- Blank Generation, Berlin club ://about blank's semi-regular club night, has consistently been one of the capital's best parties. For June, the team decided to host two extended events, starting with a weekend-long session fronted by two of the UK's best selectors, Ben UFO and Pearson Sound. The weather forecast in the lead-up was stellar, making it one of Berlin's most eye-catching clubbing options of recent months.
I got to ://about blank at around 5 PM on Saturday, just at Resom, one of the club's increasingly impressive resident DJs, was throwing down dusty house and techno in the garden. Cuts like Hidden Sphere's "Waiting" and W&T Rwrk's "Donnie" invited enthusiastic responses from a sunny, swelling floor. Due to a flight delay, Ben UFO stepped up at around 7:30 PM, two hours later than planned. Although I was looking forward to hearing the UK DJ indulge his more abstract side, this turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Playing just as the sun was coming down and the party was taking off, he treated the crowd to nearly three hours of house, disco, UK garage and more. Daphni's "Pairs" and Kentphonik's "Hiya Kaya (Rocco Deep Mix)" were some of the stand-outs among a sea of tunes I didn't recognise. His UK garage workout for the final 30 minutes provided some of the evening's more memorable moments, among them Granite's recently-reissued "Even Deeper (Part 2)" and MD X-Spress' "God Made Me Phunky."
Later on, inside the lobby, Pearson Sound began his set with a mood befitting of the atmosphere, mixing slow, chugging house into techno with typical flair. Unfortunately, the room was essentially a large corridor between one of the main bars and the toilets, which meant that were was a frustratingly constant flow of bodies through the centre of the dance floor. Because of this, I was slightly jaded by the time Ben UFO joined for a back-to-back around 3 AM, but what I caught of the Hessle Audio pair's set sounded great.
Instead I opted for DJ Skirt, AKA Bethany DeMoss, who was sharply mixing punchy house and techno in the club's MDF space. Watching DeMoss play hard to a dark, strobe-filled room, you'd have been forgiven for thinking that you were at a different party from earlier. And that's the thing with Berlin club weekenders: the seemingly endless runtime means that there's always something fresh and invigorating around the corner. Skirt proved herself more than up to the task, dropping weighty cuts like Crackboy's "Weapon (Dub)" while the floor whooped and hollered. Outside, daylight was creeping into view.