So, work sent me to Frankfurt last week to do some “work”, but in my plentiful spare time I managed to check out a few clubs in the city of dodgy sausages. First up on a Tuesday (the day I landed) I was taken out to Club Keller which is a predominantly indie/rock type club. There had been a band playing but I arrived just in time to see them pack up their equipment. Instead I was treated to a night of, uh, I guess a load of indie stuff that’s popular right now and some older stuff I recognised (Stereolab, The Cure, Le Tigre, Chicks on Speed, a range of shtuff loike!) being played by two hot German girls in stripy tops. The club is cool and cozy, with table football tables (I challenged a hot German girl in a stripy top to a game and lost spectacularly) and a big row of coat hooks for your coats! I’m told they do decent punk gigs there too, might be worth checking out if you want something other than techno.
I spent the rest of the week checking out bars, the highlight being a pretty classy and expensive place called “22nd Lounge” which is on the 22nd floor of one of Frankfurt’s skyscrapers, has a great view and a guy playing piano on a baby grand! I was surprised they let us in and ended up spending far too much on cocktails and trying to chat up a hot German girl in a stripy top who then enraged me when she tried to explain that Ireland gets 300 days of rain a year (Wikipedia says some parts of Ireland experience 275 days of rain a year so she was well off!). Stripy rain girl was friends with the barman, Guido, who some “2006 Best Cocktail in Frankfurt” competition to I spent the night saying “Give me the 2007 winner Guido! Give me the cocktail in your mind!!!!”, well that explains the 100 quid bill then.
Fr-Fr-Fr-Friday night brought me out to one of the Germany’s, if not the world’s most well known nightclubs, Cocoon. It was my first time there and while I was very impressed by the building and soundsystem I was left cold by the music and crowd. The main room is surrounded by this kind of mesh/wall that reminds you of the insive of a bee-hive (a cocoon, geddit?) and there are lots of alchoves where people can sit/lie around, a seperate classy bar area with expensive looking lights hanging on….string things. Luciano was headlining, I’ve got a couple of his sets and he seemed to be either having an off night or just wasn’t too bothered. Dull minimal by numbers, I didn’t hear anything exciting or fresh in his set. Before him a duo called Galoppierende Zuversicht had been playing live with a lot of technical difficulties that caused their Ableton Live (or whatever) to skip, and not in the skkatter approved way! The crowd there seemed to be more interested in showing off their stripy tops to each other than dancing, overall a very non atmospheric night in my opinion. I’ve heard it can be really good though, perhaps I was just unlucky that time. (one German I work with joked that they all call the club Cocaine)
Desperate for a proper night’s dancing I had the choice of going to either the legendary Robert Johnson to catch a few of the DJs from the local Freebase Records shop or else U60311 to check out a DJ set from T.Raumschmiere, I ended up blagging a guestlist of Marie the French Princess who’s interning for Shitkatapult in Berlin at the moment so U60311 it was! I had a rather amusing time finding the entrance to the club, when I got to where I had marked on my map there were these two small kiosk things with lights shining out of them (about the size of that coffee shop on the Liffey boardwalk ), I could hear music coming out of them but the doors were locked. After walking around a bit I found another locked door which had a buzzer, once again I could hear das groovy techno beats to I gave the buzzer an ‘oul press and some German voice answered so I said “Yeah, I’m on the list, word!”, he then opened unlocked the door and politely explained that this was the back door, and the main entrance to the club was right over there, so I apologised and went ’round the front and got in. I’m a regular pathfinding ninja master!
The U60311 is a grimy and dingy underground club with about a 350 person capacity, I thought it was great! Two guys were playing a live electro (and I mean proper electro, apparently that’s pretty rare in Germany!) set off a pair of laptops which the fairly healthy looking crowd (in their stripy tops) were getting down to. Marco came on at around 2am (gotta love those long German pub/club opening times) and knocked out a great techno set, I didn’t trainspot much of it, I’m pretty sure I heard something by Sami Koivikko and Motor amongst others. It definitely wasn’t clicky minimal anyway! I’d an early flight the next day so didn’t get to hang out until the end of the night but that was the first time I saw T.Raumschmiere DJ and he pleasantly surprised me as a lot of live acts I’ve seen don’t often make good DJs.
Frankfurt is an interesting city with some great cloths shopping (holds up credit card bill) and a healthy techno scene. I’ll definitely be heading over again pretty soon, I need to check out that Robert Johnson club especially! The bad news is that right after DJ Rush played the TBMC my brand new(ish, well, it’s only three months old!) Fujifilm F30 stopped working! ARGHAGHGRHA! So I didn’t get any photos of Frankfurt, I’ve sent it off to Fuji with a big sad face drawn on a piece of paper in crayon but I doubt I’ll get it back in time for my trip to Manchester next weekend to see LFO, Surgeon and Autechre. I might borrow my mother’s or something. Anyway, hope you have a good weekend, seeya soon!