Berlin Festival – Tempelhof Airport

There are stranger places to hold a music festival than Berlin’s 104-year-old Tempelhof Airport, but not many. Eagles flank the departure building ominously, while a yawning airfield encroaches upon Schöneberg’s uninspiring horizon. And while the less illustrious passages of its history remain masked by functionality, one spectacular bell-end has actually entered the festival’s fancy dress competition in a costume that has uneasy echoes of Goering. Well, It beats making the Music for Airports joke, except, you know, it really doesn’t.

Still an airport is an apposite setting for a city festival, dealing as they both do in pockets of escapism. Once airside the open, rheumatic spaces find rhyme with James Blake’s opening set. The acoustics sometimes work in Blake’s favour, the windows of departures tremble promisingly as malignant spasms of sub seep from the pauses in ‘Limit to Your Love’. However, the halting ‘I Never Learnt to Share’ feels deadened by the emptiness; wan soul lost amidst the tarmac expanse.

“Our album is out here today so we’re happy to be here for that,” declares The Drums’ Jonathan Pierce insouciantly, hip cocked, beach-blonde highlights mussed in the chill air. Sadly, poor sound levels and an unenthusiastic crowd defuse the band’s natural charisma, and even Pierce’s sociopathic marionette moves seem halfhearted. The chirpy single ‘Money’ feels rushed and keyboardist Jacob Graham’s attempts to instil some gravity through elegant cod-conducting hand gestures appear touchingly futile. It’s up to HEALTH, in the far hangar, to stomp on mediocrity’s head and wrestle disinterest to the floor with their cover of Pictureplane’s ‘Goth Star’. The kick drum stomps with finality, the guitars shred and twinge, John Famiglietti’s hair flails. It’s the bolt of adrenalin into the festival’s rapidly blueing arm.

However, as daylight fades things make more sense; party girls in sexed-up hostess uniforms coagulate round the toilets, cynical Berliners stop taking the piss out of the Amy Winehouse made of toast in the art village and Hercules and Love Affair bring a veneer of decadence to the conference atmosphere. Aerea Negrot may punctuate ‘Painted Eyes’ with her throaty soprano like a woman screaming at cars from a traffic island, but it’s nothing on the almighty schaffel pomp Battles are brewing which threatens to sinkhole us all.

While it’s difficult to muster a fuck for Primal Scream’s embarrassing-dad, “I took acid once, kids” routine, Suede still possess a degree of relevance. ‘Trash’ resonates with Berlin’s own glamorously wasted credos, illustrated by the local crowd screaming along with unstudied enthusiasm. Brett Anderson himself looks in rude health, in tailored trousers and figure-hugging shirt more Issey Miyake than Terylene. “Sing with me?” he mouths to the front row whom he courts during ‘The Wild Ones’. But it’s onstage, from a distance, where he looks his best, falling to his knees during ‘Metal Mickey’, a nimbus of steam rising from his soaked-through shirt. As Brett swings his microphone over his head for the climax of ‘Beautiful Ones’ he rips a hole in the space-time continuum, and we are flung back to the ’90s where we’ll always be misunderstood outsiders with androgynous hair, shit accessories and beautifying drug habits.

The next day brings bigger crowds and warmer temperatures, which sits well with both Mount Kimbie concrete loops and Tune-Yards’ rag and bone tropicalia. The latter sees Merrill Garbus — all stare-y eyes and supernatural yelp — constructing percussive layers from vocals, glass bottles and her mic stand. The sax squall of ‘Gangsta’ sees the assembled throng swing their arms like gap year casualties. “There is a natural sound animals make when they’re bound,” Garbus yelps during ‘Hatari’. We’d venture it sounds like the noise coming from the awkward, just-found-themself Berliners coaxed into singing along.

With limbs thus warmed and minds numbed by pilsner, Beirut provides ample diversion before Pantha du Prince who, for clued-up Berliners, is the real draw. The producer has always been linked with the more

romantic end of techno-minimalism, and the warm, engulfing throb is as life-affirming as a heartbeat. Led on through the dry ice by hooded figures he’s at once there and not there, cloyingly dramatic figurehead and the ultimate anonymous techno cipher. Opening with the chimes of ‘Asha’, he begins slowly, organically, a light cast onto a filter creating uncanny shapes onto a screen behind.

He’s up against Boys Noize on the main stage, and the contrast is stark. Where Alexander Ridha offers an instant mid-range hit, Hendrik Weber finesses the details of his productions with timing and nuance. A massage versus a punch in the face. The glistening patina of ‘A Nomad’s Retreat’ feels more filigree here, yet when he rips out the textures and accelerates into the mechanical throb of ‘Behind the Stars’, we’re having flashbacks to the most feverish basement visions. Just as we’re beginning to lose ourselves, Weber is given the signal to wrap it up. As he prises out the kick, we’re guided back down to earth with chiming ambience. Transcendence grounded, the trip halted. An apt closure to two curious days in a disused airport. And while die-hard Berliners’ ashen faces flush with the prospect of the after-party, it seems wiser to call it a day. Sometimes the best trips are the ones you know when to end.

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