Clubbing in Belgrade

It’s Friday night in Belgrade and the city - discordant, concrete and rain-soaked - isn’t looking its best. Entering Opservatorijum, however, is like stepping into a peaceful bubble. The tiny white-walled art gallery and bar is resonating with ambient electronic music from a DJ behind a laptop. Solo guests listen silently inside, seated in an almost trancelike state. It feels like an unlikely start to an evening touring the city’s clubs, but the space, which opened earlier this year, typifies the avant garde nature of the city’s underground scene.

I’m there to meet Tijana T (real name Tijana Todorovic), a DJ who’s been involved with Belgrade’s nightlife since 2000, when she made a name for herself as a music TV presenter and the face of Serbia’s biggest cultural export, EXIT festival. In those days, recovering from years of conflict and the trauma of Milosovic’s rule, Serbia was understandably lagging creatively behind the rest of Europe. “Everything got to Serbia three years late,” says Todorovic. “Even three years ago, if you mentioned something mainstream in London, it would be underground here. Now it’s happening at the same time.”

While Belgrade’s electronic music output is thriving - even Chicago’s seminal Teklife crew have a branch in the city, with Mystic Stylez putting on regular footwork nights - there’s also an appetite among young people to open venues, despite the obstacles. “To start a bar, cultural centre or club, you need to have great personal connections or bribe everyone,” says Tijana. It wasn’t until 2009 that Belgrade got its first independent culture centre, KC Grad. “But I think in the past few years people just flipped. These young people grew up in total anarchy and chaos, so they’re used to it.”

We head out of Opservatorijum (which hosts a highly recommended Sunday afternoon vinyl listening party) into the drizzle, moving from one of the city’s newest spots to one of its long-running ones, KGB Caffe. You’d think the basement-level wooden pub, which has been open since the 1990s and has walls covered with constructivist poster art, would be a warm-up drinking spot, but it was recently taken over by twin sisters who, I’m told, really like to party. “People dance on the bars,” says Tijana. “It can get so crazy, it’s actually scary - people go mad.” Even though it’s not a late opener, the pub gets DJs in to play every weekend: tonight the decks are loaded with disco and house punctuated with African brass. “I like it when places survive,” Tijana tells me as we leave, reminding me of the insecurity most venues live with. “This place has been here for 15 years and it hasn’t changed inside.”

Another long-running club worthy of a mention is The Tube, while across the road Tijana points out a new club, Sveta, run by a much-loved former barman at Belgrade’s legendary boat venue Klub 20/44 (we’ll come to that later) - before we walk down to another popular alt bar, Bivsi. More like a living room than a bar, the tiny place, with retro furniture and a huge poster of Heironymous Bosch’s Inferno on one wall, still manages to fit in a set of decks. A relaxed mid-week watering hole, the venue crams people in for parties on the weekend. “Normally, it’s so busy you can’t breathe because of the smoke,” says Tijana. (For now at least, Serbia keeps it old-school when it comes to cigarettes - so if you’re planning a night out, brace yourself for some second-hand smoke.)

Next up is a club which has either the best or the worst name ever, depending on your sense of humour. WATS, or We Are The Shit, opened around a year ago, boldly branded with a turquoise cartoon of, well, you can work it out. The venue, however, is classy. On the upper floor of an old shopping mall, it consists of one long room with coloured strip lighting. It’s around midnight and people are dancing to house in laid-back bar-groove style. What really makes the venue are the huge glass windows along one side looking out over the city (and Tijana’s old high school) - in summer it’s a place to watch the sun set as you warm up your night.

At 2am, it’s time to head to Klub 20/44, which everyone just refers to as “the boat”. Opened soon after KC Grad, marking the birth of Belgrade’s underground scene, the club is a former strip joint in a rickety ship on the Sava river. Inside there are still red velvet curtains and poles, as well as brilliantly surreal touches like a gold statue of John Cleese doing “that walk” on the top deck. “The thing that made it so important was that it was the first club that was completely independent,” says Tijana, as the DJ drops another timeless disco edit behind us. “They even had it as a policy: no sponsors, no patrons. They were the first really honest club owners. I just get goosebumps everytime I think about it. I just love to be there, to play there. It’s magic.”

We’re joined by one of its founders, Milivoje Bozovic, who is tall and lean with wild hair and the well-earned nickname “goofy”. “For a long time, we weren’t able to travel,” he explains. “We wanted to bring international DJs to the people here, to make people here feel like they’re also part of the world.” Even though they were rarely able to pay DJs competitive rates, the draw - or magic - of the boat was so strong that DJs actually started asking to play there. The music policy is diverse - everything from funk to grime to footwork. Tijana dreamily recounts a summer party there when she DJd till noon: “No one ever left. The waiters were begging people to stop …”

This time, however, the boat is not our final port of call. We hop in a taxi to one of the city’s biggest and most ambitious underground clubs, Drugstore. It reopened in its current space last spring, after a brief period of homelessness (things open up and close down again in Belgrade with alarming frequency), and now occupies a vast former slaughterhouse. “I think the whole chaotic system we live in somehow works in favour of nightlife,” says Tijana. “People can get incredible spaces so cheap, but everything is so corrupt, it’s hard to maintain anything.”

The entrance to the club is up a metal staircase - you definitely wouldn’t want to stumble out of this place - and the interior is dark; some sections are pitch black apart from the orange glow of cigarettes in the darkness. With the thumping kick drums echoing around the derelict interior, it’s an environment that would be terrifying if it wasn’t so exciting. It’s the kind of venue post-industrial dystopian rave dreams are made of. Inside the smaller room, the Banda Panda art and DJ collective are playing tunes behind the lazers. The main room, however, is a straight-up techno cathedral - a huge arched chamber with a stage at one end and, above the entrance, a Jesus-like sculpture of a man with arms spread.

The following evening our plans to hear Tijana play at another venue are abruptly cancelled when the police show up at the venue before the event. This isn’t unusual: Tijana tells me about another recent party that was raided and everyone checked, before the police apologised to the DJs for interrupting the night and left. And only the week after my visit armed police raided clubs across the city.

After some phone calls, we wind up back at Drugstore and Tijana gets to play a set anyway - dropping thumping techno to a steadily filling room. What Belgrade’s nightlife scene lacks in stability it makes up for in enviable tightness - everyone seems to look out for each other in a way that’s rarely necessary in your average clubbing city. “I tend to compare Belgrade with Berlin as I know both cities quite well,” Tijana tells me. “Berlin is so perfectly organised, and everything is so smooth that as a partygoer or a DJ you just have to relax and do your thing. In Belgrade it’s more like ‘you gotta fight for your right to party’.”

Will Coldwell

Clubbing in Barcelona

Friday night in Barcelona. It’s still warm, of course, and the city is getting ready to party. A pair of skateboarders, beers in hand, clatter down Carrer de Ferlandina to join the crowd of kids congregating outside MACBA – the city’s contemporary art museum/skate spot – and the streets are picking up that humid late-night energy that northern Europeans dream of.

Down the road at the Discos Paradiso record store, I’m waiting for Gerard López, the shop’s co-founder and a central figure in Barcelona’s close knit nightlife scene. The clean, white-walled store, lined with neat wooden shelves of records, has just celebrated its fifth birthday; during that time it has played a big role in supporting local DJs, producers and promoters.

Like everyone else in the city, the shop and its DJ collective, Discos Paradiso Crew, are already gearing up for the city’s annual electronic music takeover, Sónar, which takes place 18-20 June. The festival, which also sees countless spaces across the city converted into event venues for the unofficial Off Sónar fringe, may last just for one weekend, but the Catalonian capital is a beautiful place to party in all year round, and López is here to point me in the right direction.

During the five years Discos has been open – and since vibrant deep house producer John Talabot rose to global acclaim – Barcelona has become home to a growing number of major electronic artists, with Sinjin Hawke, Zora Jones and Alizzz among them. This, combined with Sónar (plus a tidal wave of tourists), means for some time there’s been a growing interest in Barcelona as a clubbing city.

“Compared with other cities – Berlin, Detroit – it doesn’t have a consistent sound,” says López. “But it’s a city that’s fast moving: people are looking around at what’s going on and seeing how we can do it here. Sónar has helped put Barcelona on the map, but during the year there are loads of independent things – people should come check them out.”

We head through the Raval neighbourhood – via beautiful, classic, gold-shimmering bar La Confitería – to a small venue and community space, Freedonia, where Discos is hosting one of its monthly nights. The low-key space has a vintage feel: brick walls, deep red colours and a small stage backed with neon strip lights. You have to sign in as a member on entry. As López explains, strict licensing means it’s hard to get permission for parties or to open new clubs in Barcelona – this remains an obstacle for the ambitious scene. Inside, the bar is friendly and bustling – a place for an easygoing night, or in our case, a warm-up.

That night we’re heading to one of Barcelona’s flagship clubs, Nitsa, housed inside the grand Sala Apolo. Run by Fra Soler – one of the team behind Barcelona’s other big festival, Primavera Sound – the club has been programming underground line-ups for 30 years. “Nitsa in the 1990s is where my generation discovered electronic music,” says López. Music that evening is courtesy of The Monkey Bar, another collective whose rise has run parallel to the opening of Discos.

As the club fills up, Detroit techno head Mike Huckaby takes to the decks. The large, glamorous venue is a traditional theatre-style space, with a huge stage and a balcony level circling overhead. It stays full till 6am (Barcelona always feels “up”), with the crowd dancing till the lights are turned on before spilling out into the street to find an after-party.

The next evening begins (gently) at 33/45. As the name suggests, the bar is run by another DJ collective in the city, Struments, making it a popular hangout for the music scene (I bump into some people I met at Nitsa, quietly recovering in a corner). The front bar features big windows opening on to the street, with low-slung bulbs, while the back room is full of comfy sofas with vintage radios for decoration. On Sunday afternoons it hosts vinyl markets and live music to accompany your vermouth; in the evening it’s a place to get a gin and tonic and whirr back into gear.

Barcelona’s biggest club is Razzmatazz, a five-room multiplex in the developing Poblenou district. Residents including Baldo and Toner hold the fort, which has a club for everyone – there’s a techno room, a pop room, an indie room... Of course, it’s also the place where you’ll find the biggest names – Buraka Som Sistema,Pendulum, Ben Klock. Another venue worthy of mention is BeCool, though rumour has it it’s due to close its doors later this year. So that evening I opt to swing by two of the city’s smaller spots, starting with Moog.

Just behind Las Ramblas, signposted by a rabble of people drinking and smoking in the narrow street outside, Moog is a long-time champion of dance music in the city. Consistency is key: the club has been open every single night for 21 years.

“People go crazy in there,” says López. “It doesn’t matter what’s playing – everyone there is familiar and you enjoy the music as a family.” Inside it’s a Polybius Trax label night, and acid house and techno are thumping through the room (really more like a dance pit) with the DJ in a cage-like booth. The crowd is friendly, dancing like mad in the thick smoke. I have a weird moment in an upstairs room, where Toxic by Britney Spears is playing at full pelt to a completely different group of partygoers.

If Moog felt small, the final stop for the night is even smaller. Its sound muffled by an airlock door, Macarena is a tiny yet distinguished one-room club, with space for around 120 people. They encircle the DJ booth, while disco balls of varying sizes bounce green dots around. Given the club’s diminutive size, it’s a bit like being in a laser disco snow globe. Tuneful, upbeat house music is coming through the Funktion One set-up; it’s the kind of club you feel lucky to be in.

The same can be said for Barcelona in general, but it’s a city of mixed blessings. The recession continues to be a challenge – as López says: “During these last years people don’t have work... it’s hard to spend money on clubs, beers, records ...” – but there’s a sense of optimism among the young generation of DJs and producers, who are enjoying a rise in collaboration.

Pau Roca, another star producer I bump into, who is tipped to follow in John Talabot’s footsteps, backs that sense of unity. “Five years ago if you played at one club you couldn’t play at another. Nitsa, Apolo, Razz … they had a lot of fights. But now is a really good moment. Sónar is booking new artists from the city and the nightclubs have become better too ... They’re believing more in the local scene.”

Will Coldwell

WATERGATE

Most clubs which have appeared in an article on this blog so far, were typical raw Berliner-clubs. The garten of the Sisyphos, the graffiti around the Kater Holzig and the caravan in the About Blank: All examples of the unique style which many clubs in Berlin possess. But today another kind of club will be in the spotlights: the Watergate might not be raw and underground, but is it most defenitely one of coolest clubs in Berlin.

Club Watergate in Berlin

Located exactly at the border between the two bezirks Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, the club Watergate is located in the Falckensteinstraße. The club was founded in 2002 by a guy called Steffen Hack and the Watergate has been one of the main players in the nightlife of Berlin for a while now. The Watergate is often mentioned in one breath with clubs like Berghain and Kater Holzig but in my opinion this club is quite different from many other clubs in Berlin. Many clubs in Berlin are characterized by graffiti, unique features and special area’s but Watergate has other things to offer. This club might not be as RAW as some of the other clubs, it has an awesome location, very stylish interior and a regular line-up which will impress you.

Located at the Spree

The popularity of the Watergate has a lot to do with the location of the club. The Watergate is located directly at the spree and because of a glass-wall you can see the Oberbaumbrucke and the Spree when you are dancing. When you decide to visit the Watergate, you should defenitely experience the sunrise early in the morning. Especially from the terrace, which is literally located ín the Spree, you have a great view over the water.

View from the terrace of the Watergate

Waterfloor and Mainfloor

Club Watergate is divided into two area’s: Upstairs you can find the Mainfloor and the groundfloor is called the Waterfloor. The mainfloor is worth a visit because it probably has the coolest light-installation in Berlin. Almost the whole roof of this floor is one big discolight. Besides that, the quality of the sound is a bit better than downstairs if you ask me. Downstairs in the Waterfloor you have the possibility to chillout at one of the many benches and in the end the view is even cooler than upstairs here. This floor also gives you direct access to the terrace in the Spree.

Personally I think it is a small disadvantage that both area’s in the Watergate are not that large. On a busy night it can be quite crowded and there might not be that much place to dance anymore.

Spectaculair Line-Up

In general you can state that the Watergate normally has one of the best line-ups for techno, electro and house-lovers. Many talented but also famous dj’s are playing regularly in this club. Last weekend Sasha Braemer, Niconé and Olivier Koletzki were present for example. In most countries a line-up like that would cost at least 30 Euro but in the Watergate the entrance is normally 15 Euro. Other famous dj’s who played in the Watergate are Fritz and Paul Kalkbrenner, Pan-Pot, Sven Väth and Alle Farben.

Club Watergate also has its own label. From time to time you can buy one of their cd’s.

Svan Väth @ the Mainfloor of Watergate

Prices and practical information

The Watergate is known as one of the more expensive clubs in Berlin. With its entrance of 15 euro and a beer for 4 Euro (0,33 Becks) it is defenitely not one a cheap club. But if you keep an eye on the impressive line-up, it might not be so expensive after all. Just make sure you visit the club when one of your favourite dj’s is playing and you will have the night of your life. You can find the line-up on the Facebook of the Watergate or sometimes also on their official website. To get in the right mood it might also be cool to have a look at the Soundcloud of the Watergate: You can find many great songs and livesets from the club and its label.

The entrance of the Watergate on a busy night

Facts of the Watergate

All in all it is defenitely worth your time and money to visit the Watergate. The club might not have the specific Berlin-style like some other clubs, but it has a great location and if you love Techno and Electro you will enjoy this club for sure.

For the readers who do not have much time: Here are some of the important facts of the Watergate.

Address: Falckensteinstraße 49

Public Transport: Station Warschauer Straße

Entrance: 15 euro

Beer: 4 euro (Becks)

                                                                    Website: www.water-gate.de

From Ufo to Berghain, Berlin’s Rise To Clubbing Capital

If Berlin is the techno capital of the world, Berghain is most definitely its White House. The club has a reputation for its hedonistic spirit and dedication to supporting a vibrant club culture, though several predecessors have helped set the stage for the city’s techno renaissance. From Ufo to Berghain, this is the story of Berlin’s rise as the clubbing capital of the 21st century – a good primer for DJs everywhere.

Early Berlin Clubs: From Ufo to Tresor

Techno’s rise in Berlin is fitting, having just passed the 25th anniversary of the Wall’s fall. Detroit’s auditory vision of the future was the perfect soundtrack for a city undergoing reunification, uniting people across not only East and West Berlin, but also racial, gender and political lines. Achim Kohlenberger and Dimitri Hegemann founded Ufo in 1988, home to Interfisch and the city’s first acid house club, located in a dingy West Berlin basement. The club’s illegal operation was eventually shut down, reopening in secret locations until financial difficulties closed Ufo for good in 1990.

A crowded West Berlin led Achim and Dimitri to Mitte on the city’s east side. In the months before reunification, free-spirited Berliners took advantage of questionable claims over ownership, squatting in abandoned buildings and creating a community for artists and activists. After scouring East Berlin, the Interfisch crew stumbled upon the abandoned vaults of a department store. Surrounded by concrete and steel, they explored the space in silence, guided only by their lighters through the rubble. Despite being damp, derelict and having no electricity, Achim and Dimitri knew this was the place and began renovations on their new club, simply named Tresor; meaning “vault” in German.

Located close to the Berlin Wall’s former “Death Strip”, Tresor had truly turned the tables on history by attracting a diver mix of people, uniting the gay community and football hooligans alike. The club opened without water, but the acoustics were perfect for a hard-edged sound. It stood in stark contrast to Ufo, which looked more like a disco and played house. Tresor on the other hand was a brutal looking place, with a dark, cavernous atmosphere and booming sound system built for techno. While it took a bit of time for people to warm up to the Globus bar upstairs, walking to the downstairs soon made it clear that this club was a no frills place, dedicated purely to the music.

After The Wall Fell

Rising from the ruins of the Berlin Wall came a community-based techno economy, where a focus on self-sufficiency and participation. Prior to the fall, Berlin was primarily a rock city with a strong avant-garde influence. Europe’s rising Free Tekno movement was the perfect breeding ground for rave minded squatters in early 90s Berlin. Looking for bunkers, power stations and hangars, these early ravers were dancing in the remnants of what could have been a lost civilization.

One of the best-known examples is Elmer, located in Mitte and originally squatted by the East Berlin punk scene. Also known as “The Bucket”, this underground club became a hub of experimental art and electronic music, and was even host to members of Spiral Tribe, London’s free party sound system.

Tresor would close down in 1990, though it did reopen in a new location in 2007. As the decade progressed, clubs like WMF, Planet and E-Work carried a techno scene that was undergoing a cooling down period. The shifting landscape of legal and illegal venues splintered the scene before the 1998 opening of Berghain’s predecessor, Ostgut. The former railway warehouse had an impressively stark look to it and continued the spirit of Tresor with a main floor dedicated purely towards hard techno. The later Panoramabar would have a more accessible sound, featuring anything 4×4 but with a penchant for disco and 80s house.

The reclusive Michael Teufele and Norbert Thormann eschewed sponsors and profit-seeking business practices and instead focused on playing to their sound and community. While it doesn’t exactly look welcoming, Ostgut had an inclusive spirit where no one was to ever feel out-of-place no matter your age, dress or money. The dancefloor would largely be a sea of leather and skin, developing a reputation for hedonism for all. Sadly this came to an end on January 6, 2003 after a 30-hour farewell party before the railway warehouse-turned-club was demolished.

The Rise Of Berghain

Berghain would open the next year, becoming the de facto capital of techno in not only Berlin, but the world. Its name by now has reached mythical proportions, regularly referred to as the “church” where what can only be described as religious experiences happen. Once a year, the club even holds Holy Saturday, where the venue is reserved for the city’s gay community for a night of decadence in the spirit of Ostgut.

Achieving worldwide fame has had some effect on the club though. Berghain and Panoramabar follow the musical standards set by their predecessors, but the crowd is slightly tamer than in its heyday. Much of the gay community parties downstairs in Lab.oratory, which has developed its own name for debauchery, but while Berghain might have slipped in eccentricity, it makes up in diversity. Age, appearance, sexual orientation, choice of intoxication, it doesn’t matter, you’ll find everyone from tourist couples to ravers to leather daddies.

This is in some part thanks to the club’s fearsome looking doorman, Sven Marquardt, as well as his inexplicable door policy. Many people have been booted from the club, with VIPs and celebrities like Felix da Housecat and Richie Hawtin treated no differently. The policy is still up for debate, but there is no question that Berghain has been able to avoid commercialization with its fame.

Techno’s story in Berlin is a true testament to the power of dance music. Its sound has become a global force while resisting commercialization, and has been able to unite people across racial, sexual and cultural lines. While Techno’s sound has changed since Detroit and its importation to Berlin, some things haven’t changed. Faced with economic austerity and talks of building new walls, the youth of the world are still dancing, much like they were 25 years ago.

 AKHIL KALEPU

Cavo Paradiso

Nothing beats a Greek holiday. Unless it's a Greek holiday with a world-class clubbing experience attached (obviously). Situated on a cliff overlooking the deep blue Aegean Sea, the palatial confines of this giant Grecian villa could just as easily belong to one of many millionaire tycoons, who sail to Mykonos on a super yacht each summer, as it does to this family who see clubbing as a more noble pursuit. And thank the rave lords they do! Fitted with a colossal custom-built JBL Dance 5/5 soundsystem and enough CO2 cannons to bring down a fighter jet, these plush white-wash walls, complete with an open-air swimming pool, have witnessed sights and sounds you wouldn't usually associate with this holiday destination. Ricardo Villalobos, Sven Väth and Marco Carola have all rocked this place until sunrise, while Skrillex, Nicky Romero and Diplo have all created a riot here too.

Clubs that changed the dance music world (part 2)

PACHA, IBIZA (1973 – TODAY)

In 1973, Spanish brothers Ricardo and Piti Urgell opened their second Pacha club on a quiet Balearic island, and helped to kickstart the evolution of Ibiza from a sleepy, hippy isle into the revered dance music destination it is today.

42 years later, Pacha Ibiza is still going strong as one of the world’s biggest clubbing brands. The original Ibiza venue – which pioneered the idea of clubs having sprawling, outdoor spaces as well as dark rooms – has grown from an old rural farmhouse into a labyrinthine, Frankenstein mega-club, and the Pacha Group can now lay claim to franchise clubs in 14 countries.

It’s truly a pioneering monolith, and part of Pacha’s lasting-power has to do with its willingness to embrace changing music trends and fun themes; “a great party is one where everybody participates," founder and original resident DJ Piti Urgell says. Like at the first ‘White Party’ that Urgell ever threw, in which every participant had to wear white. “Everybody made a really big effort [and] when we put the UV lights on, the clothes glowed…so everyone took them off and danced in the nude.” Sounds like Ibiza to us. [Photo by Erek Ridgers]

SHOOM, LONDON (1987 – 1991)

A lot of people daydream about still being on holiday at the end of their vacation, but not many use it as the fuel to launch a nightclub; least of all a club that would go on to make history, by spearheading early acid house and rave in the UK, and kickstarting the beginnings of the PLUR movement.

Danny Rampling had been trying to break into DJing for several years without much success, but after a heady week-long party on the White Isle for Paul Oakenfold’s birthday in 1987, where he found himself discovering both DJ Alfredo’s Balearic mixing style and a certain illicit substance known to inspire dancing, Rampling had an epiphany.

Returning to London, he worked with his then-wife Jenni to try and re-capture the Balearic dance paradise by the ocean back in a gloomy city gym, and thus Shoom was bor, transporting Ibiza’s anything goes, everyone’s welcome attitude to South East London.

Shoom arrived at just the right time: in the middle of a recession, when young people were grasping for escape. It became a space where class, race and sexuality meant nothing, not to mention the place where you could hear game-changing new tunes from all over the world.

In a much more literal sense, Shoom changed the face of dance music in another way, by giving us the bright-eyed yellow smiley face logo we’ve come to associate with acid house and rave. The first flyer for Shoom featured the iconic imagery (as designed by George Georgiou), and it’s been the two-dimensional face of rave ever since.

CREAM, LIVERPOOL (1992 – 2002)

While Ministry of Sound went down the commercial record label route, Liverpool superclub brand Cream was one of the first to turn their club experience into an outdoor music festival.

The early ‘90s rave scene in the UK was defined by illegal outdoor raves, which would usually kick off after the clubs closed at 2am; so it was a logical progression for Cream to take their weekly knees-up at Liverpool venue Nation from indoor to outdoor.

Over its ten years existence as a weekly club night, Cream cemented its place firmly within the dance music pantheon, hosting the era’s superstars from Paul Oakenfold, Sasha and Carl Cox to The Chemical Brothers; but the marquee-name parties weren’t enough. Cream began stretching out internationally, with parties in Ibiza (from 1995) and across the rest of Europe, and in 1998 launched the first Creamfields festival, the biggest dance festival in the world (at the time), travelling across Europe and South America (and even reaching Australia for three festivals between 2010 and 2012).

While mega-festival brands like Ultra, Tomorrowland, EDC and their ilk are defining the scene in 2015, back in 1998 Cream changed the game by taking dance music culture from out of the clubs and surreptitiously set-up outdoor raves, and into the music festival major leagues. [Photo of Cream Ibiza via The Guardian]

LIMELIGHT, NEW YORK (1983 – 2007)

New York’s Limelight took over a deconsecrated church in 1983, and eventually became a pioneering place to hear darker shades of techno, goth and industrial. But the club’s enduring legacy has less to do with its music policy, and more to do with the home it gave to an outrageous, eccentric, heavily-medicated crew of queer hipsters.

These strangely dressed polysexuals called themselves the Club Kids, and their leader was Michael Alig, who only recently got out of prison in 2014 after serving 17 years for accidentally murdering his heroin dealer, then slicing up his body and throwing it into the Hudson River.

Gruesome deaths aside, at their peak the Club Kids were the biggest thing going, throwing debauched parties fuelled by disco, house and vast quantities of illicit substances. One of the most prominent Club Kids, James St James, described their hedonism (in his memoir ‘Disco Bloodbath’) as fuelled by “fear and hysteria”.

“There was a prevailing sense that you and your friends might not be around this time next week – so enjoy the now! Don’t think about tomorrow,” he says. “So we partied too hard, drank too much, laughed too loud. We danced on the lip of the volcano, so to speak.”

Everybody wanted a piece of the Club Kids’ action, from New York’s fashion crowd to Joan Rivers and the talk show circuit. But the party couldn’t last: Alig went to prison (but only after he bragged publically about having committed murder and gotten away with it). The resulting bad publicity forced the club to shut and its owner Peter Gatien (dubbed the “King of New York Clubs” and the owner of other storied ‘90s venues like Tunnel, Palladium and Club USA) attracted the attention of the authorities and was later arrested and deported back to Canada after being busted for tax evasion.

But almost 20 years later, people are still obsessed by those crazy Club Kids and their excesses; their influence on fashion in popular dance music can still be seen in the experimental style of every chart-topping pop star, from Madonna and Lady Gaga (the meat dress, anyone?) to Nicki Minaj.

STUDIO 54, NEW YORK

In 1977, Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager took over New York’s Galla Opera House and created arguably the most famous nightclub to have ever existed, setting the template for every glitzy club to follow.

The pair transformed the former theatre’s interior into a celebrity playpen with epic props, a laissez-faire attitude to debauched behaviour, and a clientele handpicked by owner Steve Rubell at the front door. The notoriously selective door policy, Rubell said, was partly to keep out the “undesirables”, but mostly “like mixing a salad, or casting a play… If it gets too straight, then there’s not enough energy in the room. If it gets too gay, then there’s no glamour. We want it to be bisexual. Very, very, very bisexual.”

As the legend goes, the cocaine use was flagrant and free flowing: a benevolent Man in the Moon sculpture hung over the dancefloor and would light up when its coke spoon came to rest under its nose. Bartenders and busboys served drinks – and carried out ‘other tasks’ – in just their underwear, while the theatre’s upper levels also – allegedly, and infamously – hosted orgies.

Legendary disco DJ Nicky Siano set the party mood, while Grace Jones, Donna Summer, James Brown, Stevie Wonder and more all played live at the club, which Rubell turned into a safe haven for celebrities where they could dance and party without being hassled (you’ll still find photos of Woody Allen hanging with Michael Jackson, or Dolly Parton petting a white stallion in the club).

Eventually, Steve Rubell put his foot in it by bragging in an interview that only the Mafia had made more money than Studio 54; the FBI (unsurprisingly) raided the building and found cocaine and bin bags full of cash hidden in the walls. Rubell went to prison for tax evasion, and while Studio 54 has been reanimated many times in the years since, it’s never quite recaptured that era defining decadence of its early years.

ANNA HORAN

Clubs that changed the dance music world (part 1)

THE WAREHOUSE, CHICAGO (1977 – 1982)

(1977 – 1982)

Chicago club The Warehouse only ran for five years, but it earned a permanent place in history as the venue that gave its name to house music. The parties were (reportedly) wild, with acid in the punch and an up-for-anything, gay-straight-whatever mixed crowd, but it was the club’s resident DJ Frankie Knuckles who earned the title “Godfather of House” (when he sadly passed away last year, Chicago renamed the street where The Warehouse used to stand as Frankie Knuckles Way).

Inspired by the parties he’d gone to back in New York (like David Mancuso’s storied private Loft parties), Knuckle’s started using his residency at The Warehouse to play weird European electronic music and New Wave cuts in among the disco, soul and R&B records favoured by most DJs at the time. He’d also play new edits of older disco songs – looping remixes cut together by a sound engineer friend; a few years later, Knuckles released Your Love, widely recognised as “year zero in the evolution of house music" because it was the first house-style record that wasn’t an edit of an old disco tune.

Soon enough, record store customers in Chicago started asking for the music they heard at the Warehouse. According to Chicago producer Chip E, the store started labelling records with “as played at the Warehouse" and “as heard at the Warehouse". “Eventually we just shortened that down," he says in the documentary Pump Up The Volume: The History of House Music. “Because people even just in the vernacular started saying, ‘What’s up with that house music?’… So we put on the labels ‘house music’”.

PARADISE GARAGE, NEW YORK (1978 – 1987)

Opening in 1977, New York’s Paradise Garage was originally envisioned as a destination for Studio 54’s runoff; but in the annals of history, the Garage has far exceeded its glitzier neighbour. The club was named for its parking garage location and served no booze (to dodge liquor laws), and it’s weekly sessions became known as “Saturday Mass” for New York’s party faithful: resident DJ Larry Levan’s sets were the sermon where all were welcome.

The music was non-denominational, as Levan dropped punk, disco and the nascent house music coming from Chicago…the only requirement was that it had to be danceable. Levans’ ear for the dancefloor was so finely tuned that people started labelling the music they heard the club as ‘garage music’, in the same way that Frankie Knuckles’ sets at Chicago’s Warehouse birthed and named house music.

Levan was obsessive about cultivating the club’s atmosphere, from the records to the set-up; cleaning mirror balls mid-set or moving speakers and lights around so visitors to the Garage would feel like they were in a fresh venue every week.

MINISTRY OF SOUND, LONDON (1991 – TODAY)

When Paradise Garage closed in 1987 many people were at a loss as to where to get their weekly dance fix. Englishman Justin Berkmann was among the bereft Paradise Garage regulars – but the club’s closure spurred him on to start London’s Ministry of Sound, inspired by the vibe at Paradise Garage, and along the way conceive the “superclub” concept that would rule the ‘90s.

Berkmann invited Paradise Garage’s resident Larry Levan over to the UK to help program the soundsystem at his new venue: and old bus garage where the sound system would be the number one priority, followed by lighting and then design. (To make sure they could secure their 24-hour music and dance license, the club originally served no alcohol.)

Levan was famous for fiddling with his sound systems to get the sound just right, and his fly-by visit to consult at Ministry of Sound ended up lasting three months. “Up until that point the sound system had been in black and white,” Berkmann told The Independent, “and when he touched it, it turned to colour."

Since its inauspicious opening, Ministry of Sound has expanded into one of the biggest clubbing empires in the world, launching several record label subsidiaries, a radio station, and hosting more than 1500 events around the world each year. Meanwhile, the original club has survived numerous closure threats to keep drawing in marquee acts and hordes of punters each week, keeping alive the superclub vibe it created.

OSTGUT, BERLIN (1998 – 2003)

Berlin’s legendary techno temple Berghain grew out of the hedonistic gay fetish party Snax, which still takes over Berghain once a year in honour of its beginnings. Snax came up in the vibrant, DIY culture of post-Wall Berlin, when promoters, artists and musicians realised there were hundreds of abandoned government buildings in East Berlin just begging for a pop-up party.

The Snax parties moved around various locations before setting up shop in a former railway warehouse called the Ostgut in 1998, becoming the first permanent home for Berlin’s nascent techno movement. As the new fixed home for Berlin techno, Ostgut became “an underground sensation,” Ostgut affiliate Thilo Schneider told inthemix. “It really became like a home to a lot of people of that time…you really felt it was the beginning of something special.”

Sadly, Ostgut had to close its doors in 2003 to make way for the corporate sponsored O2 Arena, but a year later Berghain threw open its doors in a disused power plant and techno history was made; its name lives on as the club’s official record label, Ostgut Ton. [Photo by Tilman Brembs]

HACIENDA, MANCHESTER (1982 – 1997)

Factory Records founder Tony Wilson and post-punk pioneers New Order opened a club in 1982 as a home for the kind of music they wanted to bring to Manchester, but it struggled for half a decade (propped afloat by the profits from New Order record sales) until resident DJs like Mike Pickering started playing the pioneering sounds coming out of Chicago studios: house music and its mutant 303-driven sister, acid house.

The Hacienda’s house music nights – and the thriving free rave scene kicking off all around the UK – coalesced with local indie bands influenced by dance culture (The Happy Monday, Stone Roses) to turn the club into the epicentre of Madchester: an MDMA-fuelled, Smiley Face-sloganed, baggy-jumper-wearing moment in dance history that still reverberates today. The Hacienda may have been knocked down in 1997 to make way for luxury flats, but its memory lives on (as do bits of its dancefloor, stage and bathrooms, bought at auction by fans of the club and captured in this year’s documentary ‘Do You Own the Documentary’). [Photo via The Guardian]

 ANNA HORAN

The weirdest things you can do after dark in Berlin

If you searched every corner of the globe it’s doubtful you’d find a place with a greater glut of weird and wonderful things to do after the sun goes down than Berlin. The exploration of nightlife is woven into the city’s very fabric, for a number of reasons.

First, Berlin enjoys some of the most relaxed and liberal licensing laws you’ll find anywhere in the world, the kind that lend themselves to venues being able to open late, and staying open as long as they damn well please (clubs that are open from Friday night ‘til Monday morning are so common here, it’s a cliché). Berlin is an indiscriminate 24-hour city that truly never, ever sleeps.

Also, the accommodating attitude the state holds towards the city’s nightlife encourages a certain entrepreneurial ethos. Move into a neighbourhood that initially seems deathly quiet, and in no time quirky little bars and other assorted strange establishments start popping up all over the place. This is largely due to the fact there’s less red tape, and less financial risk involved due to the regulation side of things being so much cheaper. All those labyrinthine clubs in old warehouses, powerstations and swimming pools? Australians are always shocked at how long the state will turn a blind eye to their existence before forcing them to go legit.

On the topic of the city’s weird and wonderful clubs, there’s also an inspiring culture in Berlin of re-appropriating old spaces. It’s a tradition that stretches right back to the early ‘90s, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when ravers were kicking around the city’s east and discovering that all those old GDR-owned buildings now pretty much belonged to nobody at all. So of course they turned old power stations into clubs, and did the same with a bank vault they found in the basement of a pre-WWII-era department store.

Most importantly, the culture of the city begets the strange and the fantastic. Berlin has long drawn the kind of people who both think and do things differently, and it’s one of the most culture-heavy and creative spots in the whole of Europe – or indeed the world. The city is brimming with creative types who don’t care a whole lot about making money, and who tend to have open minds to the kind of charming strangeness that pops up everywhere.

So what are some of the finest places in Berlin to explore once the sun goes down? It’s hard to even know where to start, but here are a few to choose from…

Basement vaults, abandoned powerstations and other clubs

Considering the city’s status as one of the world’s best places to enjoy electronic music, clubs are the most obvious category to explore in terms of weird things to do after dark – particularly since the ‘superclub’ notion doesn’t really exist in Berlin, and they’re pretty much all weird. Berghain, with its abandoned powerstation setting, is the most famous of them all, though it would be a crying shame to overlook everything else on offer.

Tresor is another of the most well know clubbing spots in Berlin, with its mainroom set in a basement vault that can only be reached by traversing a 30m long tunnel. Every August, though, during the Berlin Atonal festival, we’re reminded Tresor is only just the far corner of what’s actually a sprawling powerstation that once upon a time powered the whole of the city’s east. The festival organisers put the site to amazing use, with all sorts of eerie art installations that complement that spectacular audio-visual live shows of its experimental line-up.

Parties in erotic labyrinths and converted swimming pools

Berlin riverside institution Watergate actually represents one of the few conventional clubs you’ll find in the city. One of the city’s other institutions, Stattbad, often hosted the Boiler Room live streams in the venue’s actual basement boiler room, as well as holding weekly parties in its emptied-out swimming pool.

It was also a wider cultural hub that was home to hundreds of artists who regularly held exhibitions in the old pools, the upstairs changing rooms and beyond. The fact Stattbad was actually licensed solely as an art gallery space was what led to its recent closure – pray to the gods of weirdness that it reopens soon.

Otherwise, Zur wilden Renate sees you partying in the living rooms of an old residential building (which also includes an indoor erotic-themed labyrinth, though sadly closed for the time being). Grießmule is one of Berlin’s many elaborate open-air playgrounds (the city is brimming with playgrounds for big kids), its name referring to the indoor party space they’ve built inside an old semolina mill. [ipsə] boasts an outdoor area that just plonks itself on a brick path alongside a canal – beautiful in its simplicity and often projecting visuals on the huge industrial brick building across the water.

Cargo containers, swimming pools and more places for a drink

There are more quirky, cool hipster bars than you could hope to visit in a lifetime in Berlin, though instead of being a city full of funky themed bars with elaborate, expensive interiors, it’s best to think of it more as a city where the owners have been allowed to express their creativity in ways that aren’t necessarily that coherent or focused (and yes, consider this a good thing). The city’s forgiving licensing and regulation laws again come into play here.

Platoon Kunsthalle is a series of cargo containers that have been plunked down on the streets of Schönhauser Allee, a place for beers as well as regular art exhibitions and installations. Prater Garten would be one of your typical German beer gardens, except for the fact that high diving boards give it away as a converted outdoor swimming pool. And the Klunkerkranich bar offers the best views of the city you’ll find anywhere, with an arty wooden exterior that will make you forget you had to climb to the top of a shopping centre carpark to get there.

Astro Bar offers more of your old fashioned themed-quirkiness, modeled as a 1960s vision of the future with outer-space wallpaper, vintage electronics scattered about, and a host of tiny robots threatening to disintegrate you with their laser beams.

Meanwhile, Barbie Deinhoff’s is run by local drag queen favourite Lena Braun, and boasts a suitably debauched (and pink) atmosphere that offers a good example of the wider queer culture you’ll find in Berlin. Here the gays, lesbians, straights and pretty much everyone else mixes freely, and no one bats an eye at any of the strange goings on.

Derelict amusement parks, mini-golf and avant-garde art

You could never do justice to all the strange goings-on in Berlin in one hit – on the whole, the city is plain weird. In particular, Berliners have an endless fascination with the old, the decrepit and the deserted, and as such there are constantly urban adventurers trying to break into the infamous deserted Plänterwald Spreepark (even though there are guided tours offered at certain times).

Check out Schwarzlicht if you fancy a game of mini golf in the dark, or the Revaler Straße strip, which contains an impressive assortment of old industrial warehouses converted into all manner of places to enjoy food, drinks, music and weird avant-garde art, including Urban Spree, Cassiopeia and Haubentaucher (another spot that fuses a ghetto-post-industrial aesthetic with a swimming pool).

Meanwhile, it probably doesn’t get any weirder than the Das Klo, a toilet-themed restaurant that is alarmingly popular with some of the city’s older West Berliners. Instead of napkins you have toilet paper, instead of glasses and plates you have chamber pots, and when you dine you sit on actual toilets. Sometimes things get just a little too weird in Germany.

 ANGUS PATERSON