Berlin Digital

While try­ing to dig into the Berlin elec­tron­ica scene, the good record stores etc., I came across Berlin Dig­i­tal as I was brows­ing the shelves of Dense (which is also an excel­lent record store — lots of Mille Pla­teux, Staub­gold, dub, breakcore).

It’s an 2004 DVD (175 min­utes) shot in ten days, high­light­ing some of the Berlin elec­tro scene, fea­tur­ing labels like !K7, Shitkat­a­pult, Sonar and Hard:Edged, clubs like Water­gate, peo­ple like Gudrun Gut and much more. It gives a good pic­ture of what you’ll be able to find if you dig a little.

As extras there are a 5 minute run-down of good record stores, list­ing their genre, loca­tion the vinyl/cd-ratio etc. Prob­a­bly hope­lessly out of date, but very use­ful nev­er­the­less. And a look behind the scenes at a dub-plate pro­duc­tion plate. Nice imagery of peo­ple tak­ing cut­ting foil seri­ous — and a lit­tle the­ory of the game of dub-plating as well. Interesting.

It’s all well-produced and the inter­views take place all over Berlin, giv­ing the artists an excel­lent oppor­tu­nity to tell a bit about the city, their neigh­bor­hood, the best places to eat.

It got me think­ing about an idea I’ve had for years; try­ing to por­tray cities from the point of view of peers. I’d like to have, not only a city guide, but a city guide made for peo­ple like me — by peo­ple like me. I couldn’t care less, say, if some bridge was built dur­ing the thir­ties or fourties — but I would thor­oughly enjoy like-minded peo­ple shar­ing their knowl­edge of good places to eat, catch a good per­for­mance, good the­ater, good clubs, the best wifi-cafes etc. If it makes sense for this par­tic­u­lar scene, make it look pretty as well. I’m sick of lists on old web­sites and cheap ‘in the city’-magazines with focus on main­stream entertainment.

I’d rather know about the afore­men­tioned things as well as places in the city where you nor­mally wouldn’t go as a tourist. A Copen­hagen guide of this type would high­light the outer parts of Hol­men, pro­vide direc­tions to the area behind the rails, list the best places to catch a cheap break­fast etc.

The record store part of the DVD should be online some­where and get updated every sum­mer, it should be hooked up to Flickr, Plazes or what­ever. I know about 43places, but some­how that doesn’t cut it.

I’m think­ing of doing soemthing about it as soon a sI return home, in the mean­while, thoughts and ideas are very welcome.

Berlin Dig­i­tal in Berliner Mor­gen­post.