- Unless you're ready to recite the lineup to the bouncers at ://about blank, it can be difficult to get into the club—even if it's 10 PM on a weeknight. During the last installment of Away, which runs every first Wednesday of the month, the doormen greeted a lone woman who approached the door with an inquisition as to whether she could name any of the DJs playing that night. "I don't know specifically, but my friends called me and said I should come because they knew I would like it," she explained. The kevlar-clad bouncers conferred in German for a bit, waited in silence for another moment, and then, somewhat begrudgingly, stepped aside to let her in.
The gatekeepers' stringency might have been a reaction to the many party tourists visiting Berlin in August. There were plenty of out-of-towners in ://about blank that night, which was by no means a bad thing: the club felt unusually packed and energetic, especially for a Wednesday. Part of the excitement can be attributed to the headlining DJ, Move D, but a good portion of the clientele seemed particularly stoked to get loose on a weeknight, maybe because they weren't in town for very long and wanted to make the most of it. And that they did: every breakdown was a cause for celebration, and every theatrical transition was greeted with a round of whoops or someone spraying the other dancers with a water bottle.
Move D was doing his part to ham it up behind the decks. His transitions involved a lot of mixing stunts, and he'd occasionally hold up a record and bow down to it in front of the audience, or pretend to fan the dancers with it. His track selection ranged from pumping house with huge hi-hat rhythms to tightly-wound techno cuts and the occasional UK garage jam—which, to be fair, is to be expected in a Move D set. Nevertheless, this particular crowd found it extraordinary, which made the experience that much more fun.