August 23, 2024 (Berlin, Germany)

It's about 18:00 and I'm wondering if I should eat something now or wait because Atonal usually has food vendors set up in the garden area outside. I decide to just grab something on the way there as I don't quite know exactly what to expect this year. That's because this is technically NOT Berlin Atonal 2024. It's OPENLESS by Berlin Atonal. The organizers and PR team were very particular in their communications about this distinction and I was instructed not to refer the festival by its traditional name. Instead, OPENLESS is a one off concept that is only three days (instead of the traditional five days or more) and each night features all new commissioned works that unfold around a specific thematic core. Basically, this was going to be a scaled down version of what we're used to but perhaps you could say it's more curated.

Let's back up though. For those who may not know, Berlin Atonal is one of the city's most iconic events. The first Atonal took place in 1982 at Kreuzberg's SO36 and featured pioneering acts of the time such as Malaria!, Einstürzende Neubauten, Test Dept, Laibach, Psychic TV, 808 State, Die Haut and many others. From 1982-1990, it was at the forefront of electronic music and hosted pretty much every legend of the industrial, experimental and electronic scenes. In 1990, founder Dimitri Hegemann turned his focus to a new little techno club called Tresor and Atonal ceased to operate. Fast forward to 2013 and the festival is resurrected. Not only that, its new home venue is a disused former power plant called Kraftwerk, which has its own fascinating backstory.

Built between 1961-1964, Kraftwerk was built exactly around the time of the Berlin Wall. The city (and country) was now split into two and the GDR government needed its own way to provide heat and energy to the residents of the east. So they constructed a massive new "congregation power plant" on Köpenicker Strasse. A combined heat and power plant is a special source of power because it generates heat and electricity at the same time in a combined process. This process is particularly suitable for a densely populated city like Berlin, as it works efficiently and conserves resources. The huge turbines of the Berlin power plant initially ran on heavy fuel oil, and from 1982 also on natural gas, supplying flats in Alexanderplatz as well as the Charité hospital and the GDR State Council building.

After reunification in 1991, the plant really had no use. By that time its technology was obsolete and Vattenfall built a new, more advanced power plant right next door. It officially closed in 1997 and sat derelict for years until in 2007, Dimitri Hegemann comes back with another great idea to utilize the structure. He moves Tresor into the basement and then has the entire building extended and remodelled. After a few years of work, it then becomes an 8,000 sq m. exhibition and event space that can hold up to 2,600 people. Finally, since 2013 the direction and curation has been taken over by Laurens von Oswald with Harry Glass.

For me, Kraftwerk is one of the most special parts of the Atonal experience. My first Atonal was in 2016 (you can read the review here) and I cannot overstate how awestruck I was first walking into the structure. In terms of event spaces, I have still never seen anything quite like this and its towering pillars and massive, cavernous main hall still never gets old. While they do host a diverse array of events and exhibitions there, it's still not very common to have the entire building activated like they do during Atonal (meaning main hall, ground floor, Tresor, Globus and OHM).

The Less Deceived

So it's around 19:30 now and I begin to approach the main entrance. The line to get in is massive and I hope the guest/press list line isn't that bad. Luckily it's not and I get my wristband and move on into the garden. It turns out they do have food vendors this year, but there's only two in addition to a coffee stand and bar in the garden. The first performance is supposed to start at 20:00 but I'm told things are pushed back a bit so I get an Americano, have a cigarette and delay going inside for now.

Finally I decide to enter and it's a great feeling taking that first step inside. There's a particular cold, industrial air that hits you walking in and the ground floor hosts a bar, merch booth and a small lounge area. There's still a huge amount of space that is roped off and that's too bad as it's always been nice to explore and roam where ever you want. To get to the main hall, you need to walk up a concrete staircase and as I ascend up the steps I can start to hear the first piece of the night. Białowieża is a new work by the legendary field recordist Chris Watson, who is working with Izabela Dluzyk, a blind Polish sound recordist celebrated for her profound connection to nature's acoustics. Named after the Polish forest where a significant number of migrants from the Middle East, Africa and South Asia have perished trying to cross through into the EU, the piece is a soothing work of nature's sound while green, leafy visuals are displayed across the space. It's a nice prelude and a good way to ease people in.

Night one is titled The Less Deceived. The evening plays out theatrically in the spaces between music and sound design, research and journalism, art and site-specific performance. I was particularly intrigued by this one as I of course love a focus on journalism with geopolitical undertones.

After Białowieża, we arę treated to “A Forbidden Distance” a new work that is jointly produced by Iranian-Canadian brothers Mohammad and Mehdi (Saint Abdullah), Irish sound-designer and musician Ian McDonnell (Eomac), and London-based Italo-Australian video artist and filmmaker Rebecca Salvadori. An exploration of the sense of self in relation to processes of displacement, there are multiple edited home videos projected on the large screen beside the stage which shows people talking about missing loved ones. Mostly focused on displaced persons in the Arab world, it’s very emotional and supposed to be heartbreaking at times.

Next up is the probably one of the most anticipated pieces for me. “The Drum and the Bird” is a new multi-sensory performance by Forensis in collaboration with Bill Kouligas' PAN. It’s an immersive auditory experience which examines the relationship between lost ecologies and colonial exploitation. Rooted in Forensic Architecture/Forensis' ongoing investigation of German colonialism in Namibia, the work weaves together generative environmental audio, oral testimonies, and spatio-visual modeling, and compels an audience to contemplate the price of colonial amnesia by highlighting voices and sounds that have been silenced or altered as a result of this history. While I was certainly aware of Germany’s colonial past, I was not so familiar with the empire’s specific history in Namibia. The piece was quite inspiring which then lead me to do a little bit of my own research as well.

Forensic Architecture (FA) is a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London. Their mandate is to develop, employ, and disseminate new techniques, methods, and concepts for investigating state and corporate violence. The team includes architects, software developers, filmmakers, investigative journalists, scientists, and lawyers. The interdisciplinary agency operates across human rights, journalism, architecture, art and aesthetics, academia and the law. They examine all types of cases from colonial genocide across Africa, police brutality from Portland to Bogotá, human rights abuses in Palestine, Ukraine and much more. It’s quite an impressive body of work.

Since 2022, Forensis and Forensic Architecture (FA) have worked with Nama and Ovaherero leadership groups in Namibia to examine sites related to the 1904-1908 genocide perpetrated by the German colonial army against the Ovaherero and Nama peoples. This investigation examines one of the most traumatic chapters in history - the legacy of Shark Island, the site of the deadliest concentration camp established by the Germans in the colony known at the time as ‘German South West Africa’. Together with descendants of victims and survivors, they reconstructed the camp in unprecedented detail and identified burial sites dating back to that period, which is often referred to as the first genocide of the 20th century.

The camp was located on Shark Island off Lüderitz, in the far south-west of the territory which today is Namibia. The camp was erected after the local population began to rebel against German colonial rule. The precise number of deaths at the camp are unknown. A report by the German Imperial Colonial Office estimated 7,682 Herero and 2,000 Nama died at all camps in German South West Africa, of which a significant portion died at Shark Island. A military official at the camp estimated 1,032 out of 1,795 prisoners held at the camp in September 1906 perished and it is estimated that eventually only 245 of these prisoners survived. In December 1906, an average of 8.5 prisoners died per day. These stats are just numbers now but I think the piece did a nice job of capturing the sheer horrors of what took place there. The other thing the project investigated was landscapes are repositories. Rocks, sediments, flora all tell a story of the history and the impact human’s have had on the land. Also woven into the piece were facts about the effects of Germany’s “green” initiatives and their hidden costs. This was a very powerful work and probably the most engaging and educational of the whole festival.

The last act of the night and I suppose you could say the headlining performance was Lord Spikeheart. Originally emerging from Kenya’s death metal scene, the project has evolved into a massive cultural voice. He sings, he raps, he screams and the sound is clearly influenced by metal but driven through an electronic lens. Appropriately outfitted with an extremely spiked vest, Spikeheart took the stage and immediately captivated the crowd. He snarled and spit, emitting pure energy. He would not be confined to the stage as well and forced his way through the crowd and scaled a platform in the middle of the space. Definitely a highlight and I think he gained a lot of new fans this night.

After the performances the night was set to continue in Tresor, Globus and OHM. Some highlights of the lineup were Laurel Halo, Datashader (live), Simo Cell (live) and Quiet Husband. Unfortunately, as people exited the main hall, there was no indication or direction of how to proceed to the after parties. This resulted in what I would refer to as a crowd control failure and I waited on what appeared to be the correct line for around 45 minutes without much progress and became discouraged and went home to save energy for the remaining nights. Sometimes it goes like that….

Transcriptions

August 24, 2024

The benefit of not attending the after parties was I got a good night’s sleep which is important when attending a multi-day festival. With so many acts, stages and parties, how does one even cover such a thing? When I first started doing this over a decade ago, I thought the goal was actually to see as much as possible and that was just part of the job. But then I received some helpful advice from a veteran music writer in L.A. who told me that should not be the approach and it's rarely possible to do anyways (which makes a lot of sense looking back now). They told me that you do some research before and pick and choose the acts you want to see and appear to be the most interesting and along the way leave yourself open to spontaneity and always look to jump into something you don’t know.

Night two of the festival would probably fall under that last category. Titled Transcriptions, the entire night would focus on the rhythmic tradition of the sabar drumming culture and in particular the immaterial musical legacy of the late, great Doudou N'diaye Rose. Unfolding operationally according to the logic of the Senegalese traditional Tannebier (the street-based celebration which has the sabar at its center), the concert would involve family members of N'diaye Rose as well as luminaries of the electronic music world who take the percussive grammar of this tradition as a starting point for their own experiments in sound. Basically it was a whole night of homage to this particular type of drum culture and to its master, N’diaye Rose.

Going in I did not know anything about this sound, instrument or artist. Born in 1930, N'diaye Rose was a composer, band leader, drummer and considered a modern master of the traditional Senegalese drum, the sabar. The father of a musical dynasty, he was one of the most renowned musical artists of West Africa and is often credited as bringing Senegalese music to the global stage. He was purported to have developed 500 new rhythms and performed with artists such as Miles Davis, the Rolling Stones and is even featured in the remix of “The Warning” by Nine Inch Nails (felt like I should have known about this). The sabar itself is a tall drum and is usually played with one hand and one stick and the style of music played from it is also called sabar.

I arrive after 20:00 just in time to catch LABOR. The sonic duo of Farahnaz Hatam and Colin Hacklander, the pair is known for their large-scale works and performances around the world. For Transcriptions, LABOUR & The Ndiaye Rose Family presened an ecstatic ritual rooted in a hybrid of electronic music and Doudou's complex drum patterns. Indeed a mesmerising performance that to me felt like a perfect modernization of the traditional sabar sound.

Next up, an emotional performance by Nikisi. With “Myth ou Realité (Cheikh Anta Diop)” she delved into her personal connection with Cheikh Anta Diop's proto-Afrofuturist legacy through the lens of Doudou N'Diaye Rose's 1992 composition named after the Pan-African scientist. A new musical composition recoding and decoding rhythmic strategies of storytelling as a ritual act of remembrance and reconnection, it featured just the artist on stage taking the listeners on a slow, sonic journey through time.

The night ended with what seemed like an improvised drumming secession which took place surprisingly at the back of the hall featuring the Family N'Diaye Rose. Once the crowd saw what was happening, they converged to the back of the space and stood around the circle of musicians who played a vigorous outro of sorts which closed out the main performances of the night.

Overall it was great to get familiar with this style of music and also sent me into research mode. While there was not much visual stimulation with the performances, I think I understood the focus was on the auditory and more or less introducing a lot of us to the sabar sound.

Afterward, night two of the afterparties commenced and it seemed the festival learned from the night before and changed the club entry process. It was still a bit confusing but it was much better and while we still had to wait for a little I eventually descended into the Tresor basement where I was able to catch a strong and bass heavy set from Lee Gamble. Also caught a nice one from 2K88 followed by Dr. Jeep in OHM, which really remains one of the best feeling and sounding spaces in Berlin (when it’s not too packed).

The Clearing

August 25, 2024

After staying at the after parties until nearly 5 a.m. it was only natural that I was moving a bit slower today. A couple days of engaging, immersive and emotional music also can really wear on you. One of the things I like about Atonal, but also makes it difficult, is that it’s not necessarily easy music to digest. Listening to ambient, drone and experimental music for multiple hours can be challenging, especially when the performances and topics are complex. It’s simply not a festival for everyone and I’m even quite impressed that it has continued to find an audience in these times of candy pop and ultra short attention spans.

The final day of the festival is titled The Clearing. Perhaps an apt name for the night, it offered a profound auditory journey harking back to renowned formats like The Long Now or previous Berlin Atonal nights that utilize the vast Kraftwerk interior for deeply engaging and transformative musical experiences. Each concert reconfigures the space into a dynamic canvas for sonic exploration and creativity. I arrive a bit late and catch a nice architectural inspired piece by Sara Persico and Mika Oki which is followed by a new collaboration from FRANKIE and Kelman Duran which, to this point, is probably the most vocally driven work of the festival.

This would continue though the next and perhaps most spectacular performance of the festival - Canzonieri featuring Lara Damaso and Lord Spikeheart. The multimedia artistic and musical project by artist Emiliano Maggi and musical artist Cosimo Damiano, the project blends electronic and electroacoustic experimentation with elements of neofolk, aleatory, and minimalism. Canzonieri's performances feature live electronic manipulation of acoustic instruments such as voice, harmonium, flutes, string instruments, and percussion. They often use self-built or customized instruments, which vary based on the venue and circumstances. The pair arrived on stage dressed in sort of medieval jester type outfits and when the vocalist begins to sing, it immediately feels like you’re watching a tragic play or theatre production. The instruments on stage are indeed clearly customized there’s a modular rig, guitars and more. Injected with elements of poetry, horror, desire, metamorphosis and beyond, this was probably the most gripping performance to watch as the pair brought us into a fantastical world of song and performance. They are also joined at certain points by Lord Spikeheart and Lara Dâmaso who lends her beautiful dance and performance abilities while Spikeheart again delivers his unique vocal prowess.

After a short break, we now come to the final act of the festival - “Baselines” by Demdike Stare. No strangers to Atonal, the duo returned with an all new a/v piece which I would say highlighted the best elements of their work. Clearly inspired by the occult, punk and generally the forgotten and bastardized bits of culture the project has always been one of my favorites as they have a unique ability to present something that feels like it could be from a horror movie from the 70’s or 80’s but still something very fresh and modern. They didn’t disappoint on this night and gave us the most rhythmic and danceable performance on the festival while projecting a hypnotic blend of retro-future cult imagery on the massive screen beside them. While it was a great way to end the festival, I think a lot of people were even yearning to keep dancing as it was the first time we really got that opportunity in the main hall.

That concluded OPENLESS by Berlin Atonal. Overall I applaud the organizers for trying something different and taking a risk to shorten the program and deliver a more highly curated and concept driven experience. On the other hand, I feel the event was missing a lot of the elements that people really go for and that was deeply felt. For example, there were no after parties on the ground floor of Kraftwerk (which were always some of the best ones). There were also no art installations around the space, lounge areas, modular room and a lot of the things that enhance being inside the Kratwerk complex. The afterparties too, while diverse, I think were also missing more of the classic techno sounds and there were a few artists who were repeated and throughout the program which felt unnecessary.

With all that being said, it was an amazing experience and we were all treated to incredible performances that actually had something to say, which is quite rare these days, even in Berlin. Also of course, being back inside Kraftwerk is always a special occasion. Another impressive aspect of the festival is the majority of these pieces were commissioned and have never been seen, heard and were specifically created for this space and time. The one off concept makes things a lot more special and offers the audience an experience that can never happen again. I would like to thank Berlin Atonal for having me and as always look forward to seeing what’s in store for next year when they bring back the full, more traditional festival program.

-JRS