to Astra for a headline slot from internet-favourites Kindness. Anyone with an awareness of Adam Bainbridge beyond his recorded music will have some idea of his unorthodox charisma, but nothing can prepare you for the real thing. Dressed like a Smooth Criminal-era Michael Jackson, replete with pleated trousers to his navel and wide-brimmed fedora, his unquenchable energy and impeccably delivered stage banter have the crowd swooning on all sides.

Aided by two backing singers with enough sass to steal the show all by themselves, Bainbridge (himself a former Berlin resident) shucks and jives his way through a feel good playlist of hits – never once slowing down his impressive array of dance moves. As a spectacle, it’s something akin to watching Jim Carrey’s green-faced character in The Mask: sharp-witted, smooth moved, and just slightly bordering on the insane. Certainly not a bad way to round off the two days.

As an overall assessment, this year’s FWTB had a couple more hiccups and a couple less truly standout moments than the last, but it’s safe to say it has earned its place at the city’s dining table for a few more helpings at least.

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Words and Photography: Alex Gwilliam