decoded_ Something for your mind… Something for your mind…

Hello, I’ve been doing some edits to previous posts, adding more text, images, links etc. Have a look…

We’re still yet to sort through all our 1000s of digital photos…

Cheers Dave

Berghain/Panorama Bar – Berlin
Inside Berghain… http://www.funktion-one.com/Berghain_Germany_Mondo.htm

Hello from Berlin! We’re currently using the Internet terminals in a big shopping arcade called Arkaden, in Potsdamer Platz, just around the corner from the massive Sony Centre. We’re loving it here in Berlin, we’re well and all is going well. We’ve seen lots of sights, too many to mention! Have had a few tours, visited some WWII, and Cold War bunkers, and spent a day with Berlin walking tour guru Terry Brewer, visiting some different Berlin sights; the Olympic Stadium and Bell Tower, the Allied Forces War Memoral Cemetery (20 years old average age on the grave stones!), and a trip to Spandau (oldest area of Berlin) and visiting the Zitadelle castle/fort. And we’ve done a lot of clubbing!

The weather has been annoying, with rain just about every day at some point here, as with all of our holiday, apart from Barcelona, it’s been quite cold at times too, summer in Europe?

Techno friends, don’t hate us… Here’s where we’ve been and who we’ve seen since arriving in Berlin last Thursday… Minus Night @ Week12End (the 12th, 15th floors and roof top terrace of an office building) – Paco Osuna, Marco Carola, Marc Houle [live], Ambivalent [live], and Troy Pierce. We didn’t have a chance to see Magda, Rebekah Aff, or Richie Hawtin. We could hear Richie playing on the terrace (outside roof top) at Week12End from our hostel apartment’s balcony in Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in Mitte, a couple of blocks away. He started around 8am! We knew it was Richie as it was all the same tracks he played at Awakenings. This Minus party was cool, but difficult to enjoy, as it was really hot and completely packed, rammed full, lots of messy people, call them ‘hype followers’. I bet 5% of the crowd actually know/buy any Minus music. Sorry to say I actually found Marco Carola quite boring, bland minimal loops, I was really looking forward to finally getting to hear him play too, he started at 5am! Troy Pierce was excellent though, lots of great tracks, interesting/different sounds, not the typical Minus sound. Paco Osuna played quite pumping techno, maximal not minimal. Infact a lot of the music we heard was more maximal than minimal.

We left sometime after 6.30am to go to Perlonized @ Panorama Bar (Berghain), which had Fumiya Tanaka… We got to hear an hour of him, and he played awesome deep-techno, some quite abstract stuff, very deep and spacious sounds. I finally got to hear Ame – ‘Enoi’ out too! He’s pretty rough on the mix though. Perlon’s Zip followed with some excellent ‘Perlon’ style minimal sounds, had we stayed until much later into the morning/day we would have also seen Sammy D. Panorama Bar was awesome, fantastic crowd, very friendly vibe, music lovers, space to move, amazing sound system, the best I’ve heard/felt, and such a unique venue, being an old power station, very industrial feeling. Felt very comfortable there, really had a nice time, made me forget how tired I was. Actually I feel very comfortable in Berlin full stop, all the guys have messy/long-ish hair, and facial hair is very popular here. Lots of 30+ year old people clubbing here. Lots of party animals! They party well into the next day, mind you, they don’t get to clubs until 4-5am, the time most of the clubs in Sydney are fininishing up!

The next night we went to the Poker Flat Night @ Water-Gate, another amazing venue, right on the river, over-looking the most amazing old bridge. We watched the sun come up, the sky starts to get blue/light at 3.30am! The top floor of Water-Gate has a fantastic light show, a matrix of multi-coloured, individually controlled LEDs in the ceiling, making for lots of cool patterns and effects across the rows of LEDs, check it… http://www.roomdivision.com/2006/02/10/club-watergate-berlin

We got to see Argy, Steve Bug, Guido Schneider, Martini Bros [live], Phonique, Martin Landsky, and Patrick Graser. Awesome music all night in both floors/rooms. Argy did a fantastic DJ set to warm things up, got a few track IDs from him too, nice guy. Steve Bug was awesome too! So much good music, and it’s all fresh/new to me! I really had to hold myself back from asking for Track IDs almost every track.

The track of the moment seems to be Simon Baker – ‘Plastik’ on Playhouse, we’ve heard just about every DJ play it, and it always gets a big reaction. Other new stuff getting many plays, the new Mountain People, new Rejected (Joris Voorn), new Jesse Rose – ‘Itchy Dog’ on Dubsided, and the Argy mix of the new Sascha Dive on Raum Musik. I’m missing Beatport and Juno to chase up track IDs. Have visited Hard Wax, Records In Mitte and Rotation record stores here.

On Sunday afternoon until just into Monday morning we went to this cool little party called Electronic Waves #2 @ Spindler & Klatt, outside, under sails on a dock by the river, later moved inside due to noise complaints and a police visit. Check out how stylish this place is! http://www.spindlerklatt.com very cool venue. We got to see Matt John, The Dose [live], Daniel Dreier and Marcel Dettman. Matt John is a bit of a party animal, he was also out on Friday at Minus, and later at Panorama Bar on Saturday morning. Joanne said g’day and got a photo, and a track ID from him at this party, she was very happy with that. Matt John played some cool minimal sounds. Daniel played a great set of minimal/techno, my fave so far, got quite a few track ID’s from him, hearing many of the popular tracks of the moment, and he was a nice guy to chat to afterwards. Lots of friendly people at this party, cool vibes, a fun day/night, great music. Was great to catch up with ex Sydey now London based friends Marshall and Lucy there too, who are holidaying here at the moment.

Ahh, before I forget… Love Family Park 2007 in Hanau (Frankfurt)… Richie Hawtin Vs Ricardo Villalobos… umm, kinda boring actually, lots of deep-house sounds, nothing that exciting, not much minimal/tech at all, nothing really memorable. We watched them for 2 hours. The ‘messy’ crowd was going nuts to really bland music, and really simple changes during tracks. They didn’t live up to the hype for me sorry to say, too ubercoolische? Luciano who played prior, was great, played some nice Cadenza label, latin flavoured minimal house stuff, and got quiet tough and techy as well, we enjoyed that more. Sven Vath was larger than life on his own stage, in the main area, great performer, good tracks, great vibes towards the end of his set, with friends watching the fireworks together. When LFP finished up around midnight we went to the LFP After Party @ Cocoon, and heard a fantastic set of deep, clubby techno from Andre Galluzzi, then Karotte Vs Dominik Eulberg Vs Andre Galluzzi, great sounds, Cocoon still one of my fave clubs. Thanks for all your help Andreas with LFP, much appreciated. Huge thanks to Iris for letting us stay in her apartment whilst we were in Frankfurt, much love.

One more thing… the night before we left Frankfurt, a Wednesday night, Iris took us along to a club called Hafen 2, to see surprise guest… Omar S from Detroit, he played lots of chunky, soulful, Detroit/Chicago style house/techno stuff, some old acid-house stuff, his mixing was pretty dodgy though. It was cool, but I wasn’t up for a late night, so we only stayed an hour.

Is that enough techno/minimal names yet?

Coming up we’re going to the Melt Festival 2007 on Friday, with Autechre, Onur Ozer Vs Matthias Kaden, Alex Smoke [live] and many of the Minus crew again… Magda, Richie Hawtin, Troy Pierce, and Marc Houle [live]… We’re thinking of only doing Friday at Melt now, as the Saturday line-up isn’t that good for us, and then we can then come back to Berlin to see… Daniel Bell @ Tresor! A good excuse to go check out Tresor! We’re also going to try see Dan Curtin, and Jeremy P Caulfield at a club called Maria the same night, and then end up at Berghain/Panorama Bar int he morning to see… Paul Brtschitsch [live], Ben Klock, Len Faki and Jesse Rose…

OK, I’ll shut up now, sorry for upsetting you all 🙂 This place is awesome! Having much fun.

Cheers D & J

Hello, yes we’re still alive, all is going well, sorry for the lack of posting, we’ve been so very busy, having lots of fun. I’ll write more in the next couple of days, lots to catch up on…

Hello, we’re back in Frankfurt-Am-Main once again, for a few days, another ICE (Inter City Express) train journey early this morning from Amsterdam. At one point the indicator said the train was travelling at 302 Km/h, so fast!

We’ve been in Amsterdam the previous two days for the Awakenings Festival event, which we really enjoyed. It was great that it was a 12 noon till midnight event, no worries about falling asleep/keeping awake. We got to see/hear heaps of people DJ/play live; Marek Hemmann was our fave performer, really nice, deep, minimal sounds. British Murder Boys were excellent, I was surprised how much I enjoyed hearing those types of techno sounds again, awesome intensity. Joris Voorn, Martin Buttrich, Marc Houle all performing live (Apple laptops!) were great. Anja Schneider and Loco Dice were very cool, very deep, very minimal. Jay Denham, Robert Hood, Joey Beltram, Dave Clarke, Cari Lekebusch and Adam Beyer… all played very hard, lots of ye olde banging/loopy techno sounds… didn’t do much for me. I’ll go into more detail about all this later. Awakenings was a very well organised event, large but not huge. Shuttle buses from the train station there and back, never had to wait more than 5-10 mins for toilets, food/drink tickets, or to get food/drinks, impressive with an estimated 20-30,000 people there… for techno, and only techno! We had horrible weather in Amsterdam, a lot colder than we were expecting, and raining. Luckily the rain held off most of the day at Awakenings, but it was still very muddy, however there were lots of wooden boards/paths on the main routes between rooms/tents so my sneakers survived.

Amyway… must rush, we’re heading off to the Love Family Park event very shortly, looking forward to seeing Ricardo Villalobos Vs Richie Hawtin.

Paris was full-on, we saw so much art, so many museums. It was fantastic to also go on a tour and vist the actual locations/inspirations for many Monet and Van Gogh works. We had some of the most amazing meals, and wines, in some of the most hidden away places, all over Paris. It was awesome and exhausting. There is a crazy number of people living in Paris now (compared to when I was last there in 1992), every second person is black too. At times I felt like the only white guy around. We were standing, packed in like sardrines on every Metro train trip no matter what line, day and night, crazy! The vast distances between different platforms/lines, and 1000s of steps was a real challange. Barcelona was good practice for that. Will go into more detail about Paris soon…

Must go, thanks for all your comments, much love, speak soon.

Cheers Dave & Joanne

We didn’t make it to any of the after Sonar day/beach parties on Sunday. Those who know me, know I’m not much of a beach/sun person anyway. We were considering going to the M_nus one, but ended up sleeping in, having a wander around the back streets of Barcelona, then going out for food/drinks with our German friends, which was all very nice, great drinks! That turned out to be the right choice, as we heard later the M_nus party was an hour drive out of Barcelona, and got shut down by police a few hours after it started. I heard that only Troy Pierce got to play. It would have been nice to have checked out some of the beach parties, but you need a serious amount of energy to party here non stop day/night.

We did however make it to the night M_nus party at City Hall/Zen Club on Sunday night and stayed from opening to close, 12am till 5am. We got in for free with some little passes we found in a bar earlier. Rebekah Aff (apparently one of the M_nus crew?) mixed first, deep tech-house/minimal, warming things up. Magda came on around 2.30am and played to the end. A very similar dark techno/minimal sound to her mix CD, all bass and beats and bleeps and lacking much melodic data. She also mixed up lots of quite maximal dark/noisey banging stuff, think Areal, Kompakt, Bpitch Control labels sounds. I knew basically nothing she played! It was great, but not awesome, her mixing was a bit rough too, may have been because of all the messy sunglasses wearing fan boys and girls dancing all over the stage alongside her with many of the M_nus crew, party, party, party, how do they keep going? Richie was up there, giving everyone false hope he was possibly going to play too, but it seemed it was Magda´s show.

The club was a small square box with a high ceiling, probably about 600 people, the air-conditioning was freezing when we first arrived and the club was empty, but I think it either got turned off or failed not long after, and with the club rammed and pumping in a big way later it turned into a sauna, sooo hot! There was water dripping continuously out of the air-con vents!

I’ve found the crowds here really messy, rude and pushy. At this night I felt like I was being pushed, bumped, knocked, touched, and rubbed against continuously, people dance as if they have 2m of space around them even though they are rammed up against everyone, not very nice to be amongst that when your not in the same mood as everyone else. We found a nice space and rail at the back to sit and just enjoy listening, drinking our €6 soft drinks!

We had a nice chat to Mathew Jonson outside as we were leaving too, he loves Australia, and has a lot of family in Melbourne and NZ.

We paid a little extra for a late check out on Monday morning, had some food at a great place we ate a few times in La Boqueria Mercat called Bar Central, then headed to the airport for our plane to Frankfurt with Andreas, Iris, Thomas (Heckmann), and Natasha…

Words from Deutschland coming soon…

What´s with all the 80´s new romantic/pop music in Barcelona? Every taxi, restaurant/cafe, and shop pumps it out! I´ve heard Frankie Goes To Hollywood´s ´Two Tribes´ about 6 times in the last couple of days. I´m hearing Madonna in this Internet Cafe right at the moment.

The taxi´s are cheap here, well if you´re earning Euros. Fast too, these people drive like maniacs, i don´t think Ive seen anyone indicate to change lanes, they just push in on each other, gets the heart racing.

I can understand why everyone here in Barcelona is so thin, little tapas meals, they all smoke like chimneys, and there´s 1000s of steps (especially the Metro subway) and large-long distances involved with doing anything/going anywhere.

There are 1000s of people everywhere, just walking down La Ramblas from the Internet cafe here to the Hostel, about 100m takes 20 minutes.

The shops and shopping centre´s here are HUGE! There´s this new shopping centre that has a floor dedicated to watches, every brand/every model. Lots of awesome shoes/trainers here too, couldn´t resist buying a pair of Adidas Superstar II Adicolor (with different colour stripe inserts) sneakers with black sole/toe shell and a dark green/brown camo pattern on them. I could go crazy with buying shoes here, so many different styles/types I´ve never seen.

The weather has been nice, blue skies mostly, hot but not too hot, quite humid, a couple of overcast days and a tiny amount of drizzle.

Anyway, I´m hungry, off to eat, and continue my look around the shops, I hope you´re all well and all is going well, catch ya laterz

Went to the last day of Sonar by day, and saw a great live set from Claro Intellecto, another Apple laptop live set, was hoping to hear ´Chicago´´ but he didn´t play it.

Went to Sonar by night last night, the last night of Sonar… it´s such an amazingly huge event, lots more areas opened up, than on the opening night. it takes 5 minutes just to walk to/from each area. Devo were great, also saw bits of Mogwai, Tadeo Vs Damien Schwartz, JPLS, Tractile, Dixon (Innervisions), Matthew Dear´s ‘Big Hands’ live band, with him doing the front man/singer part. Didn´t stay for Ame, Jeff Mills or Dave Clarke, instead went to the Poker Flat Records night at The Loft @ Razzmatazz, which is an enormous multi level/multi room club, and was absolutely rammed with 1000s of messy people in each area. In one room they had Oxia & Agoria (advertised as live but was DJing back to back with Oxia). In the other room we saw Guido Schneider and Patrick Chardronnet live (another Apple laptop live set). It´s hard to enjoy these events, being so sore and tired, being bashed into by 1000s of people non stop (imagine chinese laundry on a huge scale), and it taking 40 minutes to get into a toilet or get served a drink. Would have loved to have stayed for Steve Bug, but was just too tired and over it.

Today, Sunday, is the day of all the day-night label´s beach parties, hoping to get to the Minus one, keen to see Gaiser, Magda, Pierce, Houle, Hawtin etc.

Happy Birthday to me today! I’m 0x24 (HEX) years old today.

Hope you all have a great Easter!