Waterghain

Clubbing highlights of Berlin so far:

The Environ night at the Panorama Bar would be the first one. A night of DJ sets from Morgan Geist, Darshan J and Daniel Wang alongside a live set from Kelley Polar was just too good an opportunity to pass up so I headed into Berghain extra early for this one, extra early being 2am. Unfortunately half of Berlin had the same idea and there was a massive queue outside, bigger than a normal Berghain queue even! It was moving pretty fast though, mainly due to the harsh door policy of turning every second person away. As luck would have it (hey a 50/50 chance is a pretty good one!) I was one of the people not turned away and managed to catch the end of Daniel Wang’s set which full of disco/house gems you’d expect to hear at an Environ night. Kelley Polar had a band with him, a dude on bass, a shaded loretho on keyboards + vocoder and Mr. Polar himself (I believe, or is that the name of the entire band?) on vocals and violin. I’m positive that was the first time the Panorama bar saw live violin playing! They pulled it off incredibly well, it was the kind of thing that had the potential to fail horribly but it was great. Morgan Geist played a much tougher set than I’d ever heard from him, lots of Chi house, plenty of jackin’ acid stuff. Unfortunately I couldn’t last past 7:30am, but there were still people arriving as I was leaving.

Berghain too popular right now unfortunately, it’s pretty big but there’s no way that everybody who turns up can fit in. I don’t like their pick and mix rules of admission, I’ve been lucky so far but I’m sure there’ll be some time in the future when I’ll be refused after waiting an hour outside, it’s not really their fault they’re so popular I suppose. Also, I’m not sure I really like the concept of clubbing when it starts getting bright again. I’ve always hailed the arrival of the sun as the time to start thinking about going home. 6 or 7am, that’s a sensible home time, right? :) Not for most Germans it seems!

The second highlight was Skerries finest Donnacha Costello at Watergate last Saturday night. I’ve seen Donnacha quite a few times now, mostly supporting some other people and mostly on at a pretty early time, 11/12am. Here he was headlining at 4am! A few of us met up for dinner and some drinks beforehand, Donnacha being sensible and heading back to the hotel at 1 to catch a nap before the gig, the rest of us trying to drink responsibly so we’d be sober enough to make it to the club. The Watergate is quite a fancy club! They’ve banned cameras in there now (although I remember taking loads of photos of the place back in 2004, check the skkatter archives!) but I managed to get a small camera phone video of Donnacha in action featuring the fancy schmancy lights in the ceiling upstairs. It was also the best set I’ve heard Mr. Minimise play, the later time definitely suites him and the excellent sound system there also helps! Once again I wimped out and left at 6am, the two Irish girls in our group stayed on until midday the next day!! Madness! We’d all be dead if they let us do that in Dublin, seriously, if you do eventually get your opening times sorted in Ireland you’ll need special “extended hours nightclub” fitness classes, all hours dancing techniques coupled with how to pace your drinking.

Here’s the little video of Donnacha at Watergate!