Berlin is a city with its past starkly visible and its interior on display. It is a place which celebrates transformations. Newly designed apartments in a converted water tower do not hide their history as a site of Nazi torture. In the Hamburger Bahnhof Gallery you can see the glittering yellow of an Andy Warhol thrown casually up against a priceless orthodox icon. This notion of collaborative opposition can hide as much as it reveals. The science museum has rooms dedicated to magic lanterns, pink tinted turn-of-the-century photographs and peep show zoetropes alongside stern histories of cording and textiles. There are jars of dead babies in the medical museum, which are both violently real and fantastically gothic. In this city of shadowplay and metamorphosis, Tresor and Berghain are the ultimate manifestation of the Berlin Fantasy. The industrial working week evinced by these once-power stations is obliterated by the endless party weekend.
From a distance, Berghain looks like a doll’s house with squares of coloured light at the windows. The image is both rejected and reinforced inside. Hedonism implies innocence and abandon and both are at work in Berghain. The candy box colours of Panorama Bar slather a layer of gloss on top, whilst downstairs the vicarious thrills of the dark room, the over-sized swings and the hide-and-seek corners are all about play. The enormous Wolfgang Tillmans prints of colourful abstracts and genital close-ups dominate the space, but there is nothing kitsch, sly or ironic presented here. Rather than a sense of silliness or shame there is frank enjoyment undiluted by guilt or aggression. The music here is unwrapped expertly like a complex gift, each layer offering a new surprise.
The flat grey exterior of Tresor is intimidatingly vast. Upstairs is all lush pop fun but beside the DJ booth you can see the exposed metal girders and dripping orange ceiling that remain from the old building. Witnessed through the safety of glass, the wreckage is transmuted into art. The tunnel leading downstairs is damp and lit by a flickering red light with an ominous atmosphere of punishment rather than pleasure. Once inside, the disorienting permanent strobe in the basement is made more jagged by the brutality of the music. Functioning like a cross between prison and Disneyland, Berghain and Tresor are the ultimate in Berlin Fantasy.
What is it with all these new-noise bands who love to keep it lo-fi as much as they love surplus ‘v’s? First there was Lovvers (see previous posts), now there’s San Diego’s Wavves - One more and we’re coining the VV scene. This band (or is it just one Nathan Williams?) should make sense to 20 somethings who grew up listening to handed down copies of Nevermind and Bug whilst absorbing endless teen dramas and sitcoms all set in Californ-I-A and repeated ad nauseam. On 'So Bored' the simple song structure and disaffected, childlike vocal harmonies add a doo-wap beachbum slacker attitude to raw, blown out guitar distortion. Wavves debut 7” Beach Demon / Weed Demon is out on Tic Tac Recordings and limited to 300 copies. Alternatively you can download both tracks of the single (legally too!) from Nathan’s blog. 
