The Reeperbahn Festival Preview

You’d think that most places would be satisfied just to be famous for the Beatles and sex. Not Hamburg, though; while it’s hardly ashamed of the fact that the Fab Four cut their teeth with multi-hour sets there (indeed, there’s even a photo on one street that must’ve escaped Epstein’s revisionist clutches as it suggests that they also managed to squeeze in the odd banquet of excellent drugs pie while they were at it), and there’s no end of, er, hospitable ladies doing the rounds, Germany’s best known not-Berlin city’d also quite like us to know that it’s now got the annual Reeperbahn Festival among its charms, and, given that that appears to be a cross between the Camden Crawl and South By Southwest, it’s already terrifically high on our to-do list. So, needless to say, when some hearty souls tied up in organising it asked if we wanted to nip across in advance to get our bearings and catch a band or two while we’re at it… well, you’d've said yes too, wouldn’t you, readers?

Admittedly, one of the bands we see already have something of a profile on this corner of the continent, and, especially sadly given the laconic’n'iconic nature of their chosen venue the Molotow Bar (cavernousness itself, but, if the entrance is anything to go by, an at-least-one-time haunt of virtually everyone who’s broken through on an indie front in around the last ten years. And Hanson, bizarrely), Ganglions don’t do themselves any favours, scuppering their brilliant idea – they’re the hits of shoegazing busked round a Glastonbury campfire, essentially – with a ruinous vagueness.

We weren’t familiar at all with expat Kid Decker, though, and his set in the Hanseplatte record store is a huggable thing indeed as he recaptures perfectly the warm vulnerability and inclusive amiability of the new acoustic movement and even manages to involve the audience in a split-up pantomime singalong; we’d not seen anybody do this since Ms Dynamite in her Proper Pop Star phase, and we’re reminded that we’d like to see it a whole lot more often. Terrific shop too, mind: we find a lot that we like in there (including – and there’s an entire generation that’d be thrilled by this – the soundtrack to The Fantastic Adventures Of Mr Rossi, as re-released by local label Bureau B), and when we’re unable to lay our hands on the CD by sparkling electro-femme Little Dragon that’s being played there as it belongs to one of the staff, said retailer gives us the addresses of all the other disc emporia in the area so we can hunt it down. Well, nearly all – there’s no mention of the dubstep hairdresser’s that we find on the way to the Ruff Trade shop, but even so, service!

And even on a short jaunt like this one we still manage to stumble across plenty more in the way of eminently listenables, with the Tapete label doing all kinds of tremendous internationalist things via the absurdly skyscraping alt.Euroisms of Nom De Guerre, the snarly geek-chic provocations of Herpes and even – joy! – some forthcoming new work from none other than the emperor of erudition himself, Lloyd Cole, and the good folks of Audiolith supporting the area itself with some particularly strong releases floating about from astonishing post-bis battalion Bratze, chunky club wallopers One Foot In Da Rave and – our personal favourites from the trip – the swaggeringly sexy electro-foxery of Juri Gagarin. Brilliantly, we also make the acquaintance of Neon Pingu Pussys, who have probably turned up at precisely the wrong moment to be making, frankly, heroically top-notch new rave records, but do a fine job of jostling with the wonderful Tingle In The Netherlands for having the best new band name of the last twelve months.

But what’s perhaps most striking of all, and which bodes well for somewhere we plan to be running about again at the end of the summer, is that, more than anything, Hamburg feels like a city where punk actually won. Not that it’s all lurid ‘dos and bondage trews, mind, although we do find ourselves at one point in a late and deeply clandestine-seeming bar that’s more than happy to take requests for Sham 69, but there’s a profound politicised bent and a sincere subculturality to the place that permeates every aspect of it. For instance, St Pauli – the football team immortalised in song by Art Brut and literally hundreds of other bands – have a stadium festooned with Robert Crumb-esque artwork and a stand incorporating anti-fascist messages. It’s somewhere militant enough to have art communes digging in in battle with the city’s more homogenising investment elements, yet laissez-faire enough that a bar can spring up with its own sand and parasols and virtually declare itself the beach. And it’s even managed to reclaim an actual war bunker as the home to Mis-Shapes, which, in contrast to the bleeps-n-boshes clubs most associated with German nightlife, can be found blasting Britpop out til inadvisable o’clock.

In fact, there’d be much to enjoy there at any given point, we suspect, although of course you don’t get to see the stellar swirliness of Musee Mecanique, the beautifully profound granitary nihilism of This Will Destroy You, the DIY pranksterism of The Chap or the brutal spartan stagger of Schlachthofbronx every weekend. Ideally, though, the whole scamper-between-venues schtick of the festival should also be a fantastic way to cross paths with a whole glut of even-more-hitherto-unencountered delights; personally, we wouldn’t be at all dischuffed were we to stumble across delicious math-lurchers beat!beat!beat!, techno-flecked tag team ZPYZ, atmosphere-thickening artsy wanderers Fotos, shouty masters of the vicious wibble Saalschutz or the Goldfrapp-as-two-boys wonder that is Curry & Coco, but, really, there’s no end of intrigue to the lineup already and no end of confirmations in sight either. Bring on the Reeper madness, we say…

The Reeperbahn Festival takes place around Hamburg from the 23rd to the 25th of September 2010. More details can be found at www.reeperbahnfestival.com.