FIRST WE TAKE BERLIN
Various Venues, Berlin | September 4-5th
Berlin is a city so littered with aspiring musicians you can barely sling a kebab without hitting one in the beard. Here there are more record labels than railway stations, more clubs than corner shops, and more people willing to ‘chase the dream’ than an X Factor audition room. What it has never had up until this point, however, is its own dedicated music conference.
This is perhaps down to the fiercely dogmatic, do-it-yourself spirit of the scene; Berlin, quite frankly, has never believed it needed any outside attention. But times are changing, and a city that boasts the European headquarters of Universal Music on its riverbank can’t hold back the advances of established business practice forever. So this September, with all the tentative resignation of a Victorian debutante coming of age, the German capital offered herself up to a sea of delegates, journos, A&R-types, and plain-old regular punters at the inaugural First We Take Berlin music showcase.
Held across seven or eight venues in the hipster mingling ground of Schlesishes Tor, the two-evening midweek event is a warm-up of sorts for the more established Berlin Festival. Upcoming acts in proper clubs is the name of the game, with fey Scandinavian synth pop featuring prominently across much of the line-up, much to our dismay. Anyone who tells you Berliners care only for techno is sorely misinformed, and the volume of twee, self-indulgent crooning this city consumes would make even the most die-hard, megging-clad Dalstonite blush. Still, further inspection reveals a number of very credible acts nestling amongst the fawning, falsetto tide, and (as it turns out) one or two exceedingly pleasant surprises.
The first of these are quasi-electronic Dutch-German duo Mehawk at Comet Club. With a sound that’s somewhere between Mount Kimbie and How To Dress Well, the pair ply their mix of inebriate, off-kilter percussion, inventive bleepery and syrupy R&B croonings to an appreciative-yet-intimate early doors crowd. It’s a strong performance, and we can’t escape feeling this is the kind of act the Kimbie boys so desperately envisioned themselves as when penning their decidedly lacklustre second album.
With an impressive start behind us, we nip next door to Magnet to catch the second half of self-confessed Danish ‘space pop’ trio Ice Cream Cathedral. Their dreamy, delay-heavy, female-fronted psychedelia could, at first, be any number of derivative and interchangeable Scandi hipster bands. But, as the set gathers pace, a strange, primal intensity takes hold of the wailing figures onstage, and we leave pleasantly convinced of their place in the world.
A quick kebab-pitstop and beer re-fuelling later, and we’re over at Lido watching Pool do a remarkably strong impression of a coming-of-age British indie band for three boys from Hamburg. Germany isn’t known for its indie scene (for some good reason), but the twangy riffs and late teenage ennui of the vocals are about as convincing as anything we’ve heard in the post-Foals vein of guitar group—although perhaps a little too well-rehearsed to be truly original.
Next, with those dying, tight-jeaned notes still throbbing in our ventricles, we set off to Fluxbau on a Cleese-ian mission for something completely different, and stumble on our second great discovery of the evening. Standing on stage, barefoot and clad in what appears to be a two-dollar charity shop suit several sizes too big for him, is Sean Nicholas Savage. Imagine, if you can, the most louche of ’80s lounge romantics, with the voice of Michael Jackson serenading George Michael and a body that’s part Macaulay Culkin, part Steve Buscemi, part Princess Bride-era Cary Elwes, and you’re some way towards the full picture. Suffice to say, mesmerising doesn’t begin to cover it; we can’t recommend his neo-R&B balladry highly enough.
Content that the night probably can’t get more surprising than that, we head to our final venue, Privat Club, for the last two acts of the evening. The first of these is Icelandic teenage trio Samaris, who have been curling the ears of everyone from Lauren Laverne to Dazed & Confused with their spectral brand of fairytale electronica. With siren-like frontwoman Jófríður Ákadóttir cooing lines from Icelandic folklore over a brooding trip-hop bed, replete with trills of live clarinet for added surrealist effect, it all makes a very witch-like kind of sense. And, with a performance at Sonár already under their belt before they’ve even hit 20, they’re ones to watch in future for sure.
With the bar set pretty high for the day, it’s going to take something truly special to keep the enjoyment curve on its upward trend. Fortunately, hotly-tipped enigmatic Manchester bombasts M O N E Y are on the late shift, and they’re ladling out bowls of special like it was gruel at a soup kitchen.
The much-touted charisma of frontman Jamie Lee is laid bare right from the off, opening, as he does, with an impromptu flurry of grandiose spoken word poetry delivered from right within the crowd. Like a monologue from Dante’s Inferno told via Parisian Cabaret, it’s the perfect springboard for the band’s narcotic brew of shimmering plucked guitars and groove-heavy basslines to push off from. Drilling out lush, spiralling sonics that seem to journey inward even as they build and grow, each of the band’s eight-minute epics takes us further down the rabbit hole, while Lee – wide-eyed and bare-chested – flits between epiphanic vocals to pithy jokes with the crowd in the very same breath. He’s undoubtedly one of the most natural band frontmen we’ve ever come across, and heading home it’s clear M O N E Y are the comfortable highlight of our night.
After a late night and a long day, evening number two gets off to a slower start. Nevertheless, thanks to current blogland pinups Snakehips it doesn’t take much to charm the cobwebs away. The pair’s unspeakably infectious arsenal of feelgood hip-hop/R&B edits is the soundtrack to every golden-era block party you’ve ever dreamed of. If only it wasn’t a September’s evening and we weren’t stood inside the cavernous Astra Kulturhaus …
Still, spirits lifted, we head back over to Privat for the start of Holy Esque – a band whose apparent ambition to be the loudest of the festival takes some beating. With all the grit and guts of a granite haggis, the Glasgow foursome growl, shout, and generally tear several noisy pieces out of the rather timid German crowd. It’s a shame, because frontman Pat Hynes has an immense voice, and he brings every last piece of it to the table over the course of the set. We’re completely won over by its honest intensity, although it seems Berlin’s more effusive rock fans are elsewhere this particular evening.
Without much time to spare, we hop on the bikes and cycle over to Chalet, where Seams is treating a far more animated assembly to tracks from his newly released debut album. The UK-born Berlin convert has been garnering a lot of praise for his lively, house-informed take on electronica of late, and murmurs of ‘The Next Gold Panda’ are not without substance. While his performance is a rather press-button affair on just two simple MIDI controllers, the quality of his music speaks louder than any unnecessary kit ever could.
And so onto Lido for the final chapter of our festival, where Brooklyn natives Parquet Courts are popping their Berlin cherry with raucous vigour. While their hook-heavy mix of garage-stoner-punk is a tad retrograde in places, there’s a rawness to the band that speaks of early day Spoon or At The Drive-In, and pulls them comfortably away from any lazy pigeonholes that might be associated with the genre. The riffs are as jaunty as the folk dancing down the front, and the frequent assaults of screeching guitar feedback from lead man Andrew Savage shatter the occasionally glossy veneer to reveal something altogether more visceral, sleazy, and enjoyable underneath.
With the music for the most part now over (although there’s always another party to go to in this town), we file out into the night sweaty but happy. Closing the book on the inaugural edition of Berlin’s latest festival venture, we have only one slight regret: it’ll be a full year before we get to do it all over again. Electronic music might be the evergreen lubricant that keeps Berlin’s day-to-day gears turning, but man cannot live on techno alone. Thankfully, with so many great musicians in residence here, he really doesn’t have to.
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Words + Photos: Alex Gwilliam
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