Berlin Atonal 2023/W1 – Trip Review

This is the first full Atonal Festival in 4 long years. It’s true that during the past years there has been other events run by them and with similar style, but never was the same. So, there was big expectations for this ‘come back’, in general, but specially at a personal level. First question was about if we would find ourselves in the same festival or if it has changed, for the best or the worst. The answer to that it’s easy, even though I didn’t know until the festival started. Obviously everything has changed after the last 4 years. The society, the economy, the concept of performing, the way we do art, even ourselves have changed. So obviously this Atonal could not be the same.

And how it has changed? In many ways… First the dates, for many Atonal were connected with summer holidays in Berlin, that’s not anymore, and for many this might be painful as it’s harder to attend if you live abroad and have certain job obligations. But for Berlin’s shake it makes all sense… moving their dates to the very same week that happens to be the Berlin Art Week offers the opportunity to contextualise the festival as an art event, as I always claimed it to be, instead of being just another experimental music festival.

About the prices… Before and during the festival I heard many complains about how expensive it was. Prices were around 50-60 euros a day, 150-160 a weekend, and about 300 the full festival pass. Is that expensive?

A) YES! If you consider spending that money all at once, knowing how hard this year and the previous ones have been, considering the inflation, the global situation, etc. True, you feel it in your pocket harder than 4 years ago.

B) NO!! If you consider that every night there is more than 10 artists performing, in most cases presenting exclusive shows that might never be seen again, also considering the dimension of the place and the cost of make all run in such beautiful way… Make maths, divide the price you paid and tell me if it worths it.

If you still think is expensive, we have a problem. A big one. Because we have to ask ourselves if we want festivals and clubs to pay fair fees to the artists. And we have to consider that not always things can run based on public fundings and state helps. Those times are gone. But think it another way… If the same week you are asked to pay almost 40 euros for just 1 concert + support artist (artists that usually you will find at Atonal)… It seems to me that tickets for Atonal are a much better deal. But it’s also a matter of personal choice.

So here we are, stepping once again inside the stunning Kraftwerk. The venue is filled with a dense smokey atmosphere and low lights… it almost feels like the building has been closed for the last four years and we are the first ones going in. Which is a curious feeling, considering that I already know the building, it made me feel I was about to discover it again. Before the first concert I explored all the open spaces, searching for the art pieces included this year, some of them seemed like hidden, which adds that “explorer” feeling. The art selection offered shows a really particular style, a combination of science, poetic moments, raw aesthetics, archival material, black and white, organic and industrial, all at the same time. If that Atonal style was already defined years ago, the time passed by only made it more consistent, which means an important and solid curational work, that fits perfectly with Kraftwerk‘s environment.

The opening act, on the ground floor, was Valentina Magaletti, Italian drummer who set the perfect tone to light up the place with an slow performance between post-jazz, ambient and industrial, the right in the middle point between acoustic and electronic that might define the many styles contained in the festival. Her performance felt like a rusty machine brought back to life.

After that and moving already to main stage we were about to encounter the world premiere from one of the big names in the evening, Laurel Halo was presenting her new album Atlas. Her live performance had no visual companion, but used lights reflected on a scaffolding covered with metallic fabrics… an element I thought was meant as stage design for her performance, but later on we will discover it was part of the general set up… It didn’t convinced me, seemed like those ideas that look nice on paper but not the same in real life, still worked out nicely on occasions, when there was enough smoke and lights bouncing. Laurel performed on a grand piano  and electronics, along cellist Leila Bordreuil. Personally I have never been a big fan of her music, I tried several times, and this new album and performance didn’t got me, even though I like modern classic and ambient music.

Florentina Holzinger is known for her intense performances, usually including nude female performers, blood, loud sounds, fire, car wrecks, etc. She was presenting Étude For Church, part of a series of “sound activations” of different spaces, and a place like Kraftwerk well deserves such treatment. The performance will take place each day of the first weekend, so, 3 performances. And I must confess, being able to experience this performance 3 times offered me the opportunity to observe, change perspective, reflect on it and get my own conclusion. This first time I felt drowned to watch it up close, I enjoyed seeing the whole choreography, the big old bell from the church as a central point, the different women “activating” the bell like angels making God’s work, the suspended performers banging the other metal plates as intensively as their hooked bodies allowed them. No doubt, Holzinger knows how to paint an strong image in the viewer’s mind, vivid enough to make you wonder about its meaning and intention… My first impression was that the performance played in the thin line between divinity and punishment, action and release, elevating the woman body at the center of it, right in that thin line. In any case, the inclusion of performances like this as one more act of the Main Stage widens the conception of Atonal as Festival.

Must confess I missed big part of Rainy Miller’s concert, stuck in the bar… So I could listen, but not watch most of it. It was another “world premiere”, without visuals or any key visual element, Miller performed a special set under a black hoodie moving around different areas of the main floor. Maybe I am spoiled after many editions of the festival, but when Atonal announces ‘WP’ (world premiere) I am always expecting something else than this minimalist display. Yes, still is impressive to observe the many angles of the industrial architecture in a game of lights and shadows, and experience sound getting lost and bouncing in every corner. Miller’s sound and aesthetic was just right for the place, in between beautiful pop melodies, great abstract sounds and emotional voices.

I always take it easy on the openings, I find it the right day to enjoy a quiet stroll, chat with friends and get home early… But still I stayed a bit longer for Holy Tongue on the Stage Null. Somehow was impossible to escape their sound, an infected mixture of jazz, dub, psychedelia and electronic music that made people dance. That moment when you realise your body is asking for it, forget the last U-bahn and let the rhythms take you… I did and it was rewarding. Holy Tongue proved that their albums are a mere encapsulated translation of their true nature, live performing. For me it was the perfect ending for this first night. Tomorrow the trip will start… so I needed a proper rest.

The first act of the main stage was again a highly anticipated project, or let’s say that the sum of all its participants make it an interesting proposal. Another Atonal’s inbreed team-up that included usual suspects: Pedro Maia on visuals, Shackleton / Zimpel on the music side, in special collaboration with singer Siddhartha Belmannu. I knew already quite well the sound of Sam Shackleton and his many deviations into different sound spectrums, I also had the chance to see before his live set with Zimpel, which was a great game of balance between the electronics from one and the distinctive jazzy-folk clarinet sound of the other. Adding to this equation elements of Indian Carnatic music seemed like a great field to explore, so I decided to start right there my journey. The set up was beautiful, like a high contrast between futurism and tradition with some LED lights placed right under each member on stage. The experience was colourful, spicy and intense over all. But at the same time the sum of all its parts might not enhance the result… feeling like Shackleton became a mere background devoured by the omni-present powerful voice of Belmannu, same nearly happens to Zimpel contribution, but in his case the clarinet sound has the ability to make itself still present between the lyrics. Maybe, some longer moments of pure instrumental delight would have helped to balance the equation. Maybe, it’s just this kind of singing, its tone and rhythm is so powerful that by itself is a whole universe, hard to mix with other genres. About the visual aspect of this set, had the same feeling than the day before with MFO. Besides a couple of beautiful moments, what we saw was the usual analog film backgrounds of Maia, that felt more like leftovers than a purposed show. Again, looked like a visual set made on the rush to fill the bill (let’s point out that both, MFO and Maia, had two performances each lined-up in the whole festival). The whole result in my opinion has a great potential, but all the parts involved might need a finest tune up in order to find a more organic balance.

If the concert we just saw had nearly no visual additives, the next one made it clear from the first moment that needed nothing else than their music to conquer and make you vibrate to an state where you barely touched the physical realm, their sound made it whole, taking you in a rollercoaster of emotions and sensitivities where there was room for pure poetry, storytelling, noise, folk, post-rave epic sunshines, experimentation and hypnotic traditional chants. The world premiere presented by Aasthma and Sara Parkman was a pure feast of sound that I hope will be released in full in the shape of an album any time soon. Here you have another assemble of great musicians, each one with their own independent careers, just this time the sum all its parts enriched the final result by leaving space to each one breath their very best into it. Peder Mannerfelt is already known in the line-ups of Atonal, and usually brings a great sense of aesthetics, not only on the music side, but also in how to present it on stage, in this occasion without visual support, but as I said, it was not missed. Special mention to Sara Parkman who’s performance had the capacity to transfer pure emotions through her voice when she was reading several texts to us, even if we couldn’t understand a single word. Sometimes it sounded clearly nordic, but some other times it could have been any other language of the world, still she made us feel, she touched us, and that’s what creation (in this case singing) in pure state is made for.

After a brief encounter in the toilets with one of those unsolicited lovely casual conversations with a tall muscular German guy, that felt the urgent need to ask the following chain of questions: Where are you from? Are you here on holidays? How long since you live here? How is your German? Are you planning to stay… Thanks God in that moment one cabin got free! For a moment I thought instead a toilet inside, I would find an immigration office with a couple of policemen… As I was going to say, it was time for the closing act in the main stage: Sandwell District, the sum of Function, Silent Servant and Regis, promised a high-octane techno set. For the first time in two days we see displayed the iconic vertical screen and the classic set up. The show starts with black and white visuals, a very graphic mixture of typography, burned out images and old footage with bikers, stripes, dots, hypnotic patterns, all perfectly matched to the structure of the building and the industrial driven techno, that the audience receives like manna from heaven… everything seems perfect, even my new German friend from the toilets is beside me asking “what are the odds??!!!” …the illusion lasted no longer than 10 minutes.

Time for the Stage Null, my body feels tired, but still there is some great acts that I’m looking forward to see. The night there opened with aya and MFO presenting ‘u can make me hole again’, a show that was commissioned by Southbank Centre for their Purcell Sessions. And in opposition to Marcel’s show the previous day, here you could see him at his best with a combination of lights, smoke, visuals, lasers… you name it! All in perfect sync to create the right mood, taking us all to an ideal post-rave colourful fantasy that could only fit the surprising aya (before known as LOFT) and her crazy, accelerated, funny, acid, wild take on… breakcore / techno-rave. Her engage with the audience reminded a drag show on speed, were the double sense in her words crossed your brain too fast and too sharp, before you just got the joke she already dropped another hard-bass-bomb. Somehow reminded me to the good old times with Jason Forrest, Sickboy, DJ Scotch Egg, etc. All in all, putting aside the fun, it was a high detailed show, perfectly planned and performed, rich on the display of the many skills from both artists.

Same goes for the first artist on the main floor, Loraine James who was presenting a new album. I was already familiar with her music, indeed I listened her previous albums when they came out, but never felt engaged by them, always saw them like an intimate IDM without the spark, at least the spark I personally like. The live set confirmed my pre-opinion, didn’t make me feel a thing. And once again the visuals instead of adding, became a terrible distraction, without any sense of aesthetic or apparent purpose. A badly interlaced and low resolution video filmed with a phone, a portrait of a poor English neighborhood, with special focus on the pigeons, that was not even long enough for the whole performance. Apart of questioning myself again the need of this instead of having no visuals at all, I wondered, how can an artist ignore the importance of the visual aspect of your concert. I mean, unless you want to communicate with your music that its presentation is cheap, just because… Having an screen on your back doesn’t mean projecting whatever. It means the audience are going to link your music to that moving image. Is that the purpose? Is that lack of quality an statement? Then why not playing music with a bucket and an stick? For me this is a wasted opportunity for the artist, not aware how much the visual aspect affects the perception of their music.

There was a little break with a video art piece from Rebecca Salvadori that reminded somehow the Bauhaus style, immediately followed by the world premiere of ‘NTI-MA, Threshold of Awakening’ a new show from Nkisi including a fascinating dance performance. Here is an example of a concert where I had not much expectations and by the end of it I changed my mind.I had already seen Nkisi performing live in two occasions, and in both cases my feeling was of being in a dark bunker, lighted up by siren lights, where power noise and techno was being played. That sense of “club” experience made me forget the connection sometimes I felt between that and tribal music. And indeed with this new show Nkisi achieves to reconnect both, the spiritual aspect of dance as a ritual, with the contemporary concept of electronic music gatherings. Giving a more profound and elevated dimension to electronic music. No doubt that her music has evolved and enriched in many ways, also on the aesthetic side. It couldn’t have been a better timing at a personal level, my trip was about to become more and more transcendental and spiritual, the vision of sacred rooms and divine entities alternated with personal judgements, regrets, sins and confessions. Becoming more aware of the dark corners of my soul, my ego and the work that needed to be done in order to restore an inner balance.

In that state came again the performance from Florentina Holzinger, which I was about to ‘see‘ for the third time, I decided to enjoy it along friends who still didn’t have that chance, they asked me about it, but I didn’t want to spoil it… Again I was more interested in observing their reactions than seeing a choreography that I already knew. For a moment I became aware of that weird feeling everyone senses when you notice that someone is staring at you, so I excused myself and went further away in the hall, away from the performance, asking myself once again about its purpose, when I was far enough the sound hit me harder, I was still observing the performance and it stroke me that the sound came from the sound system behind me, such a detailed, rich, distorted but beautiful sacred sound… My trip asked me to ’surrender’ to it, I gave my back to the show and committed fully to hear that sound, facing the speakers and the empty stage. In that moment the so called “sound activation” passed through the depths of my body and soul, I felt it, now for real. I needed a third round to finally make sense of the performance as I suppose it was meant,  realising how much the sense of sight was preventing me to experience sound in its full spectrum.

I got ‘lost’ but never alone among many others to presence the last performance on the main stage. Nothing I knew about the artist and I forgot anything I read before. As many times in these trips words come to my mind, as I said before: surrender, heal… they come to you like a message. Also little I knew that the night was about to become even more spiritual, in fact Honour was presenting THE BLOOD (2TEARS & A $UCKET), and as defined on the Atonal program, I was about to experience “a sermon that pushes the boundaries of traditional religious oration and modern liturgical music”, by challenging the audience “to confront their own perspectives on love, death, and memory”. The whole show couldn’t have a deeper spiritual dimension. And I know, most people read these kind of summaries and think it’s just bullshit to look profound. But the music itself, the samples chosen, the visuals projected (black versions of the catholic visual universe), and specially the unexpected journey inside me pushed the limits I wanted to reach so badly, the reason why that night I took more mushrooms than ever in my life, like Icarus trying to reach the Sun. Everything was perfect, in the right place at the right time, when another word came to me. As soon as I verbalised it in my mind: TRANSFORM. I felt my right leg twisting and shattering through my knee, like if that word had the power to do all that by itself, letting me fall on the floor, pretty much conscious of what was happening I ran to catch my knee with both hands, everything was back in its place, but deep inside I knew something was broken somehow. I felt my body, the people surrounding me was really worried and asked me to stay still. I asked for a minute, air and space, just to feel myself. My inner self told me I could and I should stand up, so I did. I tried to calm down those around me and I thanked for their care. I stayed there, still, feeling the whole experience… in that moment, a female voice was coming through the speakers singing to me “It’s the way it is”. I understood. I got the message. I was not in pain, but I knew the consequences were coming… I ended the concert, an amazing performance. Was it provocative or profane? No, I don’t think so. Does all that darkness and unsettling electronic sounds portrayed an evil side? No, I would not place it in Heaven or Hell, that realm where I was sneak peeking in doesn’t have such bias. There, all is one.

For those still interested, the journey continued, while my friend helped me getting home in a taxi, my mind was wandering through the events happened, the significance of that word (transform) and the possible futures to come. If someone asked me in that moment if I was in pain, my answer was that I couldn’t feel the pain, but the fear. Indeed fear is such a powerful tool, it can totally numb your senses, blind your reasons and push you down an spiral of panic. As soon as I was alone in my own room, I sought for help. I was falling apart running inside my mind, like if I would be inside a building on fire I couldn’t escape from. Diving in all those thoughts you never considered before dying. My brother was at the other side of the line (and the world) but he could understand what I was going through… I tried to calm down, breath… breath… deep, breath… lay down on the couch, listening some binaural music, placed one hand on my forehead and another on the chest, and surrendered to the idea of letting go. And if that was the end, so be it. Enjoy it! The calmer and relaxed I got, the lighter I felt, an immense sensation of peace invaded my body. I felt a warm light in front of me, an suddenly a cascade of memories, faces and moments fell over me. I enjoyed going through each and every one of them, specially all the people that has passed through my life. I felt my deceased grandparents and father there with me, my hands were not my hands anymore, but theirs… I felt like I was passing through different levels of blue thick light. In a way I felt ready to go, and at the same time part of my remaining consciousness had still a hook on me, enough to ask myself if all that was real or an auto-suggestion that felt pleasant in order to escape the present moment. Let go…