the female technover

TECHNOTECHNOTECHNO.
every berlin techno lady, including monika (who doesn't have much of a uk presence as far as i'm aware) is name checked here to preview the ellen and anja albums in the context of their superstar status in the city.

i picked up the second issue of the magazine mentioned in the article, bangbangberlin (LICK MY KUNST asks the cover in (f)lurid pink and yellow) at munich airport on monday - who could resist a neon berlin fanzine written in both german & english? (or the cover) when i flicked through - and what made me hand over 6euros for it - was a review of laurent garnier's night at panoramabar in february. that was the night that net, s-l and i waited in a rainy, typhoony, don't leave the house TORRENTIAL storm outside berghain for an hour and a half. at least. but it was worth it. BBB has fanzine-level writing (from me, a zinegirl who is immune to syntax/grammar), but realzine content. something on stil in berlin - the occasionally updated german streetstyle blog where the stars are definitely on the screen and not behind the camera - why are fashion people so terribly earnest darling? there's also a feature on flyers and the graphic designers who are making BBB's favourite ones in berlin right now. it might sound obvious in an art/club zine, but it works.
hmmm what else? getting a bunch of bpitch people in a photoautomat, that's fun too.

since i won't be moving to the bln any time soon, a subscription might be in order...

tight/fit

around about the end of april, marks and spencer, with their history of genius in retailing, stop selling classic black opaque tights in their stores. this is presumably something to do with 'space' on the 'shopfloor' - they need room for SUMMER picnic grub and cava and wotnot, but it's not particularly practical or customer friendly to just eliminate such a staple, whatever the (british) season anyway. (i'm basing this post on 1 or 2 visits to the store in angel only, but i remember this happening last year too).

but OH, what's this? they still do FOOTLESS TIGHTS. useful, wicked, ta. so i'll be darning my past-it pantyhose to wear with my pretty summer frocks then.

tout est cassé: unravellment chic

your skirt is undone at the back

mum 08:51am

often, one can feel as if everything is unravelling and one's grip on oneself is as tenuous and fragile as a manuscript held together with an elastic band. snap. fall apart. so this morning, hair gone wild and shirt untucked, i was just about holding it together until a man approached me as the train pulled into the station to tell me that my back-sde was exposed. luckily, we could both laugh about it. embarrassedly.

which was so try-hard trend i can't believe i didn't think of it before...

listen:
1. if someone says 'your collar is sticking up' tell them: it's meant to be. i'm doing rockabilly/elvis/rizzo in grease.
2. if someone says 'your zip is open' it depends on which one it is. you don't want everyone checking out your underwear on the way to work, but it's sometimes quite fun to flash some flesh. i have this white indiegirl blouse from topshop that (very inconveniently) has buttons all the way up the back and was in the lift at goodge street station once when a lady said 'excuse me, your top's unbuttoned' and she proceeded to do it up for me in a very motherly, dare i say tender way.

therefore: wearing clothes wrong on purpose=good, being careless: sometimes bad

one outfit, one weekend

advice for the permanently partying.

the chinese invasion

liberty's got an AMAZING window display right now featuring mountains of retro trinket toys - in one viewing i spotted trolls and power rangers and miniature soldiers. They've been built into a monstrous frame to highlight the plight (?) of the chinese factory workers who made them. made me think of that bit in concise dictionary 4 lovers when z gets a vibrator for her birthday and reads 'MADE IN CHINA' on the back.

found a couple of flickr pics which give snaphots of the mega-ness.

OMG ELLEN ALLIEN #4. IS TERRIFYING//THE CITY IS MINE

Formidable record label head, casual fashion designer and full-on disc mistress Ellen Allien might be my hero for ever, but even the loyalty (and patience) of her biggest fans will be tested by this relentlessly sparse trip with her into the Berlin state of mind. During opening track 'Einsteigen' (enter), we glide into the incidental buzz of the city. As bustle crackles over a single note tapped out over and over again, a voice over a loudspeaker announces that the train's arrived at Alexanderplatz station, which is where we begin our journey.

This Berlinette, this Stadtkind has made a record (her fourth solo stretch) that's borne of mornings becoming afternoons behind the tinted windows at Ostbahnhof minimal institution Berghain. SOOL was dragged out of a stupor, its dot-to-dot skeleton etched like clouds onto the dawn and viewed from the banks of the Spree at parties where the phrase 'don't forget to go home' was invented. It is now and always has been the city (and what else?) that pulses through her veins, while on the outside her skin's baked in a glaze of last night's (or was it the night before?) sweat.

If Ms Allien's last solo LP Thrills was a celebratory but patchy, loved-up and danced out session, and that faultless Apparat collaboration Orchestra of Bubbles set the emo-techno standard, SOOL is a severing and a step beyond. With the help of east German sound re-structuralist (and guest producer) AGF, she racks out the electronic test tubes for some intense sonic experimentalism, to once again redefine the boundaries of her shifting soundscape. So 'Elphine' climbs to a spooky crescendo with whistles (human and tin) and the brassy thrum of trumpets and oboes; the brooding minimal of 'Its' is pinned down with a Jaws bassline and 'Bim' throbs with a blood-in-your-ears heartbeat.

Where there are vocals, they're chopped up to reverberate around the beats, as if the bones of the album have been left half bare, those clipped voices trapped in an echo chamber. 'Sprung' makes tentative, paranoid steps towards the dance floor, with an acid-deep beat and haunting fragments of a memory of a party that might have happened some time before strung out across five deliriously lost minutes.

'Frieda', then, interrupts the blissed out blips nine tracks in – it’s a swoony, semi-pastoral ballad which Ellen tenderly addresses (in English) to her 'sun', making me wonder whether she expected anyone to actually make it to the end of the album. For whoever braves it that far, closing track 'Out' is slashed through with the metallic-sounding swishes of a sword to the drip-drip rhythm of a broken tap. It's hard to recognise Ellen here at all: you have to roll back your head, switch to that rattled, addled, empty six o'clock in the morning brain and allow yourself to slip in between the sounds, contract and expand when she tells you to.

IN THE SHADE IN THE SHADE

body language > in white rooms > control me /charlotte.

booka shade

GLOVES UP

i knew that boxing was back.

sack the stylist

special men's fashion issue of STstyle today, featuring a pic of WILL YOUNG!! wearing this! t-shirt in jessica brinton's column! SHOCK! yes i'm in shock. it looks like an orchestra of bubbles/bpitch design, so wondering how will got his hands on it. didn't know he was berlin techno, how sweet. i can see him going down a treat at panorama bar, strike a pose!

GOOD RIDDANCE YEH

grim west end hellhole the astoria has received it's bulldozing orders (almost) from mayor ken. demollition has been mooted for years, but something to do with the crossrail scheme has finally been confirmed i think, which means it's - PRAISE BE - about to be razed to the ground. the intersection of tottenham court/charing x/oxford st roads is one of my least favourite places in london. let it be damned.