Finally, something to spice up the general monotony of Perth nightlife - a night devoted to reasonably monotonous Germanic techno. Yay! Tonight down at Shape we have all three of the above mentioned Berliners swinging through town for a ‘Beck’s Fusion’ session - close to the only proper techno evening this town has seen in a good solid year or so. I didn’t manage to frequent any of the famous Berlin clubs in my brief time there, which I kinda regret now, but hey, I’m sure this will recreate the non-stop 24 hour party mayhem that is a night out at the Berghain. Right?

Of course, those of you from over east may recognise all three of their names from the poster of the We Love Sounds festival, but hey, we don’t care that at our ‘We Love Ministry’ we were stiffed half the acts, had our alcohol cut off at 2 am, and had the festival scattered across three venues at least 5 minutes walk apart from one another that were plagued by massive queues whenever one wanted to change venue. And why didn’t we care? Because I got my ticket for free. Oh, wait. That’s ‘I’, not ‘we’. I had fun. And now back to the techno.

That’s Ellen Allien you see at the top of this post, who has possibly the coolest name of all time (well better than her real name, Ellen Fraatz), and whom I can never entirely work out whether or not I find attractive. It changes immensely from photo to photo I swear. Something about the nose… Still she’s one of the queens of the German scene, running the always influential BPitch label and DJing at pretty much every club of note in that country and beyond. She’s released 4 solo albums, one collaborative effort with Apparat (the amazing ‘Orchestra of Bubbles’ - highly, highly recommended), and last year put out a mix for Fabric that was audacious enough to include a 7 minute rendition of Thom Yorke’s ‘Harrowdown Hill’. She later described it as her idea of an ideal club set… could be interesting. Still, her production work is astonishing, and surely tens of thousands of coked-up German disco auteurs can’t be wrong…

Ellen Allien - Open

Ellen Allien & Apparat - Way Out

Modeselektor on the other hand = teh awesome. I’ve tried to explain Modeselektor to a few people over the past couple of weeks and have found myself fumbling wildly for appropriate genres. Kinda techno, kinda grimey, kinda hip-hop, kinda dubstep. But all sorts of cool. They ripped the blog world apart early last year with their incredible collaboration with Thom Yorke, ‘The White Flash’, but such downbeat adventures are far from representative of their sound. Although I’m still not entirely sure what that ’sound’ is. Either way, from all reports their sets are absolutely cranking and I’m looking forward to hearing a couple of these on a brutally large sound system.

Modeselektor - Deboutonner (feat. Siriusmo)

Modeselektor - Hasir

And finally, Lindstrom. I don’t really know anything about Lindstrom, but here’s a pretty sweet little remix he did of LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Tribulations’ which somehow found it way into my iTunes library. So many hidden nooks and crannies in that thing.

LCD Soundsystem - Tribulations (Lindstrom Mix)

-luke