Blackest Ever Black marks its fifth anniversary with a major two-part event at Berghain. Founded in 2010 as an outlet for the music of Raime, and to explore a new gothic impulse in electronic music, over the past five years the London-born, now Berlin-based label has evolved into something much more idiosyncratic and genre-blind, though its fondness for the mysterious, the disquieting, and the absolutely bloody miserable remains intact.
The event is split into two parts. The earlier part of the night, presented with Death Disco, features a live performance from Tropic of Cancer. Camella Lobo’s LA-based project, now expanded to a three-piece for live performances, debuted on BEB with The Sorrow Of Two Blooms back in 2011, and has remained a fixture of the label, releasing the 2013 album Restless Idylls. A new Tropic of Cancer EP is due out in October. Support for TOC comes from Berlin “punks-on-wave” Diät, and Death Disco DJs.
http://https://youtu.be/UTqM7cKdoTo
The second part of the night features live performances from Raime and Prurient. Raime and their music – a minimalist but emotive, highly original synthesis of such disparate influences as jungle, post-punk, dub, doom metal and post-hardcore guitar music – have been synonymous with BEB since its inception. This Autumn they release the eagerly awaited follow-up to their 2013 album Quarter Turns Over A Living Line, and this live show in Berlin will be the first of unveiling of new album material, and of the group’s new live configuration.
Prurient is Dominick Fernow, founder and figurehead of Hospital Productions, and one of the most influential underground artists of his generation. His 2013 Prurient LP Through The Window, a visionary meeting of techno and power electronics, was released on Blackest Ever Black in 2013, and Fernow has contributed to the label before and since under numerous aliases, among them Vatican Shadow, Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement and Exploring Jezebel. This live performance will be Prurient’s first in Berlin since the release earlier this year of what is arguably his masterpiece, the double-album Frozen Niagara Falls.
http://https://youtu.be/qgszsGqevtk
DJ sets come from Regis and Felix K. UK techno legend Regis, aka Karl O’Connor, was one of Blackest Ever Black’s earliest supporters, and quickly became one of its key artists, not only releasing his own work (2011’s In A Syrian Tongue LP) but lending his remix and studio skills to releases by Tropic of Cancer, Ike Yard, Dalhous, Vatican Shadow and Raime. This September sees the release of Manbait, a compilation of the Downwards boss and Sandwell District co-founder’s production work for BEB.
The roots of Berlin native Felix K are in drum-and-bass, and he has repeatedly advanced and invigorated the genre with his own sparse, dub-centered productions, making important lateral connections to austere Hard Wax-school techno and more abstract electronic realms. As well as being one of the faces behind the Hidden Hawaii label, Felix released an EP of his own productions, Tragedy of the Commons, on BEB earlier this year.
http://https://youtu.be/s01gAcuai8k
Behind the landmark electronic and experimental music imprint PAN, founded in 2008, stands DJ and producer Bill Kouligas. A label that quickly garnered praise internationally, PAN does not subscribe to a singular style; rather, it identifies unorthodox expressive voices from different generations and scenes, bringing them into dialogue and exploring their intersections and the ways they reference one another. Together with Objekt, Lee Gamble, Josey Rebelle and M.E.S.H., Kouligas will set Panorama Bar on fire.
Blackest Ever Black x PAN
Friday, 30 October 2015 | 21:00 CET
Berghain | Am Wriezener Bahnhof | 10243 Berlin/Friedrichshain
blackesteverblack.com | p-a-n.org | berghain.de
