The dawn broke on the 1st of January last weekend, and so began a new year. At some point during all the action your dancing energy hit its peak and broke, your bank account reached its limit and broke and now you’re, well, broke. But don’t let that tarnish the memory or taint the afterglow of the good times had. The crowds were plentiful, spirits were high, and there were a few special moments when all the hyped expectations, quality music and supposed possibilities of a brand new year actually managed to collide in some kind of climatic culmination. Panorama Bar became a hot, feverish bubble of energy in which you could almost physically see all the sticky, joyous goodness seeping out of the walls and dripping to the floor (or maybe that was just sweat). Either way, the good lord knows that many of you will be back there - or wherever else - again this weekend, scrounging around on your hands and knees, desperately licking at the remains in the hope of extracting even a morsel of that prized stuff. And if it aint there, you know what to do: dance a little harder, sweat a little more. Perspire, desire, require.
Yes, its already time for another Yes! at Watergate tonight, which rolls casually into January with UK mega-babe DJ Scarlett Etienne on their muscled party arm. Noted as being “equally at home in the dance press as she is in vogue”, let us steer this preview away from vaguely sexist indications and focus on Scarlett’s music collaborations with the likes of Damian Lazarus, her critical acclaim from Sasha, and her 2008 award of ‘Breakthrough DJ of the Year” from DJMAG. Support tonight is from Mitja Prinz, Beaner and SiD.
One of Berlin’s smaller clubby-bar venues, Farbfernseher, hosts a night of deep disco grooves and hot house jams when Break 3000 takes over the space tonight. Also spinning under monikers Dirt Crew and Sweet Slave, Peter Gyselaers will begin your w/e with housey goodness at the cosy TV-themed club that still adorns the ancient television placard out the front mounted by the abandoned electronics shop which formerly occupied the space.
What do you get when you combine an innovative sampling of Beyoncé vocals with an urgently driving broken beat and unexpected bursts of darkly melodic horn synths vaguely reminiscent of old school German hard trance? Possibly something unthinkably horrible, but in the case of Kingdom’s 2010 release, "Fogs" you get a cool, unique sound still retaining freshness and pricking up ears of DJs and punters alike. Kingdom join C.R.S.T as part of Zeitgeist Sessions at Horst Krzg tonight.
The Electrobongo Collective continues its crisp, bouncy tech-house exploration of every venue in every corner of Berlin. The Italian-Spanish flavoured trio of DJs have already toured their way through CDV, Golden Gate and Suicide Circus in recent times, and this time Nicolas Avalos and co. land in the newest room addition to growing riverside party abode, Kater Holzig – run by the same notorious bunch of lunatics who fashioned the near-mythical Bar 25.
Berghain / Panorama Bar starts the new year much the way it ended the last – in fine style. This time the juicer bits of Klubnacht reside in the earlier Saturday night scheduling, with Âme beginning upstairs at 5 a.m and Canadian Mathew Johnson playing a live set downstairs at 4 a.m. See if you can just drop in and then escape its gloriously evil clutches before Sunday slaps you in the face and Monday morning smacks you crudely on the back of the head.
Also tomorrow night, DJ Deep takes you to new depths at About Blank as part of Club Tropicana. The French DJ’s momentous career was kick started by Laurent Garnier ‘back in the day’, during which he pushed the French underground house movement towards more commercial pastures, while developing two of his very own labels, now widely respected around the world.
