überlin

This edition of Stay True Germany, produced by the Boiler Room crew, focuses on the connections between classical and electronic music, which are particularly strong in Berlin and Deutschland as a whole. The beautiful mini-doc includes some of our favourite producers, including Carl Craig, Francesco Tristano and Berlin’s own Brandt Brauer Frick, so it’s well worth a watch. Also, look out for Klavírní, the forthcoming classically-influenced album from Emika, . Check her Facebook page for updates.

The biggest surprise about 65daysofstatic’s recent Berlin date was the stand-in support act, MOON WHEEL.The magnificently bearded knob-twiddler rattled C-Club with bass-heavy, expansive synth workouts that got the collected music nerds’ heads nodding.

What WHEEL himself describes as “music for contemplative listening, relaxation and dancing, inspired by nature, history and wandering” sounds to these old ears like a cross between primitive acid house, Howie B-style trip hop and the interstitials between Pink Floyd tracks. I recommend you start with MOON WHEEL’s Boiler Room set, before digging into his Berlin Community Radio show, The Journey. Full deets about this curious artist can be found at moonwheel.org. Enjoy your trip.

I’m starting to hate doing these Berlin event roundups – how do you pick highlights from a week-long programme of amazing performances? CTM.13 kicked off with a mini-riot in the Boiler Room last Thursday, courtesy of a breakcore and tech-step set from Alec Empire, and the music arm of the Transmediale digital art festival doesn’t let up until Sunday. Empire’s back in Stattbad Wedding on Saturday, tearing it up with BlackBlackGold and Necro Deathmort, and our other picks of this year’s CTM Festival include: occult obscurists Demdike Stare, Imogen Heap presenting at MusicMakers Hacklab, Kode9 and others talking about the Death of Rave and a performance from the legendary Sunn O))). Go to the CTM website for the full programme, and get yourself a pass to Berlin’s Festival for Adventurous Music and Arts.

The Berlin outpost of the world’s leading underground music show, Boiler Room, has been broadcasting from the unique space of Stattbad Wedding for about 18 months now. During that time, the former swimming pool has hosted some of the best DJs and electronic acts in the world, including Carl Craig, Richie Hawtin, DJ Hell and überlin faves Modeselektor (celebrating above), Objekt, Redshape and Ellen Allien.

Boiler Room Berlin is strictly invite-only, and we’ve been lucky enough to get into this Thursday’s CTM festival special. The frankly ridonkulous lineup includes Kangding Ray, dub master Pole and Mr. Digital Hardcore himself, the mighty Alec Empire! If you can’t physically be there, tune into boilerroom.tv at 8pm (7pm GMT) to catch all the action. In the meantime, I’ve tried to pick some favourites from the archives, in which pretty much every set is a highlight, for your home viewing pleasure: