Vabali (19/02/24)
After my last couple of clubbing reports (here and here), you should know that I am a man of some dedication when it comes to going to parties at strange hours/going to more than one club in a night/generally carrying on — though always with a sustainable approach. Well, this weekend I unlocked a new combo in Berlin: I played a six-hour set at Fandango on Sunday evening, converted it into a four-hour stint at Panoramabar that night, and then, after a bit of a sleep, finessed that into a Monday evening afters at a club that was totally new to me. It’s called Vabali, and every time I hear someone saying the name I can’t help but think of Judy in Sleepaway Camp saying “volleyball”. But Vabali is no game! No, it’s a deadly serious venue that stands alongside other Berlin institutions like Berghain/Panoramabar or Tresor/Globus as the place you want to be when the weekend ends (or, in this case, long after the actual weekend has ended).
The first thing to mention about it is that it’s in a slightly unlikely place. Unlike the distant, grungey industrial grandeur of the aforementioned Bergs and Tresor settings, Vabali occupies a large but unassuming plot behind the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, and as you walk down the long driveway past the car park there is little that hints at what’s in store. Approaching the entrance, you reach a small chalet-type building with a big illuminated sign: VOLLEYBALL. Sorry, VABALI. This sign is perfect for taking post-club photos à la Bergs. A discreet velvet rope indicates the queue, which I’ve been told can stretch around the block at the busiest times. People are seemingly willing to wait for many hours for this special experience, but luckily I had a guestlist ticket sorted. In the end, at the allotted hour — 7.20pm on Monday — I needn’t have worried: the venue is apparently more of a summer daytime thing anyway.
I slid past the security guard and into the entrance area. The decor seemed wilfully opposed to everything you’d expect from a Berlin club. There’s not a stark concrete wall or metal cage in sight: these have been replaced by lush foliage and ‘exotic’ ornaments. I found the latter rather cringeworthy but at least they’ve committed to the theme. Everything is very opulent. The door person laid out the club’s rules and safer space policy and gave me a numbered wristband corresponding to a locker, and which would also be used to pay for drinks etc. I’m always a bit suspicious of wristband or token systems for paying for things, but Vabali is a textile-free space — yes, that means no clothes! — and phones and wallets must be left in lockers. The last time I got a talking to like this on going into a club was at Nowadays in New York. Good on Vabali for doing their bit to ensure everyone feels comfortable in the space.
Unlike the rather unceremonious plastic bag protocol at that other famously textile-free Berlin club, Lab, at Vabali you get an entire locker to yourself and the option to hire flip flops, a towel and a robe — the luxury! I couldn’t help but wonder how all this fluffy white towelling would fare in the middle of a rave, but looking around at the patrons heading out of the venue it seemed like no one had been having much of a problem. In fact, the people emerging from their sesh looked cleaner and more refreshed than those of us going in! I’d arrived a bit before my friends C & S so I decided to go through to the chillout area/bar to wait for them.
It was around this time that I suddenly clocked something odd that until that moment I’d only been subconsciously aware of: there was no music to be heard, anywhere. In fact, as I walked into the chillout area, the silence was unnerving. I saw people stretched out on sofas and chaise longues, many of them seemingly catatonic, and I began to wonder to myself if the club had a G problem.
Mitigating these reservations, however, was the realisation that they were serving food at the bar. Now I’m always going on about how clubs should serve food — and when I come across a party that sells soup, like the old Griessmuehle, or Fandango on Sunday, I’m always thrilled — but at Vabali they really go the whole hog. I ordered some pork gyozas and an apple juice and took in more of my surroundings. There were pairs of ravers sitting at tables chatting quietly, a single older man to my left reading a magazine, a group of bears in armchairs over by a central glass atrium. It was of course good to see a diverse crowd, but I still couldn’t get over the fact that there was no thud of a kick or whomp of a bassline coming from anywhere. The acoustic treatment on the dancefloor, wherever it was, must be top dollar.
C & S arrived and offered to give me the tour. I was glad to have my first Vabali experience with friends who knew their way around. You know how big clubs can be quite overwhelming the first time, especially if you’re on your own. I followed them outside briefly and then into one of the main rooms. The first thing that hit me was the heat. I remember the first time I went to Cocktail d’Amore at the old Griessmuehle, it was around 3am and as we walked into the main room there was steam pouring out of the doorway — not smoke from the smoke machine, but actual steam, produced by all the sweaty bodies. Well, let me tell you, Cocktail has nothing on Vabali. It’s almost as if the main objective of the place is to get you sweating, so carefully has everything been organised for that purpose. I found myself feeling thankful that clothing was not allowed, as I would certainly have sweated through it almost immediately.
The decor in the room recalled the expensive interior of the Blitz club main floor, but with even more wooden panelling. It seemed like we had just missed an event, something referred to as a ‘ceremony’ — perhaps a drag show or similar — and so the room was actually not that busy, but those who were there seemed to be in it for the long haul. Once again, the lack of music struck me as odd, but I figured this could just be one of the more experimental rooms, featuring a kind of musique concrète consisting of the slap of flip flops on the wooden flooring, the hiss of steam from the hot stones (so THAT’S where all that heat was coming from!) and a chorus of heavy breathing from the assembled company.
Sweat was pouring down my neck, down my chest, down my balls. Is this what true rave ecstasy feels like? We hadn’t even done any pills, but it began to feel like it. Just as I was getting comfortable, a staff member came into the room and started swishing a mop around. He told me off for not putting my feet on a towel, and then, as I recounted my previous night’s excursion to see Luigi di Venere at Bergs, he told me off for talking. The last time I had been this confused about the rules at a party was dealing with the tokens system at C12 in Brussels. C & S indicated it was time to move on.
After a quick dip in the outdoor pool (yes, Vabali has an outdoor pool — it has everything!), we went back into the main building and up to the roof terrace, where the party schedule promised a ‘Klangreise’ (that’s “sound journey” in German). We entered a room with rows of individual water beds, slapped our flip-flopped way to the back and settled down ready for the odyssey. The lights were unhelpfully bright in this room — a pet peeve of mine in any discotheque, be it strobes or spotlights shining at the crowd from the front of the room — and though I looked around carefully, once again I couldn’t see the DJ. Perhaps they would only emerge after the lights dimmed, or were they hidden in a booth in the wall, like in clubs of old? Personally I’m all in favour of this approach, as it encourages dancers to focus back on each other rather than the artist up on a stage. However, here it seemed interaction with other members of the crowd was actively discouraged. The silence was stifling. After ten minutes lying on the water bed, listening to the occasional gurgles of my fellow adventurers shifting position, I started to question whether the Klangreise was really going to take place or not. Suddenly it dawned on me: perhaps WE were the source of the journey, and it was our sounds, our gurgles, that would transport us to another plane, John Cage style. This all became too much for me. Sometimes you just need a kick drum, you know? So I roused myself once more and headed back downstairs to try and find some action.
The next hour or so saw us move from one room to another, trying to find the vibe that would fit our mood. C was a big fan of the steam room (as if the earlier room hadn’t already been steamy enough!), which had a beautiful starry-night light installation on the ceiling and, somewhat bizarrely, individual shower heads for each seat. If only Lab had the same attitude towards hygiene, I reflected. S, for her part, recommended another room with colour changing light panels, and it was here that I finally felt a real sense of release and entered an altered mental state, which I had been waiting for since I arrived. It was like something unlocked in my mind and body and set me floating free. Of course, you don’t need me to tell you that this was entirely unconnected to the music — there still wasn’t any — but there must have been something in the air.
We decamped to the indoor pool (yes, Vabali has an indoor pool — it has everything!) and I spent some time watching the other ravers ambling around the central atrium. A group emerged from another ‘ceremony’ in one of the other rooms, smelling of orange peel. Robes were discarded, loungers were lounged on, a few words exchanged between strangers here and there with the kind of camaraderie you only really get on a dancefloor. We headed back upstairs for one last hurrah. This room, finally, was where we would hear some actual music. As we took up our position next to a dramatic floor-to-ceiling glass window that looked out onto the garden, a single note rang out on a piano. The reverberations of that single note hung in the air, along with all the sweat. Then another note rang out, imperceptibly lower in pitch than the first. A third, a fourth, and then the cycle began again. Marcel Dettmann this was not. Yet it had a certain lyricism to it, and I started to lose myself in the motif. Then suddenly: CRREAAAK!! The noise of someone leaving the room Then CREEAK! The noise of someone else coming in. It reminded me of all those times I’ve been trying to enjoy the music at a club and then my brain latches on to a vibrating pipe, or a rattling cage, or someone’s awful voice talking just behind me, or someone’s godforsaken ankle bells. CRREEEAKK! I couldn’t believe how this one detail had been overlooked by the designers, given how carefully every other aspect of the experience had been curated. It’s almost as if the focus of this place wasn’t the music after all, but the smells and the sweat and the white towelling.
We could tell the night was winding down, as the crowd slowly dissipated and the staff wiped down the many surfaces. After my epic Sunday evening and night, and almost four hours of intense perspiration in Vabali, I too needed a bit of a wipe-down. The feeling reminded me a bit of how when you have a really good, hot bath, you always need a shower afterwards. I needed to get out of there. But as we wended our way back out through the changing area, returning our robes and wristbands and paying a frankly eye-watering amount for everything we'd consumed, I had time to stop and realised: this surreal mix of Eyes Wide Shut, Rosemary's Baby and The Garden Of Earthly Delights is exactly how I want to end every weekend in Berlin.
See you there next time.