Our Trinitone Blast

Leipzig-Berlin, June 14

Berlin was a long day.

We drove from Leipzig, leaving around 1pm for the 2.5 hour trip.Soundcheck was 6pm, and took a while to get monitor and house sound right. Then we didn’t play until after midnight. Plus I had a bit of extra nerves playing in front of my sister, her friend Signe (neither had ever seen me pay and came to Berlin from Copenhagen for the show) and friends Chad and Monal (and friends Monal brought).

Now I know why touring bands need quiet dressing rooms, or down-time in the van or bus to chill a bit before the show. At least those musicians with some amount of introvert tendencies (like me…about a 55-45 split on the IE scale in most tests I’ve taken). Introverts like people, we just need to recharge alone or in quiet. From experience I know that to be at my best for a show I need 10-20 minutes of down/alone/quiet time if I’m to play well and clear my head enough to be in the moment and respond to what’s happening on stage. In Berlin, my tactic was to look at the set-list Jules gave me and mentally run thought the changes. I did it while The History of Colour TV were playing and then again during the stage change-over. It helped me calm and focus.


The set was hard and driving...

Black and White
Mountain
Division
Duck and Cover
Energy
Repeater
Illuminate
Day for Night
Slowboat

No real let-up in intensity. Even Repeater, which we deliberately put in as a break from the drone, is heavy and mid-tempo, almost dirge-like (but a higher BPM dirge). It felt like we were pummeling the audience with power, speed, and drone. Day for Night and Energy, two of the ostensibly poppier songs in the set (relative to songs from the EP and 1st side of the new album), featured long drone outros that built up in intensity as we laid into the beat.

Berlin as a city, and Antje Öklesund as a space, seemed appropriate for that kind of approach. Antje Öklesund is in a former furniture-making factory in the Friedrichshain section of Berlin, in what was East Berlin near Karl Marx Allee. It’s on Rigaer Straße, up the block from a bunch of squatter buildings that apparently draw police action on Saturday nights (*).

Friedrichshain in general is a bit grittier…apparently what Prenzlauer Berg used to be, what parts of Kreuzberg used to be. The room itself is all stone…floors, walls, with high ceilings. Though there are lovely bits of geometric pattern shapes hanging from the ceiling for color and depth, it’s still not a warm room, like Noch Besser Lebben. The vibe of our set fit the vibe of the room and the neighborhood.

* - Before the show, the same squatters who drew multiple police vans were staging shopping cart races down Rigaer Straße. After the show, we walked down Rigaer Straße to see what was going on. Near as we could tell the police were more there to intimidate the squatter crowds, and there was no real intent for violence. Just posturing. Though we did see one forlorn attempt at a mattress fire.