- You sometimes hear expats divide Berlin in two: there's "inside the ring," and there's the rest. The Ringbahn, a 37km girdle of train track, encloses the city's centre and connects some of the club scene's more remote spots. There's the late Stattbad in the northwest, ://about blank and Salon Zur Wilden Renate in the east. Griessmühle, hidden down a sketchy alleyway on the wrong side of the tracks in Neukölln, shares with these clubs a relaxed frontier spirit. Its outdoor space is a grubby adult's playground in the summer, but its former factory interior elevates it above the city's pokey after-hours spots. The amply subwoofered main hall, with high ceilings and an elevated gantry for those too tired to dance, is a gem. Mothers Finest's latest lineup, which showcased some of the UK's best, revealed Griessmuehle to be one of Beriln's best spots for this kind of music.
Though it wasn't exactly clear what "this kind of music" would be. Untold, who took the early slot, has been all over the place lately, from his hard-techno phase to his UK bass victory-lap live show and the guttural noise of his debut album. Fittingly for an artist so committed to novelty, he focussed tonight on the latest British mutation, which distills two decades of ideas—dubstep's sub pressure, garage's swing, jungle and UK funky syncopations—into thunderous technoid forms, applicable to big rooms but no less weird for it.
As champions of the style, the Livity Sound crew were best represented. Weaker moments involved the bass anthems of yore—Joe's "Studio Power On" and "Slope," Pangaea's twisted "Hex"—whose strange brilliance didn't quite register with the crowd. British DJs can't always hack the lengthy Berlin sets, but as we ticked into hour three Untold found new focus, plunging into a dark, intense techno sound that suited the filling room perfectly. During one squalling breakdown, a guy abruptly threw up his arms—whether in euphoria or terror, it wasn't clear.
Shackleton is a safer bet. His live set hasn't changed much in years, and you had to work hard to be surprised by tonight's offering. Perhaps there were a few more voices in amongst the twirling organs and ethno sample packs, but the rhythms remained oblique and swaying, the arrangements laser-precise. All he's really doing up there is recombining loops in timeworn Ableton style, but in Shackleton's hands it was an artform: the moment-to-moment detail was overwhelming, and the sense of tension and release perfectly judged. And, of course, there was the bass. From the gantry you could watch a beer bottle, left on one of the room's giant subwoofers, vibrate slowly onto the floor.