The support band were Göttingen’s The Blue Screen of Death who played a short set some kind of enjoyable ‘electro-punk’ which I approved of when seeing them in 2008.

Afterwards Les Trucs set up their countless little gadgets in the middle of the room and drowned us in noisy beepy goodness, all while jumping around, creating their own sweet mini-lightshows using the lamps they brought along. As great as I remembered them, with a few new songs mixed in and playing a gig that was a bit on the short side.

Highlights of the visit were the breakfast at À midi, a sweet French-style café with a lovely atmosphere; The Der Rote Bulli exhibition at NRW Forum with photos from the Düsseldorf-school of Bernd and Hilla Becher as well as photos by Stephen Shore, trying to highlight the similarities of their approaches. Bonus points for NRW Forum making one of the rare reasonable efforts of having a useful web page, iOS app and providing their audio guide as a podcast.

Afterwards we visited the Nam June Paik exhibition at Museum Kunstpalast next door. I can’t help it, but I’m not terribly impressed by that. Whenever I see video-art type things I can’t help thinking that the artists aren’t particularly good at it on a technical level. I mean everybody has funny and new ideas all day but I thought the deal about artists is that they are very good at making them real. Those video artists mainly aren’t. A few nice ideas there, plenty of lame ones, and very little technical sophistication.

Dinner at Parlin was a bit fancyish but good and the Timid Tiger gig was fun, particularly as a bunch of us had seen them ages ago when they were young and lovely.

Before leaving on Sunday we took a walk along the Rhine and a trip up Rheinturm which luckily must have been in the only sunny hour of the day, giving us a great view around. After sipping a quick espresso at a bar in the nearby Gehry buildings the weekend was over already!

Friday

Unfortunately we missed to see Adam Green because having a (lovely) burger, walking to the airport and queuing to get it took longer than anticipated. While I find Adam Green’s music a bit boring lately, I surely would have appreciated seeing him play again. Thus our festival began with LCD Soundsystem (OK, with a huge disco ball), Norman Palm (nice, if a bit boring) and the Editors (yawn, even the fantastic cover art of their second album stopped helping).

We went on to see Hermann Dune (fine), Junip (nice to finally see José Gonzales here after I missed them in Haldern) and then ‘indulged’ in some Atari Teenage Riot, who apparently need some money and reunited. Alec Empire was talking too much on stage and may or may not have enjoyed too many ‘substances’ at some stage or another. Their music sounded more techno-ish and less indy-ish than I thought it should be.

We meant to see 2ManyDJs and Fatboy Slim afterwards, but that didn’t happen because the gigs were cancelled.

Organisation

After this year’s Love Parade death trap in Duisburg everybody’s aware about the security of such big events. The festival grounds at Berlin Festival were easily big enough and if there were to be any problems, removing a fence could extend them to the whole airfield if that was required. Yet, the poor organisation of the event still managed to create a problem there:

The main stage was closed at 11, to keep noise levels down. Bands only played the smaller stages in the hangar after that. With some of the main acts playing the smaller stages late in the evening – rather unsurprisingly – many people wanted to get in there. They had these security fences/barriers to separate the different areas, so there was at no point an issue inside the hangars but apparently queueing to get in got so crowded that the organisers decided to shut down the event after the police told them it might look dangerous. As far as I can tell this situation was entirely manageable and predictable if to organisers had thought about what they were doing and surely one could have set up more separated queueing to avoid this problem. But everybody managed to be entirely surprised, so they cancelled the rest of the evening for safety reasons.

I surely didn’t want to switch places with the guy who had to announce this inside the hangar to the crowd who waited to see 2ManyDJs next. In fact the moment he did it was the only moment I actually felt uncomfortable, feeling that the situation might escalate. It didn’t. People were upset and went home. And the organisers tightened Saturday’s timetable, so all stages would finish at 11, thereby avoiding the problem and removing the ‘nightlife’ aspect of the festival. Two days later they came up with a half-assed non-apology.

Saturday

Saturday’s gigs began in the afternoon with Seabear being the first band for us. After enjoying them a few years ago but missing their gig at Haldern this year, I was keen to see them again. Particularly as their music is so nice and you just want to hug them and take them home.

After that followed Superpunk (nice again, even though I just saw them three weeks ago), Tahiti 80 (interesting, more acoustic than I remembered) and Lali Puna (fine, dull?) all during a perfect summer afteroon which invited us to sit in the sun in front of the hangars.

Then Soulwax played on the mainstage. They were certainly one of the big attractions, particularly as their 2ManyDJs set the night before had been cancelled. They sounded a bit more technoid than I remembered, particularly during the first half of their set. But they did a great job playing the percussion and the fancy ‘instruments’ wearing suits.

This was followed by Tricky in one of the hangars who seemed to mostly walk off the stage and not do much while he was there. I had imagined his show to be more exciting. Also: If the lead singer is dark-skinned, please turn up the lights, so one can see him a bit better. The final show was a gig by Peaches with a lasershow. I’m not really a fan of her music but seeing that she seems to be one of the coolest people in her business, this was a must-see, and rightly so!

And the band – along with Final Fantasy as their support – didn’t disappoint. They brought magic to the stage in Tempodrom and turned it into a zoo of instruments, a wall of noise, festival of joy and music. They managed to put smiles in the faces of their devoted audience all the way back to the last row. A rare achievement, one that has to be repeated when the next opportunity comes along.

While I do enjoy their new album, The Suburbs, I couldn’t help thinking that its songs aren’t as intense as those of the previous ones. Most of the old songs just carry you along without any room for extra thoughts, while I found myself able to think while the newer ones played.

Also: nice videos in the background, related web geekiness and a video.

[Buy at amazon .com, .uk, .de]

Friday

We started off seeing The Horror Horror (OK) and The Wedding Present (old) before the much-loved Friska Viljor came on. I liked a few songs on their first album, but never became a big fan. That didn’t change in their gig here.

The final band on the outdoor main stage were The Notwist. I last saw them in Haldern in 2002 and it was great to see them play again.

The remaining shows of the evening took place inside where space was scarce and temperatures were high. The first band we saw were the appetisingly-named Herpes whose music could be considered like NDW with generous dashes of punk and 21st century. I quite enjoyed that.

Afterwards Superpunk played a nice gig after which we headed home. An honourary mention must go to Königsworther Platz underground station here. I passed it almost daily a few years back but had never actually used it before. It’s sweetly decorated with little trees all over:

Saturday

Saturday’s music began with Tele’s Francesco Wilking playing witty acoustic songs before the master of wittiness, Bernd Begemann came on. He started a bit late because he was stuck in traffic. Accordingly, began his gig with Eigentlich wollte ich nicht nach Hannover and then continued being the great entertainer and clown that he is.

After a short bread for coffee and cake in Linden, we saw a bit of Anajo before Die Sterne played. Their albums have become a bit mellow over the years, but they haven’t lost their charme, presenting their new album’s Convenience Shop as the 2010 version of their 1999 classic Universal Tellerwäscher.

What followed was the most refreshingly powerful gig I’ve seen in a while – played by The Go! Team, who brought two drumsets, plenty of other instruments and six people who changed instruments and didn’t cease to jump around. Special respect goes to their frontwoman who even in the last song jumped around as energetically as she did at the beginning of the show. Impressive and recommended.

Hot Chip played afterwards. They’re not the most interesting band to begin with, but after The Go! Team’s impressive show, they seemed particularly lame. After seeing a bit of them, we had a look at Fertig, Los in one of the buildings who had a nice and geeky printer on stage. But we disliked their music enough to not wait until it was used.

We finished the evening by seeing a bit of Men among Animals (OK) and Station 17 inside. I hadcool song by them on a mixtape since the ’90s and was amazed the band still exists. Probably the band warrants a lengthy discussion about what kind of music you like and why you do it. I wasn’t too impressed by their gig and the songs in it.

And that was it. A lovely in-town music festival with a few highlights.

[Buy at amazon .com, .uk, .de]

Kakkmaddafakka not only have an entertaining name, but also played a great entertaining set. With a lot of dancing and jumping happening on stage along with the music this was one of the most unashamedly entertaining bands I’ve seen in a while.

Then Wisecräcker played and a good bunch of the audience seemed to be fans who didn’t hesitate jumping around wildly to their music which is aptly described as Ska / Punk / Pop-Punk on their Myspace page. It’s not the punkishest Ska I’ve heard, thus not too harsh. They were a crowd of seven on the small stage and with space-taking instruments like trombones they used all of it and more. With songs in German, English and Spanish and a generously long set, it was an enjoyable gig even for people like myself who are not really into ska.

Later on they became a bit more quiet and clever, using even more instruments (weirdo electronic thingy, keyboard, clarinet?). I preferred that sound, particularly with the vibraphone and cello parts.

There was a second band, Helgoland, playing later on. But as the gig started ninety minutes late (as usual) and we had to be up early today, we had to skip on that. Even if it makes me sound like a square, I’d quite like correct times on event advertisements. And I think it’s not a problem if gigs start before eleven at night. Particularly on a Sunday.

Quite a powerful and energetic gig that was rather short. Possibly due to the short length of their songs. Compared to last summer’s Nintendocoriade I’d range them between Les Trucs and Gtuk. Less interesting than the former and not quite as outlandish as the latter.

And they were selling pretty cool 8cm CDs [MacBook suckers, try to read these!] which turn out to be spray painted. With average song lengths of less than two minutes, even the tiny CD comes with ten titles and room to spare…