Reviews of gigs I have been at recently.

Cylob at the Berghain Kantina: This is a great little venue I'd never been to or heard of before, right beside the main (more famous) Berghain.. Very underground dingy club feel which reminded me of The Funnel (R.I.P.). Cylob was DJing with his own DJ software written using the Super Collider programming language and controlled with a Monome. Chopped up old school electro, acid house mixed in with newer weirder tracks was the order of the day here. His music software also did the visuals and had a "Crowd Reaction Meter" and "DJ Stress Meter" which he adjusted in keeping with his own and the crowd's feelings. Humorous messages also popped up including a "Sorry for not playing any Depeche Mode" which I'd requested at the start of the night. Cylob's off playing some festival in Finland this weekend, you can keep an eye on what he's up to at his blog.

Luke Vibert at Icon Club: Icon is a mere five minutes walk from my apartment! Very literally an underground club, this reminds me of The Cavern in Dublin, except it's twice as big and has two bars instead of one and a separate smoking room. I've only seen Like play a few times but I'm a huge fan of his many many productions (he's released more music than most electronic artists I know!), his DJ set was brilliant, loads of his own stuff mixed in with some classics (Aphex Twin's "Didgeridoo" comes to mind) as well as that track Aphex secretly remixed for him for the Future Music magazine remix competition a few years ago. He played until about 4:30am then I got a taxi to Berghain to catch the end of the Leisure System night (Chris Clark, Rob Hall, Surgeon) but only saw the last 10 minutes of Surgeon and then got really drunk and fell asleep on the train home and woke up in Pankow!

DMX Krew at The Dub Club: Another great club I'd never been two before, two rooms in some kind of small abandoned factory or something. If you dressed up in fancy dress it was half price but the girl I went with refused to dress up, boo! DMX Krew is one of my favourite DJs so obviously I enjoyed the show, a bit more acid than I was expecting (it's going to be the next minimal house I tell you!), Ed started off with Dopplereffet's "Superior Race" mixed into an acapella of The Jungle Brother's "I'll House You", then it was some classics like Bam Bam's "Where's Your Child", the homoerotic version of French Kiss (a man having an orgasm instead of a woman!), Visage - "Fade To Gray", Cylob's "Sex Machine" (Cylob was in the crowd and was forced to dance to this), a fun set! Dopplereffekt themselves also played in a different club that night but I couldn't afford to go to both and had already seen them this year (and it was probably exactly the same show, they're still great though!).