CSD Weekend 2024: Hits And Misses
You know the drill…hits and misses from my CSD weekend in Berlin.
(PS I’m linking to a lot of previous articles here because the Buttondown archive finally has a search function! Praise the lord.)
MISS: Berlin public transport.
I will tell you over and over again that I’m a big city boy, but when it comes to actually crossing the big city — in this case the >1 hour journey from my sublet in Neukölln to Gart.n in Rummelsburg for Jane Fitz & Marco Shuttle’s party Particles — I can quickly become a very grumpy big city boy. Especially if I haven’t eaten properly. Berlin’s public transport and station infrastructure seems to be in a state of permanent meltdown these days but when taxis are so expensive what alternative is there?
MISS: Arriving at Particles and deciding the best way to fix my hunger was by getting smashed on natty wine.
HIT: Catching up with a whole load of people at Particles while getting smashed on natty wine.
MISS: Spending so much time catching up with people at Particles while getting smashed on natty wine that I barely paid attention to Jane & Marco’s music, for which I am very sorry.
HIT: Making the executive decision to leave Particles half an hour early and go back home to eat some pasta and sober up before the next party.
HIT: Counterintuitively, the torrential rain on Friday night.
I walked in the rain for 40 minutes to get to the PDA party at Ziegrastraße, but with my brolly and waterproof shoes it was actually pretty fun and helped with the (still ongoing) sobering up process.
MISS: PDA = Please some Damn Air.
The PDA party was so hot that I was significantly wetter inside, from sweat, than I had been outside in the rain. Not long after I arrived I saw one of the organisers brandishing what looked like an A-C remote, but there was no indication that this made any difference. My only saving grace was a long-suffering standing fan holding it down front-left.
HIT: Ziegrastraße.
This was my first time at any of the spaces on this street, home to the late, legendary KAKE club among others. It’s just over the water from the old Griessmuehle down Sonnenallee and on Friday I could hear at least one other rave going on as I walked up to the unit where PDA was. The venue really reminded me of the Brooklyn loft I went to in NYC earlier this year, for Mizz Softee: basically someone’s apartment but with a bar, booth and dancefloor. The décor was fun, the lights were cool, the cloakroom was a clothes rail in the corridor and the sound system was great for the space.
HIT: Getting away with it.
Boys Shorts ended their set with Electronic ‘Getting Away With It’, which reminding me of that glorious moment when Vladimir Ivkovic played it at Nowadays last year (read my report here).
HIT: “Michael, Michael, Michael / My feet are dancing can you see them.”
Michael Upson of Love Muscle opened with Paul Parker ‘Right On Target’ and went on to play my favourite set of the weekend: disco, boogie, Chicago house, acid techno, hi-NRG, jazzy drum freakouts, weirdo italo, all delivered in 40 degree indoor heat IN A VELVET GOWN. Michael, you are an inspiration to us all. Highlights included an extended mash-up tribute to Evelyn Thomas, who died last week, as Michael rode the vocal from Love Muscle staple ‘High Energy’ over Hardfloor’s epic classic ‘Acperience 1’.
MISS: The monitor blowing part-way through Michael’s set.
When this happened, the promoters somehow managed to locate the sound tech guy in the melee, and he brought in another monitor, stationing it on top of the left-hand sub where I was dancing in front of the long-suffering fan. He plugged the monitor in and with a satisfied look on his face shuffled back to wherever he’d been hiding. A couple of tunes later, Michael looked at me and gestured that the monitor wasn’t working. On closer inspection it turned out that the sound tech guy had plugged it into the mains but had failed to either turn it on or, more crucially, plug it into the mixer, leaving Michael believing he had a monitor when he didn’t. Finally we managed to plug it all in and get it working, and Michael could relax a bit…
HIT: Michael “On The Job” Upson
I say relax. One of the pleasures of watching Michael play was the way he fussed, lightly, all the way through his set: the booth lighting wasn’t quite right, there wasn’t a good space for his record bag, the mixer was redlining, there wasn’t enough smoke…if you’ve been to Love Muscle you’ll know that Michael runs a tight ship, and as an incorrigible organiser/promoter he can’t help but try and enforce those standards wherever else he goes. (At Aether the next day, where he was nothing but a punter, I still caught him lighting candles around the space as the sun was going down.)
HIT: The PDA crowd.
Although PDA belongs to that genre of party described deliciously by a friend as “for girls who have bisexual boyfriends”, it just so happens that that makes for a pretty great crowd. And although I was definitely above the average age (when am I not these days?), the kids were cool enough for me to not feel it too keenly.
HIT: Michael playing my ‘Wild’ edit and people dancing a lot.
It’s been over 5 years since I made that edit and first played it at The Breakfast Club, and it still does the business. Michael also finished his set with the gothic piano and elusive phrasing of East Wall ‘Eyes Of Glass’, which I hadn’t heard in a while. (In fact I believe the last time was at Romantso in Athens, around the same time as I made ‘Wild’.)
MISS: A very unfortunate scheduling clash.
Bouffant Bouffant, one of my favourite DJs, and who has made regular appearances on Midweek Mixes (check the archive here), was playing after Michael, which put his set on a collision course with Colored Craig, one of my artists at Campout last year and whose performance at that festival brought people to tears (as described here). Craig was playing at Pbar, so I stayed at PDA just long enough to hear Brett hitting his stride then jumped across town so I could catch the last hour of Craig. Apparently PDA didn’t finish until 2pm that afternoon…
HIT: Craig turning it out.
I walked into Pbar to see Craig looking like a million dollars and popping and jumping like we all knew he wanted to — but couldn’t — at Campout last year. It was exactly why I had made the effort to get across town. On the face of it he had made the same cardinal error I made the first time I played at Pbar — namely, wearing trousers instead of shorts — though of course Craig’s were pure fashion (see above). Nevertheless, surely it was far too hot for that? But then the solution: as he mixed into the strings of Armand Van Helden’s remix of CJ Bolland ‘Sugar Is Sweeter’, he whipped off his shirt and started singing along to the lyrics:
Sugar daddy set me free
Sugar daddy come for me
A slay.
MISS: An awkward exit.
Despite going to some lengths to get to Pbar, I didn’t plan to stay long. I wanted to sleep before my next engagement so I made a plan to leave a good 20 minutes before the end of Craig’s set, beating a retreat before any hint of the possibility of staying for Lakuti + Tama Sumo afterwards. They might be favourites of mine, but I still felt pretty well charged up from the extended session with them last Christmas, so it didn’t feel like a loss to miss them this time. (Btw I continue to dream of that incredible track played by Tama Sumo that Boxing Day afternoon.)
So I said my goodbyes to a couple of friends in Pbar and made for the door. It was still absolutely pissing it down outside, and as I faffed putting my umbrella up I became conscious of a group of people advancing past the queue towards the entrance: Lakuti, Tama Sumo and their considerable entourage. “I wanted to leave before you arrived” was all I could muster in the face of Lakuti’s disbelief.
A couple of years ago DJ City wrote a song called ‘Gilded Harm’ about someone asking for guestlist and then not showing up to the party. Well, Johan, now you need to write a song about trying to leave the party before the DJ arrives yet still managing to bump into them on the way out.
MISS: Not going back to Pbar.
Of course, now I had the wristband I could go back to Bergs whenever I pleased…or so it would happen on any other weekend. But CSD is different: the re-entry queue ends up being just as much of a slog as the main queue, if not even more so. If you want to see someone play, you have to go in there early and just stay. So of course when I considered going back in the afternoon to catch Chris Cruse and Baronhawk Poitier in the garden, I heard the wait would be 2+ hours, and I assume it remained so for the rest of the evening and night. I never made it back.
HIT: Spending the day at Aether instead.
In a repetition of the conclusion to last year’s Berlin summer, I ended up spending most of my Sunday at Mahalla in Schöneweide for Aether, the ambient and experimental listening event run by Gwenan, Eli Verveine and ISH. I helped run the door again, welcoming people into the monumental space, explaining the format of the event and laying down the ground rules (only two: shoes off, and no smoking in the carpeted area). The music was stunning, from Laura Fiore’s opening DJ set to live sets from Gin & Tonic (Gwenan and Tali) and the Pool Lab Orchestra, ISH’s DJ set and Sarah Wreath on gong and modular. There was delicious vegetarian dosa with curry and the same lovely-sounding omnidirectional speakers.
During Sarah’s set, the sun, which had been putting on its usual show of streaming through the Mahalla windows, finally set, and Achim Mogge’s analogue visuals sprung to life on the back wall. Max, a Mahalla resident, emerged unannounced in a skull mask and began to dance in front of the visuals. The skull prop echoed the contraptions Alkimistka had been using earlier for the ‘scent journey’ element of the event, while a small disco ball lent a comedic edge to the performance. It was a moment of surreal drama, of the kind that really only makes sense after many preceding hours of voyaging. I had actually slept that morning, but it gave me pure second-evening vibes.
HIT: A fabulous finale.
Of course all that blissfully beatless space travel was the perfect warm-up for…Horsemeat Disco. I’d never been to the HMD annual CSD Sunday night party and I suspected it would be more along the lines of their parties in NYC, which I’d been to once and regretted, than the OG Sunday evenings at The Eagle in London. But I still wanted to try it, especially since Prosumer was playing. Sure enough, on arrival I was greeted by a crowd made up of 95% pecs. Now, I like pecs as much as the next man, but I don’t have any myself, so when I am surrounded almost exclusively by people who do have them I start to feel like a bit of an outsider, even invisible.
Never mind, looking past the pecs (not always an easy task), the vibe in the club was basically on fire as DJ Paulette finished her set and Achim took to the decks. ‘Miura’, ‘Feels Good (Carrots & Beets)’ and ‘Freedom (Make It Funky)’ all made appearances, and when a stretch of his set threatened to get a bit too functional for my general energy levels, he delivered the never-fails punch of ‘Mary Mary’ and got me fully back on side. A group of drag queens and other non-pec-centric revellers appeared behind the booth and started some friendly dance-offs. I had an immense amount of fun and then, choosing Patrick Cowley’s ‘Mind Warp’ as a suitably poignant selection on which to close my CSD weekend, I ran for the night bus home.
BONUS MISS (HIT?)
As I was waiting for Achim to start playing, I became conscious of James Hillard standing near me behind the booth. Michael asked me if we knew each other, and I sort of prevaricated and moved away before he could introduce me. Why, you might ask? Because the only interaction I’ve ever had with James Hillard was online three years ago, when I shared a dream I had about him on Instagram and he ended up reading it. I reproduce the dream here for posterity:
I was taking part in a reality TV show where me and another guy had been selected to play at Horsemeat Disco. James Hillard was our mentor as we prepared for the gig. He wore a black polo neck and light eye shadow. His first comment to me was: “It was Severino who chose you. I listened to your stuff and it was…lacking.” We had to take part in various exercises to prepare for the gig but James sabotaged us at every turn. One time we had to rehearse over the river but he told us the wrong departure time for the boat so we missed rehearsal. Another time he bizarrely insisted we shave our cheekbones for ages for no reason, when we should have been practicing. At one point he begrudgingly complimented a podcast I’d done, but hit back with: “The mix is fine but your promo shot is just a little…Marcus.” (‘Marcus’ was clearly some kind of supreme shade in my dream.) James Hillard is a DJ hero of mine but Dream James Hillard was evil incarnate.”
James’s reply on Instagram?:
I will haunt your dreams forever mwahahahaha