- ‘FKK’ is yet another moniker of the Berlin promotion guys around Ostfunk, Incognito, Backstage, Feinstaub ... (to name just a few). What does ‘FKK’ stand for? It’s an East German neologism and represents the GDR subculture around nude swimming and nude beach/sport activities. By such mottos the people behind FKK want to cobble two things together, old-fashioned memories and music. Often they try to let their rave-like mass events appear on this old-school spirit background. Although, so far it had been words only, as the spirit of East Berlin and the first days of techno essentially bases on the crowd and their hunger for electronic music. Nowadays the crowd is kind of surfeited and (to tell the truth) in the European part of the world the high time of techno over.
The venue was the former No-Ufos club ‘PolarTV’ and its two floors, show room and club floor. The support was done by quite a bunch of local techno protagonists like BPitch Control’s Housemeister, Rok, Holgi Star from KiddazFM, LoDown, Haito and many others.
On the first floor from 12pm DJ Haito cooked the crowd very well. He delivered a mixture of warm punchy bass spiced with some slight pop elements and decent vocals. While Haito drove the club floor crowd to first cheers, on the main floor a support DJ had to replace Marc Spoon. Apparently the Frankfurter preferred to let his name shine by absence and not by DJing. Didn’t see him at all and I think it’s impossible to overlook Marc ;-)
At around 2am Holgi Star from KiddazFM took over the decks from Haito. Holgi threw in stuff from Royksopp and kept the sound character and energy on that warm and joyful level. At the same time on the main floor Lars Brede booted his laptop and unpacked the mouse – it’s live act time! His sound was ok, but was there a hidden message in his “performance”? Unspectacularly he stood behind his notebook, just left-clicking the mouse and watching the display. No further interaction with the crowd... The word live act means something different to some, for example the Berlin boys around Modeselektor, who had already showed how interactive and a kicking a live act can be; steamy and kicking the clubbers asses.
After Brede’s 30 min’s laptop intermezzo the Dutch techno pioneer Saskia Seegers, better known as Miss Djax, blew the roof off. From the first beat she nailed the dance floor with an excellent blend of chunky, rough but also funky Detroit techno sound. What has been on the wheels of steel? Some examples, her newest release and even debut album ‘Raw’.
At some minutes past 3:30am Berlin based techno pioneer Rok, a long time friend of Miss Djax, took over control. This big friendly bloke seamlessly continued Saskia’s DJ set as if they had planned to work hand in hand. While those two techno protagonists gave their best to exhaust the sound system with straight hammering beats, I missed people dancing and enjoying the energy. My ironing grandmother is more vibrant than that crowd... Fortunately many fellows of the first techno hours came along to see their DJ pioneers. Together we danced away the night.
On the first floor Blake Baxter waited in the wings. He tightened the pace of Haito’s and Holgi Star’s sound and spun more technoid house tunes. Though, the people on that floor knew how to enjoy wicked breaks, mad noises and the energy of lucid Detroit house.