uberlin

We’ve uncovered never-before-seen footage of a time-travelling Techno Viking tearing Weimar Berlin a new rave-hole:

We visited the spiritual home of the proto-punks with Kevin Cousins, who also introduced us to our favourite record shop in Berlin, Bis Auf’s Messer.

The comic book, buzzsaw chug of the Ramones is one of the most recognisable and imitated rackets in rock’s pantheon. Eternal misfits, they occupied a space of paradox: musically inept but trailblazing in their deconstructing of musical conventions; Rock and Roll Hall of Famers who never really hit “the big time”; a band equally influenced by the Stooges and the Ronettes. They were the kind of band that inspired dogged devotion: a definitive cult item. Therefore, it is perhaps fitting that the one museum dedicated to these loveable losers is far from their hometown of Queens, New York, and just happens to be where one of their biggest fans lived: Berlin. The Ramones Museum is a testimony to die hard fandom, and has Johnny, Joey et al’s scruffy, underdog charm written all over it.

The exhibits are arranged in a loosely chronological order, charting the Ramones’ rise from snotty street urchins to major-label almost-stars. Most of the material is presented through myriad fliers, handbills, posters and photos, but within the yellowing snippets there are some real treats to behold. Shots of these punks mooching on street corners in their home city, unnoticed and awkward, stand side by side with iconic portraits of them hitting London for the first time. There they were hailed as champions of a new, three-chord zeitgeist, with a wide-eyed John Lydon and Joe Strummer jostling to be in the presence of their unlikely idols.

There are touching stories told, too, in which Joey emerges as an especially magnetic character. Clumsy and loping, all limbs and bushy hair, he sticks out as a truly missed icon of the counterculture, with his goofy visage standing out as a welcome presence in all the images on display. His relationship with Johnny was famously fraught: the latter stole and married his girlfriend, leading to a frosty silence that lasted the rest of their career, and this tension is in clear evidence in many of these compelling images.

From the sublime to the ridiculous, then, as you can witness Dee Dee’s alarming propensity for treading in dog-dirt, and the obligatory, Spinal Tap-esque “rotating drummer”. Alarming, too, are their label’s (desperate?) attempts to market the band. Ramones surfwear for the Australian market, anyone? Amongst other treasures are Joey’s beaten mic-stand from their last show in 1996, Dee Dee’s omnipresent padlock necklace and Johnny’s savaged Levi’s.

€5 buys you a lifetime’s entry(!) and a drink in the bar. There you can sit and scan the walls, which form a ramshackle mural/shrine to the Ramones, in the form of graffiti left by passing punk and indie musicians. From Biffy Clyro to Sum 41, all these artists have been inspired and touched by the Ramones’ less-is-more ethic and surging, fuzztone pop. They soldiered on and “did the clubs” for years, watching the bands who they influenced overtake and outshine them along the way. They were perhaps tragic in the fact that, unlike a lot of punk bands, they wanted and courted fame but remained perpetual also-rans. Johnny, Joey and Dee Dee died within a few years of each other: they would surely have been delighted to see their legacy done service at this excellent, big-hearted little museum.

Ramones Museum
Krausnickstrasse 23
10115 Berlin-Mitte
ramonesmuseum.com

What was I just saying about my obsession with Modeselektor and their labelmates’ output? Well the new German kings of the music video have just released the follow-up to their cutesy “Berlin” promo, with something altogether darker and more spectacular. Featuring vocals by Thom Yorke, a dancer/puppeteer resembling the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and psychedelic animation, here is “This”:

Modeselektor should just go ahead an sponsor our Music section, we feature their releases so often. This time we bring you the new album from Phon.o, out this Thursday on the monkeymen’s 50 Weapons imprint. But before we get into the new shit, here’s a classic Phon.o track – one that Modeselektor expertly blended into Radiohead’s “Idioteque” at the end of their Boogy Bytes Vol. 3 mix CD:

Phon.o’s new album Black Boulder is a few evolutionary steps down the line from pounders like “Ridin’ Dirty”, as the one-time Berlin resident filters the best of contemporary bass music through the dub techno aesthetic of legends like Basic Channel. Check out snippets below, and listen out for Bodi Bill frontman Pantasz on the beautiful “Twilight”:

Black Boulder by Phon.o is out on May 18th on 50 Weapons.

Miniblackhole is Berlin-based David Meyer, a musician when he gets a free moment from being a technology journalist. The former frontman for rock band Guns To Caviar, Meyer hails from South Africa and moved to Berlin last year after 13 years in the UK. Miniblackhole has existed as a side-project for the last five years, but is now taking the fore as an attempt to create a new breed of electrogrungepop, or something like that. An EP should be out later this year, but David is currently looking for a collaborator to bolster the beats and synths behind his songs – the Chris Lowe to his Neil Tennant, as it were. Skip to the Miniblackhole SoundCloud page to offer your skillz!

BANGER!

Lazer Sword’s deep roller “Sounds Sane” is back, on the San Francisco/Berlin duo’s debut album, Memory, out now on Modeselektor’s Monkeytown Records. Listen to snippets of the warm, club-hazy album below, and click here to buy.

It’s amazing that I discovered T-INA Darling, given my aversion to a) political music and b) bullshit nostalgia for olden, “better” times. And yet I recently caught myself eyeing a vinyl copy of The Fine Art of Living by the “Empress of Berlin Swing”, entranced by its psychedelic illustration of the TV Tower. When I later found the album on Spotify, I was surprised by its blending of (ew) sixties pop and swing with (yay) hip hop and dubstep – plus oddly palatable politicking. The lyrics tell a tale of gentrification and rising rents in Mitte, which is either the singer/producer’s own story or a super-tight album concept. Check out this video for the landlord-bashing track “The Law”, and if you like what you höre, you can catch T-INA DJing every Wednesday at Clärchens Ballhaus.

What a great week for Depeche Mode fans! Firstly, Martin Gore has added vocals to the title track of MOTOR‘s brand new album, Man Made Machine. Check out his contribution below, and visit Amazon to pick up a silver foil-packed copy of the album (which also features our other favourite Martin, Billie Ray – Berlin’s queen of electronic soul).

Then on Friday, I’ll be DJing at Feeling Modey, Feeling Gloomy Berlin’s Depeche Mode party. Click here for full details, but all you *really* need to know is that I’ll be playing back-to-back classics from Mode and their offshoots, and that it will be five times as awesome as my already-pretty-awesome playlist below. It’s going to be MORE THAN A PARTY! (yeah?)

We’re always asking, what does Berlin sound like? Well, Slow Travel Berlin‘s recent interview with the intriguing Schneider TM provides one answer: Construction Sounds. The title of the electronic artist’s new album describes the field recordings that provide its backbone, the noise from the construction sites surrounding his home studio:

For around 8 or 9 years I’ve lived and worked in my former apartment, which was located in one of the most vibrant renovation areas in East Berlin. The noise of the construction sites literally took over my music and I just surrendered at some point. I started to record and play around with the sounds.

Sometimes abstract and haunting…

…and sometimes, noisy and oppressive…

…Construction Sounds reminds me of Ostgun Ton’s Fünf compilation, a diverse set of tracks formed from Emika’s field recordings from inside Berghain. Emika’s one contribution as producer, “Cooling Room” turns the sounds and space of the cavernous club into a clanking, chiming musical sketch:

…all of which makes me wonder what a musician could do with our Berlin Sounds, the field recordings from around the city that you are contributing to our SoundCloud group. We have some ideas of our own, but why not listen to the clips below and let your imagination run wild – could you make music out of this?

Read the complete interview with Schneider TM over on Slow Travel Berlin.

Tomorrow Kraftwerk start a week-long retrospective series at MoMA in New York, performing one seminal album each night, backed by 3D visualisation. Now I know they are from Düsseldorf, not Berlin BUT: we can reach them by der Autobahn and everyone everywhere has been influenced by the Men Machines – Berlin’s electronic musicians included.

Proving this point (the second point, not the Autobahn thing) is Ninja Tune’s DJ Food, who for six years running compiled hour-long mixes of cover versions, sample-heavy tracks or songs that obviously owe a debt to the Düsseldorf quartet. Check out Food’s website for more infectious fanboy-ism (including his own artwork for the mixes) or listen via the players below, as he seamlessly blends the Werk of David Byrne, Erasure, Whitney Houston, Jay-Z and Rammstein(!). Kling Klang!