Bit excited about upcoming events including a dj set in 2 sleeps time at .HBC for their New Years Eve King + Queens ball. Meself and Katja are "manning" the ahem, "Pink Room". (Big thanks to Glamcanyon). Our dj set is scheduled for 11 - 2 AM slot. Apparently the tickets for the night are selling like hot cakes, and Princess Superstar is part of the line-up, she is mega. I saw her dj-ing at Berlin Festival and her set was a ton of fun. This time she's listed as performing live, either way I hope I get a chance to see a bit of her show - she's great!
I self prescribed a movie night for myself but there are just too many 80s jazzercise videos on youtube and friends joining twitter to concentrate any further.
Since I last wrote a post I djed at Berlin Festival. See for yourself: (it really kicks off around the 40 second mark)
Tempelhof airport is AMAZING. It was a STUNNING location. TOo bad the sound was shite in the hangar and there was nowhere to sit down. People were literally hanging off window ledges to give their tired legeens a rest.
I was blown away and blinded by Health. Their live show is thrilling. We interviewed them at Motor FM the next week and BJ told me about a bunker at Mauer Park that I didn't know about. Jake saw the Cardigans on our playlist and said he wouldn't mind to play that cos he likes them...I still don't know if he was being serious or not. Also enjoyed but mainly felt sad watching Micachu from the window of my prison dancefloor where i was tethered to the dj decks in the "Air Base One" room, with the most amazing view of the festival grounds and the outside stage and yes I did line up a Micachu song to play while she was performing with her shapes. Well it was actually one of those luxury spoilt rotten jails because I had my own personal lighting and smoke machine dude for the WHOLE NIGHT. Three hours of swirly effects and haze for about 30 people. Nobody wanted to be inside, and noone could find the fecking dancefloor either, there were no signs.
Looks like I will get to dj at the Health show on October 22nd. My first time djing in Westgermany!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Erm, don't tell anyone i'm staying in on a Saturday night. well in Berlin, pretty much Monday to Friday is Saturday night. I had my big night night out on Thursday anyway..It was after Ze had played her fun glam-pop set, in defiance of the raised eyebrows and small crowd at White Trash. Can you imagine? This indian chick in a gold barely there bikini getting crunk in the White Trash restaurant.
Well we were eating "fuck you fries" and sipping "roller girls" and a figure walked purposefully towards the stage and announced over the mic that Michael Jackson had been reported to have had a heart attack and died. Our first instinct was to go and get totally wasted. I was out with my friend Jay and we were across from 8MM where he had never been, so we gathered our belongings and moved on. Actually my first instinct was to check my phone in case the guy at the mic was a joker, i had more than a few messages and they all said the same thing. It turns out I know the barman at 8MM and when i go to the bar to order we clarify that strong drinks are needed. 8MM is full of the usual suspects, the wierdo in the corner, the arguing couple, the dj who looks like she floated off the set of the Virgin Suicides, the drunk scumbag, the barman who's real job is his band, and the circle of bandmates gushing over new song ideas and taking care of business when the scumbag opens his mouth. He was manhandled out of there faster than you can say "Be quiet scumbag".
Hangover of doom the next day, i still made it into work and out to dj at Death by Pop later on Friday night. I played a few MJ tunes and just..felt sad. It's a strange feeling because it's not like I ever knew Michael Jackson. but it must be the same feeling that nearly broke the internet when so many people googled to find out if it was true and the same feeling why everyone is buying up his records. So I never knew him, but he's always been there, grabbing his crotch and tipping his hat, ever since I can remember. I looked at my friend Sven's blog tonight and his post says it all, pop is over.
Yes no yes no yes no. The sun in Berlin can't make up her mind. Thankfully today was YES to the 24th degree. it could only be honoured with going for a jar after work. There's one more nice day this week: 2moro. I'll be holed up in the White Trash office for one half of it and Motor FM studio for the second half. BUT hopefully i'll be exchanging emails with Dita Von Teese (or someone very close to her hehe) and having a chat with the Cheap Freaks, the actual men themselves, so it's for a good cause. Rumour is they will do an acoustic set for our show! Should be airing on Motor FM next Wednesday July 1st! They're from Dublin aswell so i'm a bit exirah at all the hometown slang. "the lads" "defo", "mad egg". These were not all uttered in the same sentence, but if they were, it would go something like:
"the lads are defo coming out tonight, watch out for anto, he's a mad egg!"
Ummmm next week I hope Berlin will be ready with open arms because Appaloosa is sweeping into town to perform at the Bread + Butter / Vice party at - yay the MICHELBERGER hotel.
On Thursday, come out and see her perform the FIRST of a few shows she's doing in Berlin over the next few weeks. First stop White Trash Thurs June 26th, next day LUX on Friday July 25th, then Villa Wednesday July 1st then somewhere "TBC" on July 4th. "You can call me Ze, VERY BI-ZE" Get it? Busy? Busy..girl..yup..
the Cheap Freaks played an electrifying set last night at White Trash. They even have one song that goes something (with more words) like "Freddy / Frightening / Hit by lightning". Coincidentally the sun burned out in a blaze of orange tonight (sun set around 9.30 today) plus a wierd rainstorm, the rain looked all slanty, as if there was a garden hose aimed at Berlin from somewhere. Now thunder and lightning and I'm making miso soup. June? Nearly July? Hmm..
I hope this week we can set up a last minute gig so that the Cheap Freaks can play one more time before they head home! and that we can get them into the studio for an interview. They're here to record an album so will be busy lads! Their first set was ferocius and they were brave and played lots of new songs in their second set.
Word to your moms, Shane is back in B-town. Watch our for glorious coverage of wonderous Berlin gigs. Dawn gave me a free cupcake at Cupcake today. She spoils us rotten!!!! This photo is from a previous Cupcake outing, but you get the idea!
Woke up to a phonecall from Shaun Humanzi wondering about back line for the gig at White Trash tonight. Cheap Freaks are playing. They're over here from Dublin for a few days, "I'm avoiding them.." he said, "they've been on the piss for the last 10 hours, I live here, they don't". hahaha.
Last night at Death by Pop we had a benefit for Duncan from Virgin Tongues since he is recovering from a terrible sleepwalking accident. (If you can imagine sleepwalking out of a window four stories off the ground..). I had the honour of playing "6 Feet Underground" and it gave me the shivers. Probably wasn't the most "appropriate" choice of song given the circumstances, but it's one of their best. I think the CD i had was a demo so it sounded a bit rough but still amazing. You can get the shivers too, they finally added it to their myspace page here. There doesn't seem to be any news updates there, just the telling sign that something is wrong by their "cancelled" dates.
Last night before Death by Pop I stopped by Superstore. My friend Asta has opened her very own vintage store, it's amazing!!!! She has had one of the best vintage stands at Mauer Park for years, and now she's going official, with the help of a few friends. Upstairs is a cafe with specially curated art works and furniture (which you can buy of course). I had my eye on the couch with the tropical parrot theme, oh yes. We were served free strawberry cocktails and morrocan chicken, it was a treat.
The vintage area down the steep steps (do not drink too many strawberry cocktails and then attempt those stairs let me tell you!) is STUNNING. This team of kids totally transformed the previous grotty basement to a very not grotty impeccably stylish emporium. They came up with their own AWESOME designs to decorate the walls including huge Egytpian style heiroglyphics and painted on purple leopard print, YES I SAID PURPLE LEOPARD PRINT! It's glorious! I wish i had taken photos, but if you are in Berlin you can just go there: Alsmtadt str. 43. Can't miss it. *Nice one, there are photos on Garbage Dress blog HERE!
Also I just came across a link to the Michelberger Hotel. We had some free drinks there a few weeks ago for a Vice party : ) Well heck it looks like it's gonna be a very cool place, follow the blog as they are still undertaking the refurbishments and looks like they're having a lot of fun doing so! It's all buying lotso f old school furniture, atlases, making lamps out of books and I'm sure tons of hard work and elbow grease. The website is fun - do not even think about clicking "skip" on the intro.
wow wow wow i just keeping saying it over and over
the Horrors are back!!!! really back. not just oh look there's a new Horrors album out.
a few weeks ago i was invited by Motor FM to interview Faris and Josh at the last minute. too last minute and i couldnt get off work. but they did a trailer for our show. a very sardonic and giggly trailer.
cant get over how great the video for WHO CAN SAY is:
Health - May 3rd Berghain Cantine Yeah Yeah Yeahs - May 6th Pj Harvey and John Parish - MOVED TO A BIGGER VENUE YAY!!! - Astra, May 7th Bell X1 - May 7th Bang Bang Club Bat for Lashes - May 12th Postbahnhof
I did my first "real" interview for Motor FM on Saturday!!! When I say "real" I mean in the swinging the microphone over and back between me and a dj/producer, sitting on a couch in an empty venue hours before the record release party of his 6 years in the making project, which happens to be an album with EVERYONE on it, from Karen O to Tom Waits, Ghostface Killah, Lykke Li, Kanye West and everybody else ever. I was n-n-n-ervous but Ez from N.A.S.A was a pro even though the first party of the tour had been the night before in London and he'd only had a couple of hours sleep. We started late so we didn't have as much time as planned for, but we chatted for 15 minutes "on the record" about the mighty "Spirit of Apollo"; of course when I switched off the recorder we kept talking and it was even better talking than when the mic had been switched on.
Ez aka DJ Zegon and Sam {Squeak E Clean - bro of Spike Jonze omg} are some of the last people to have worked with ODB before he passed away, the track "Strange Enough" was one ODB worked on especially with them - it's not some found material that they fandangled into something "new". And Karen O's snarling drawl on the chorus is the most perfect match.
"Spirit of Apollo" is seriously the stunt of the year. In the beginning Ez and Sam sat down and wrote their wishlist of dream artists to work with for this project, Ez said they got 80% of those people. James Brown was on that list, unfortunately he passed away before they could get started.
Ez just took a month break (6 years work in progress remember) to hang out on the beach in Sao Paulo before starting the tour this week, when he only got his hands on the finished record itself. He could have had it sooner if Sam mailed it to him from LA, but Ez told him he wanted to wait til they reunited in London for the start of the tour so that Sam could pass it directly into Ez's hands. (This was my favourite part of the interview, when Ze said that).
Some of the best tracks are "Whatchadoin" - feat M.I.A, Spank Rock, Santogold & Nick Zinner and "Hip Hop" - feat KRS-One, Fat Lip and Slim Kid Tre, has one of best raps ever making fun of so-called hip hop culture.
This project is HUGE. They're still adding footage from the release tour for the documentary coming soon. Plus, amazing artists have created the videos for each track, plus there will be a remix album. PLUS there's a hidden track!
I'm not sure when/if the interview will air > the guys at Motor fm still have to listen to it and edit if they can salvage anything!
Indie christoph is back updating, regularly for 13 posts now since coming back in January two-thousand-and-fine. The blog is sexy and - indie christoph is your friend!
The news i have to report from the weekend includes a 6 foot blonde adonis dancing for 7 hours straight at Death by Pop. As luck would have it, Jack, a model from Melbz, Australia who had just arrived to Berlin on Friday night, walked in the club just as i pressed play on "Into the Galaxy". Crazy dancing ensued, and he nearly hopped over the dj booth in the excitement for hearing Ladyhawke, yelling that he'd seen her play live and that i was "a better dj than the whole of Australia". haha! Also, another Australian guy came up and asked "how do you know about these Australian bands?!" Does Australia not know that we know what they know?! Anyway, the more Australian people on the dancefloor, the AWESOMER, because the German kids sometimes don't really even like hearing music like Ladyhawke, Midnight Juggernauts or Cut Copy. I'm happy to play song requests but the buck stops at Mando Diao or Pigeon Detectives, sorry German kids. (I know Ladyhawke is from New Zealand, but so far only Australianers have come running up to me all excited because I played one of her songs. I don't know where the New Zealanders are at?!).
I djed at White Noise on Saturday night as a last minute thing. Some boys from VICE UK were part of the dj line up too and were almost giggling with glee about all the fun they were having in Berlin for the fist time ever and djing at White Noise. Apparently Peaches was in attendance - she will dj there in a few weeks time. Also there will be a dj set from the Sex Pistols in the near future.
In case you were wondering, it's not minus eleven anymore, we've warmed up to a toasty one degree.
I forgot to report back about last weekend. Well I got to make Lo Fi Fnk dance to Kylie. They were in town to do some partying and came to dj at Death by Pop. They had the downstairs area and it was great. Lots of sexy Swedish people also came out to dance. They ran out of music around 2.30 so I was invited to take over and they were awesome and stayed to dance. Best interpretive dance moves ever!
I just realised I missed the Animal Collective concert tonight, so I'm off to go and sulk about that...
Flipping heck I have to find a very nice outfit for the GLAMCANYON PARTY DURING BERLIN FASHION WEEK!!! I will be a dj there, djing for the people. The party will be at Villa and the SEXUS, NEXUS and COMPLEXUS ladies are coming from London to dj aswell.
The first Glamcanyon party was in London on December 9th, and it was a mega affair. The joint was called "THE LAST DAYS OF DECADENCE" (can you believe such a place exists?) on Shoreditch High St. There was gold on the ceiling, art deco mirrors and when Kat Walks asked for a strip pole for the dancefloor, SHE GOT ONE. There was a make out room. Some other Berliners were there too including Max Krefeld, who you may know from his amazing dancefloor twirls, or music projects Appaloosa, Candyblasta and Casper who you may know as the angel who took your 6 euros at the door at Picknick once upon a time. Max did not disappoint on the dancefloor, and neither did Casper for that matter, dancing with a horseriding helmet.
This year I was totally corrupted by pop music. My friend Robbie did his top 10 and i thoroughly agree with half of his final 10, and have yet to discover the other half. I'm ashamed to admit i bought the Sons and Daughters album on vinyl but haven't listened to it yet! HOW EMBARRESSING!
A friend wrote me a note on Last fm asking what my top 10 of 2008 was, and i took up quite a bit of his page trying to answer. So i thought i would rephrase my comment in an exciting blog post!
One of the highlights of this year for me was REX THE DOG. I thought I didn't know who Rex was, but he was known as JX in the 90's and actually produced alot of 90's hits. Seriously, go to Youtube and look up JX and get your 90's dance on. This guy kept Long Wave Atlantic 252 running, for serious (DO YOU REMEMBER LISTENING TO LONG WAVE ATLANTIC 252????)
{Will this work? I'll post a hype machine search for each song or maybe a video.}
One time i decided to go to sweden for a holiday, to see the Shout Out Louds play in Stockholm. One marracas concussion and a year later i returned there to Gothenburg to see Lykke Li play a festival. My mouth was literally watering at the thought of seeing her live, I'd actually heard one of her songs while waiting for the Shout out Louds to come on that first time in Sweden. the dj was playing 7 inches and when this eerie beautiful song came on I ran over to ask him who it was and even though he pointed to the name and said it in my ear a few times i didn't have a fucking clue how i could remember it, and promptly forgot. In Swedish her name is pronounced like "luckily". Good, because saying "licky lee" is just GROCE and WRONG people! (I sincerely hope I'm right about the pronunciation..)
After seeing her live, I can assure you that all that spit was not in vain. Goddamn this girl, she has the wierdest singing voice, she is fierce on stage, she writes heartbreaking songs and SHE CAN RAP.
The video for "I'm good I'm gone" features SWEDISH MUSICAL ROYALTY including Lykke Li herself, plus Robyn, some guys from Shout out Louds, the Concretes and god knows who else is drinking the tap water (It is the tap water, have you tasted it?)
Friendly Fires are winners on several levels. Their front man who wears high waisted tight pants and sparkly jumpers can dance like a fool and sing beautifully and the overall effect is rather smashing.
Friendly Fires - Jump in the pool
Magic Wands - Teenage Love If im djing i love to play this song at the start of the night when nobody is on the dancefloor yet.
If Ladyhawke hadn't set the world on fire I would have died a little inside (not because of her, because of the bad, bad world). THANK GOODNESS FOR LADYHAWKE! Have you seen the artwork on the album? Up close? Cats dressed up as ghosts in white sheets with holes for the eyes! it's the best ever.
I'll go out on a good one. Metronomy - Thing for me. AND it's a karaoke theme video (keep watching past the first 20 seconds, it's not just a pretend karaoke video!)
Not mentioned: Britney, Leona Lewis, that "It's too late to apologise" song and other embarressing titles.
I did my first "real" interview for Motor FM on Saturday!!! When I say "real" I mean in the swinging the microphone over and back between me and a dj/producer, sitting on a couch in an empty venue hours before the record release party of his 6 years in the making project, which happens to be an album with EVERYONE on it, from Karen O to Tom Waits, Ghostface Killah, Lykke Li, Kanye West and everybody else ever. I was n-n-n-ervous but Ez from N.A.S.A was a pro even though the first party of the tour had been the night before in London and he'd only had a couple of hours sleep. We started late so we didn't have as much time as planned for, but we chatted for 15 minutes "on the record" about the mighty "Spirit of Apollo"; of course when I switched off the recorder we kept talking and it was even better talking than when the mic had been switched on.
