The Club Transmediale program ran over nine consecutive nights with a tightly packed schedule, including headphone concerts, panel discussions, live acts and DJs, continuing well into the early hours. Opening night featured a lineup of artists fitting under the heading ‘Sampadelic Cut-Up Funk’, with the infamous tech-funk maestro Akufen leading the charge in the main room, and colorful programmed visuals by VJ team Tiny Little Elements and Marius Watz.

Visuals of main room

In the Second Hall was ‘Wasted’, Transmediale’s journey into ‘Breakcore’ featuring Terminal 11 and disco-samplist Jason Forrest / Donna Summer amongst others. I’ve never been a big fan of Breakcore, with its repetitive, unforgiving baselines and repetitive, mind-scrambling gabber beats, but I have to admit it was quite a sight to see a room full of (predominantly male) head-bangers swinging violently about to a strobe light and a smoke machine, even if it did bring back somewhat scary memories of early 90’s clubbing culture at its worst, or ‘most interesting’, depending on what you are into.

The Soft Pink Truth

Saturday night’s program promised to keep those with a less hard-edged taste in music happy, with electro-pop rockers The Soft Pink Truth and Snax in the main room. The crowd reacted positively to both sets, especially to the antics of The Soft Pink Truth who dressed up for the occasion with a rather large stuffed penis attached to his lower half.

A sizeable crowd turned out for Monday night’s ‘art-rock’ program, with Burnt Friedman in the main room supported by former CAN drummer Jaki Liebzeit. They performed a surprisingly upbeat set, melding funky, bass-heavy samples with mid-tempo drum beats, a combination that got most people’s feet moving and a certain number of CAN fans just standing in awe to see one of Germany’s original kraut-rockers playing live in-the-flesh.

Burnt Friedman and Drummer

I was club-weary and running out of energy apr_s-weekend, but heard several good reports of Tuesday’s performance by Single Unit from Norway, who apparently mesmerized the audience with his unique improvised sound, melding elements from opposing genres and styles into a high-energy mix of chaotic yet meticulously structured arrangements.