Drop Dead Festival
Day 6 - Bands in order of appearance:
Mirco Magnani
Lebanon Hanover
Bettina Köster
ADS, Berlin
Tuesday September 6 2011
Drop Dead, day six. I thought we'd never get here. I'm definitely suffering festival overload now, to the point where I'd almost prefer to sit in a quiet room and read a good book rather than spend yet more time absorbing yet more bands.
It's not often I'll express anything less than enthusiasm for live music, but I've been coming to the same venue and watching bands for six days straight. I'm going rock 'n' roll stir crazy.
Fortunately for my sanity, the first act I catch in Drop Dead's back room - where all the live action is taking place on this last day of the festival - isn't actually a band at all.
Mirco Magani occupies that nebulous musical area where avant-garde shades into neo-classical; where left-field electronica becomes outright experimentalism. In short, he's a bit of a boffin, although tonight he's a shadowy figure standing behind a keyboard, generating ambiences while performance art takes place in front of him.
The show belongs to his collaborator, Michelle Baard, who shuffles crabwise on stage, swathed in black, like a little old lady who's fallen through a manhole into another dimension. With a curious blend of awkwardness and elegance, she folds and unfolds herself in a bizarre rebirth sequence, then swathes herself in a sheet, queen ghost to Noisy Pig's king. A projected face appears on the sheet, and Michelle Baard becomes an alien creature, writhing in the light. It's not rock 'n' roll, that's for sure, but this interlude of art is just what we need at this stage of the proceedings.
And now for some rock 'n' roll. Well, sort of. Lebanon Hanover have not arrived from either Lebanon or Hanover. Drop Dead bills them as a UK band, although like much of this year's Drop Dead bill, they're actually based in the international melting pot of Berlin. There are two of them: Laurissa Iceglass and William Maybelline, and with names like those they'd better hurry up and become pop stars.
What are their chances, then? Well, Lebanon Hanover are a none-more-minimal guitar/bass/drum program thing, all frosty stares, sparse beats and slo-mo basslines. They're like a moody version of Deathline (to mention an actual, based-in-the-UK band that Drop Dead really should've booked by now), or a K-hole incarnation of S.C.U.M.
Lebanon Hanover exude the same art-before-everything approach, although their bleak reductionism is all their own. But there's a touch of camp humour in the mix, too - when the band launch into their disco dirge 'Totally Tot' it's impossible not to smile as William Maybelline informs us, dead-eyed and deadpan, that "On the dancefloor I'm totally tot." Pop stars? Probably not in this universe. But Lebanon Hanover's frozen grooves would liven up any funeral.
Now it's time for the last act of the last night of the Drop Dead Festival. It's been a long strange trip to get here, that's for sure, but we've finally arrived at the topping-out ceremony.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the formation of Malaria - and the 27th anniversary of the band's split, although nobody's drawing attention to that. I dare say everybody's been secretly hoping that the band would reform, but it seems that's not on the cards. Instead, we have Bettina Köster, the group's former lead vocalist, and a laptop. It would be churlish to remark that this set-up is a little underwhelming compared to an actual band (not necessarily Malaria: any band). But, it seems, bands aren't the way Bettina does it these days.
In the past I've seen Bettina Köster perform with a drummer and bassist, and once with herself on saxophone, but never with a full-on band. Tonight, at any rate, we're going to get a full-on laptop.
Bettina struts and swaggers on the empty stage like Marlene Dietrich doing a party-piece, and gives us a selection of her own material and some slicked-up Malaria tracks. It doesn't actually sound bad - in fact, the old Malaria groover 'Kaltes Klares Wasser' feels entirely at home in its new electronic overcoat. Bettina's rendition of the Velvet Underground's 'Femme Fatale' has an air of lilting regret that suits the circumstances rather well - last night of the festival, everyone getting ready to go home. But even so, I wish there was a band on stage doing this stuff. Bettina Köster, as a kind of auto-karaoke act, is good...but, to be blunt, her solo show just ain't as great as a band would be. It's an oddly low-key way to wrap up a festival that's had plenty of highs.
So, that was six days of Drop Dead. Probably about two days longer than it really needed to be, but we arrived at the finishing line mostly intact. I think we'll have one last beer to celebrate, and then head out of here.
My regret at the festival's end is termpered by relief that at least I won't have to traipse down to Club ADS tomorrow. I was beginning to feel like a Berlin commuter, going to work on the night shift: same S-Bahn train, same place every night. But was it worth it? It certainly was - for Mueran Humanos, for Trans4Leben, Noisy Pig, Phoenix Catscratch - yes, there was plenty of good stuff over the last six days.
Next year is Drop Dead's tenth year - although not the tenth festival. Since there was no Drop Dead in 2009, it'll be festival number nine. Or, if you count those early offshoot events in Philadelphia and Boston, number twelve. Or thirteen, or fourteen, or something. At any rate, Drop Dead has survived and evolved for a decade, so that's reason enough for a party. As long as the anniversary doesn't become a reason to extend the whole thing to seven days, or eight days...
But it'll be interesting to see what Drop Dead does next. How will the festival position itself vis-a-vis deathrock? Is deathrock enough of a force nowadays to justify taking a position at all? Will Drop Dead acknowledge the contemporary UK scene, and haul in some of our bands who can really do the death disco?
One thing's for sure. It's a unique event, and that's not likely to change. Let's hear it for the art damage.
Bettina Köster: Website | MySpace
Lebanon Hanover: Website | Facebook
Mirco Magani: Website | MySpace
Drop Dead Festival: Website | MySpace | Facebook
Back to Day 1 of the Drop Dead Festival here.
For more photos from the Drop Dead Festival, find the bands by name here.
