Magic Hands are Alex and Lucy, two Australians who met in a smoky Berlin bar two years ago. Inspired by the Twin Peaks soundtrack, traditional music and 808 clap samples with way too much reverb. Naturally, they’re awesome. Check out the video for “Golden Boy”, available for download on the Magic Hands Bandcamp and follow them on Facebook for updates.
MAGIC HANDS – GOLDEN BOY from AVBadham on Vimeo.
by Redfern Jon Barrett.
In two weeks’ time I’ll have been in Berlin for three years. I love this city – though I’m not one for attending trendy ‘discotheques’ whilst taking ‘Columbian Baking Soda’, and ‘[INSERT THIRD TONGUE-IN-CHEEK OUT-OF-TOUCH REFERENCE PEOPLE WILL TAKE AT FACE VALUE]‘.
Even so, Berlin is full of interesting, open-minded people, and as a queer-thinking, polyamory-loving, witch-being vegetarian leftist (whose entire identity can be summed up by those five categories), being here is like getting to live in the 19th century if you’re a massive conservative. In short, it’s weirdo Disneyland.
But some things in Berlin can be annoying, and in the spirit of ruthlessly criticising everything I love, I present:
1. THOU SHALT NOT ENDLESSLY DISCUSS HOW GUILTY THOU ART FOR NOT LEARNING GERMAN
Because really, this only affects you. If you feel bad that you don’t speak more German, go learn German. If you don’t want to, then you can’t feel that bad. Either way, there is now a city-wide ban on discussing how you need to take another Deutschkurs.
Penalty: having your mind wiped, and your knowledge of English replaced with Turkish. All Germans refuse to learn Turkish.
2. THOU SHALT NOT MAKE ART WHEN THOU HAST NOTHING INTERESTING TO SAY AND THOU IS ALSO REALLY, REALLY BAD AT ART
Don’t get me wrong, Berlin has some fantastic artists, and I’ve worked with several of them – there’s a lot of talent in this city, but that talent is concentrated in about 10% of the total number of people actually calling themselves artists. The other 90% are either trust-funders working on a project that will never actually materialise (IT’S ABOUT THE PROCESS), or are trust-funders paying for an overpriced vanity residency which once a year will open their doors for an ‘exhibition’ whose attempts at insightful social commentary involve a bad drawing of Jesus with an iPod. MIND BLOWN.
Penalty: having to justify your stay of execution to a death panel, using only your own works of art as warrant for your continued existence.
3. THOU SHALT STAND ON THE FUCKING RIGHT, AND WALK ON THE LEFT, IF THOU WISHES TO USE A FUCKING ESCALATOR IN THE UBAHN/UNDERGROUND/METRO/SUBWAY
Or I will push you down said escalator.
Penalty: receiving a poison dart to the neck at the top of an escalator crowded with tourists talking on mobile phones. The antidote is at the bottom.
4. HONOUR THY LUNGS
“Yeah, I’m currently planning on giving up smoking, and I did give up for five weeks last year, but it’s really hard when everyone’s smoking in a bar, and I just want to smoke socially, like when I’m drinking, but then you find yourself smoking in the day as well, I just wish I could smoke now and then but it doesn’t seem to happen, anyway I’m giving up soon, I just want to enjoy myself a bit more before I do.” – EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN BERLIN, INCLUDING ME
Penalty: city-wide smoking ban
5. THOU SHALT NOT JUDGE OTHERS’ CLOTHING, IT IS NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS
There’s a game in Berlin, called ‘Let’s Be Fucking Horrible To People Wearing Clothes Different To Ours’ (working title). And everyone is in on it. “Look at that hipster! Haha, fucking hipster, with their hipster clothes! I’m better than you, hipster!” – “Hey, you’re not wearing a stained hoodie with a bad slogan about the evils of capitalism! Are you a tourist? Your clothes look expensive! Fuck off, foreigner!”, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.
Penalty: being forced walk around Kreuzberg in an Armani suit until you’re torn to shreds
6. THOU SHALT WEAR THINE HOLY PROTECTIVE EARMUFFS
Thine divine earmuffs shalt protect thee from the angry street rants of born-n’-bred native Berliners, and shield thine delicate ears from their daily abuse.
What is wrong with them?
7. THOU SHALT DESTROY THE STAG NIGHTS
They must not be allowed to dwell in Berlin. If you see a group of drunken men in identical t-shirts, it is your sworn duty as a Berliner to slay them all.
Penalty: failure to let a stag night pass unslain shall result in you working as bar staff for a hostel in Mitte, where groups of drunken tourists will make fun of you, mistaking you for German and giving you constant Nazi salutes
8. THOU SHALT NOT FORCE EVERYONE TO DO YOGA OR GO CYCLING, THESE ARE FALSE RELIGIONS
Not everyone likes yoga, and to constantly spread the word of yoga BECAUSE OH MY GOD YOGA PUTS YOU SO IN TOUCH WITH YOUR BODY HOW CAN YOU NOT DO YOGA is to promote idolatrous gods. The same goes for OH MY GOD HOW CAN YOU NOT OWN A BIKE I HAVE A SPARE ONE COME ON A BIKE RIDE WITH ME WHERE YOU’LL BE REALLY SLOW AND I’LL GET ANNOYED AND FRUSTRATED DESPITE THE FACT YOU TOLD ME YOU’RE NO GOOD AT BIKE-RIDING COME ON COME ON BIKE BIKE BIKE BIKE BIKE AAAAAAAAHHHHHH
Penalty: removal of all yoga-twisting, bike-pedalling limbs
9. THOU SHALT NOT QUEUE FOR HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS FOR NO PURPOSE
Berlin will give you enough opportunities to enjoy a good queue. Every trip to a government bureau (there will be many), every hospital visit, every time you need to withdraw money from an ATM will involve a long time in a lovely, unending queue. You do not need to add to this experience by queuing for an hour for a kebab, or an ice cream, or for two hours to get into a club, because THERE ARE OTHER KEBABS AND ICE CREAMS AND DARK DANCY DRINKY PLACES, AND YOU ARE WASTING YOUR LIFE.
Penalty: you will be forbidden from entering a queue for a period of one year. As every single action you take in Germany involves a trip to the state bureaucracy, you shall die homeless and penniless, without kebabs or ice cream.
10. THOU SHALT NOT LEAVE THE CITY IN WINTER, WINTER IS YOUR PUNISHMENT
I’M LOOKING AT YOU, EVERY SINGLE SPANISH PERSON. WINTER IS THE PENALTY FOR ENJOYING BERLIN IN SUMMER. FROZEN BEARDS AND RED-RAW SKIN ARE REMINDERS THAT YOU ARE LUCKY TO BE ALIVE.
Penalty: the city walls shall be closed to you forever, and you shall be forced to make a living dancing for pennies in Potsdam
Go forth, my children, and share the wisdom your Berlingod has gifted you! For thine are the canals, the Sternberg and the Görli, forever and ever.
– Berlinfern
A manic giant with a PhD in queer literature, Redfern writes about polyamory, witchcraft, and science fiction. His weird novel Forget Yourself is available on Amazon. Read more at redjon.com.
Portugal has the most beautiful beaches we’ve ever seen. Drive or cycle further afield than the crowded, chatty seaside towns of Estoril or Cascais, and you have your pick of quiet bays of calm, crystal clear waters and windswept surfer’s paradises. Here’s a selection of our favourite sun/sea/sand snaps from our recent trip to Portugal.
Praia do Guincho
Portinho da Arrábida
Aldeia do Meco
Photos by Zoë Noble Photography.
Composer FM Einheit, an ex-member of the legendary Berlin industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten, has launched an artistic experiment that will open the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. WIR SIND HIER draws on user participation, inviting anyone to have their say and submit content via the project’s website, and become an active part of the live multimedia performance.
We’re particularly interested in the Sounds of Destruction action, which aims to explore the sounds of censorship and the destruction of culture. Users can upload recordings of their ideas of cultural destruction to SoundCloud, and FM Einheit will integrate these into the live performance of WIR SIND HIER. So far, so noisy ????
Other interesting-sounding strands of the project include a massive digital protest choir, Occupy History – in which users “remix” history using Vine – and an ambitious attempt to create a crowdsourced sculpture. To take part in this brilliant Berlin-based project, check out the WIR SIND HIER website now.
We’re such goths. Who else would spend a day of their holiday in Lisbon on a three hour round trip to see a chapel covered in skulls? The Capela dos Ossos (Chapel of Bones) in Évora, central Portugal, was built by Franciscan monks in the 17th century as a memento mori, an enduring reminder of their and subsequent visitors’ mortality. They lined the small room in the Church of São Francisco with 5,000 people’s skulls and bones, hanging the desiccated corpses of an unnamed adult and child for extra brutality. The builder’s bodies are buried here, slain by Napoleon’s invading army, and the entrance to this wonderfully macabre tourist attraction is marked with the extra-epic phrase, Nós ossos que aqui estamos pelos vossos esperamos – “we, the bones that are here, await yours.” Props to the visitor who turned up in a Yeah Yeah Yeahs “Show Your Bones” t-shirt!
Photos by Zoë Noble Photography.
With so much great music popping off in Berlin, I sometimes struggle to find the words to do justice to it all. Luckily the press blurb that accompanied this video from CREATURES actually (for once) nailed it, with this quote from Wolf Auf Tausend Plateaus:
Luke Troynar (the creator of Creatures) declines to be a singer songwriter. His ambient soundscapes, sweet voice and disarmingly potent lyrics create an enchanting paradox where nothing is as sweet as it sounds… one of Berlin’s most interesting emerging voices.
At the risk of being in total dereliction of my duties as a “journalist”, I’m going to simply point out that if you like the sound of that, you should listen to this: CREATURES’ brooding “Mirror Mirror”. While not quintessential “Berlin music”, I fancy I can hear trace amounts of stale drugs in Troynar’s system as he crawls across the electronic comedown of another lost weekend. Or maybe I’m projecting. Maybe CREATURES is actually the work of another driven, brave, Berlin-based “singer songwriter” whose music is a million miles from the sandle-wearers who spoiled that phrase forever. Whatever it is, I’m into it.
CREATURES play live at English Theatre Berlin this Friday, 16th August – buy tickets from etberlin.de.
War From A Harlots Mouth pitch themselves as “Extreme Math Metal Mayhem from Berlin, Germany”, which is a description that’s hard to argue with. Aside from The Ocean, they’re probably the best known Berlin metal band, having supported Lamb of God on their recent German dates. If you like your brutality technical and mathematically precise, this one’s for you.
War From A Harlots Mouth – Vertigo (Official Video) from ambitious.films on Vimeo.
