The Berlin Beat: More than Four-on-the-Floor
By John Glab
Berlin is internationally famous for its techno clubs and my visits to Tresor and Berghain upheld the stereotypes: dark spaces with intense flashing light shows, blurred by the occasional smoke screen. Loud, heavy, four-on-the-floor industrial techno rattles the concrete structure of the buildings, as well as the bones of those either dancing in ecstasy or swaying as they try to not to fall over from exhaustion.
But just because the techno scene now lives above ground doesn’t mean the rest of Berlin’s music scene does.
Hidden across the city are many punk and DIY venues that offer a space for a community of musicians to create their own art. In my time in Berlin, I’ve looked at posters taped to walls and light poles, searched names online, and asked around for some places to see a show.
Køpi, a squatting development in Kreuzberg, has a couple spaces for live music performances. I entered through a gate, obscured from street view by some vegetation. Behind it was a courtyard area flanked by the building’s two short wings. Its cracked, concrete facade was well adorned with colorful graffiti murals of contorted human figures, stencil art, and the common message of “kein foto,” no photography allowed.
German Punk Time meant I waited well over an hour for the show to start. In that time, I played a game of pick-up basketball with a few of the people who lived there, trying to avoid splashing in the puddles in the courtyard’s potholes. At Køpi, the line between public and private living spaces feels non-existent.
Koma F, the performance area at Køpi, was down a flight of stairs in a basement. Old bricks, rounded from age, formed arched ceilings in what felt like a former storage space. A crowd of around 30 people — who were well beyond their 20s — fit the punk cliché, dressed in black vests with studs and large boots.
The two bands that played, Shell-Shocked from Berlin and Disturbance from Rotterdam in the Netherlands, both reflected this vintage aesthetic in their music. Shell-Shocked had quick tremolo pickings that droned over blasting d-beats. The band’s vocalist stumbled around the front of the stage, leaning back while screaming into the mic, looking as if he was trying to swallow a sword.
Disturbance was much more straight forward, playing into the punk sentiment of less-is-more. They had a definite Oi! punk sound with frequent gang vocals sung over more classic stylings of simple rock-and-roll songs, but played faster and noisier. This affinity for the past makes sense as Disturbance has been a band since 1995. Perhaps you can critique them for never evolving, or holding onto the past too hard even from the beginning, but they were still entertaining enough for the people who came to see them.
The other venue I went to was OGH, located somewhere in the sprawling southern neighborhood of Neukölln. The entrance was tucked in an alleyway. Beyond the door, a stairwell splotched with graffiti and posters led up to the fourth floor of the warehouse space. There, the stage stood at the front of what looked like a former office area. In the back
half of the space, people sat and talked between sets at a bar and lounge area. Large windows lined the entire wall of the venue, where many people looked out over the alleyway at surrounding apartment blocks.
The show at OGH followed a more post-punk garage sound, without the aggressiveness of hardcore. The bands were Dackelkontakt from Potsdam, Fantuzzi in Berlin, and Teo Wise, an Italian living in Leipzig. About 50 people filled the space. Dackelkontakt went first, sitting behind a small synth array set on a repurposed ironing board. They played fast, peppy, synthpunk tracks with a bit of added whimsy from the little squeals of a theremin. Often songs would pause for brief spoken word parts, traded off between members, including at the climax of their set when two of the band members quickly and aggravatedly talked over each other for about 30 seconds before falling into the last riff.
At the end, Teo Wise performed his light but robust punk tracks. Together with the other members of his band, they mastered the balance of playing locked-in and succinct while effecting a sprawling free spirit that gave the music so much livid personality. Wise’s set moved the audience into an ecstatic dance, with shoes slipping across a sweat slicked concrete floor.
Most enthralling was that everyone danced together. There were no imposed boundaries as people whirled around each other, one person making contact with another’s psyche, before turning to the next, until there was a point of connection between everyone in the room. The
boundaries of the individual became invisible.
After the set, people lingered in the fourth-floor warehouse loft for well over an hour. They were simply talking, making new acquaintances, and building on the commonalities they had found during the performance. Whether it be two people just passing through the city, or someone finding a new community, these moments define life and cannot be manufactured. In Berlin, they can still be found in DIY spaces — if you just know where to look.
John Glab is a student at the University of Iowa who is reporting from Berlin this summer.
