Visiting a rock bar in Tashkent

One of the coolest experiences from Uzbekistan was going to ST Bar (бар Своя Территория) - one of the only rock bars in Tashkent! (there's also a place called Tapas bar, but we didn't have a chance to go there).
We were curious about the local alternative scene and came across the bar by mistake. So we decided to drop on an open mic night to maybe play some Girls Like Us songs (even if it meant playing without drums and bass lol).
We even managed to slip in a cover of Adore Delano's I Adore You. And let me tell you, covering a song by a drag queen at an open mic night in Tashkent was one of the best experiences of my life.
It turned out quite riot girl-sounding:

Watch my mom sing right after us!!

The alternative scene in Tashkent are just a few people fighting to be themselves in a country that permits very little. The fact that someone will go unharmed on the street with facial piercings & dressed in black is already a miracle. It was nice to see how everyone keeps close and the atmosphere was very warm.

Why haven't I checked the local scene before? Well, frequent visits to Uzbekistan meant mostly family-time only, and my cousins (21 & 18 yrs) are mostly into rap music/ rap battles. Boris and I haven't thought about it when we came 2 years ago either. I don't know why. Maybe because coming to Uzbekistan meant coming to an obscure place, completely detached from what we are used to?

Why yes, Boris does sport a David Sylvian-inspired look these days.

with ST's art director, Gotya. We had a nice talk with him about the local scene.

All pics courtesy to ST bar, thanks guys!!

So if you are out there in far central Asia, definitely have a visit to ST! They serve smoked cheese as a beer side dish!

We will definitely drop by again when we will go to Uzbekistan next time, It's cool to find a hangout in strange places.

Maria

First gig ever!

I just had to quickly update about our first ever band gig with Girls Like Us! It happened last week and I am still left in it, if I do say so myself - it was a hell of a first gig and I am so proud of us three for rehearsing our asses off to feel so comfortable on stage together! Friends were surprised it was our first time as (from what they told us) we looked and sounded very confident on stage.


And look at the super cool Trabant we drove in to the venue! All thanks to our drummer Maike (in the middle):

coming to the gig like 1969

My first experience with an electrical instrument on stage wasn't as "shocking" as I would expect. I mean- Boris always told me these horror stories about bad soundcheck, asshole soundmen who couldn't care less about you and not hearing some of the instruments as a result.

But the venue was really good, the sound guy was super sweet and really cared for everything. You could tell it was a somewhat high class bar and not a squat we were playing at.


Speaking of which, we actually warmed up Marakesh, an alternative rock band originally from Ukrane, they were pretty big there from what it seemed and even warmed up Placebo in their home land at the time. So we were stoked to play with them, and needless to say they were awesome live, very tight and of course- Mark is one charming frontman!


I still need to get proper photos, but in the meantime here's a short clip from the only song where I sing lead vocals :D
It is sadly only the ending of the song, but I am still happy we've got some kind of recording! More to come in the future I hope.

Next gig is at the end of the month, can't wait already!

Hope you're having a nice summery time! I am still busy as hell, as it's always is when summer semester comes around.

Maria

Eye Of Horus and DJ preparations

I recently purchased an eye of Horus necklace:

I found the cheapest one on Etsy for 4 euro total (with shipping) from this seller. There were 3 pendants in the package (forgot about that!) and came without the cord. I am very happy at the quality of the pendant, and the size didn´t disappoint either. Now I need to buy some more cords since other broken necklaces waiting to be worn.

sloppy face of the day. Roots need to be redyed but I  need to cut tips first.

 Tomorrow I am also taking part in organizing yet another The Wings Of Desire concert, which will take place in the squat, Tommy House.
TWOD are performing together with a post punk band from Amsterdam, Urbay Grey. I saw them live at the Minicave Festival in Münster earlier this month and can´t wait to see them again. They play very chill out, The Cure influenced post punk. I loved their drum machine especially, it was very groovy.

Do you like the poster I made? I used this fragment of The Horrors´ band pic.

Since the concert will be held in a squat it is appropriate to serve band food before the gig (a luxury I am happy to take advantage of on whenever Boris plays with TWOD or Totenwald). This time I have volunteered to help making the food, since I am not doing much anyway aside from DJing later that night. I had a lot of fun helping with veggie burgers before TWOD´s gig in Copenhagen, and it warms my heart to contribute this way.

This will be my second time DJing as well. I liked it so much the first time and had idea for songs ever since. It also saves Boris the hustle of arranging a DJ, and in Berlin everyone is a self proclaimed DJ....
So I set to myself a goal to play only post punk and guitar music. There is a horrible trend in Berlin for (apparently) several years now to play strictly minimal wave and unknown undancable songs, which annoys me beyond belief. So I try to bring some contemporary and old school post punk with some dark 80s hits and deathrock here and there. Let´s see if my DJ skills will improve this time, and if I´ll be brave enough to scatter the snob goths who ask for Sisters Of Mercy songs all the time :P

Have a wonderful weekend everyone, don´t forget to party!

Finsternis.

How we went to Copenhagen

A few days after coming back from Copenhagen and another few days before hitting Uzbekistan, here is a small documentation of our awesome weekend.
As mentioned before, I accompanied Boris, Sergej and Trish (Totenwald) on their concert-trip, where they´ve played alongside other 3 bands (the names of which I do not remember) at an even called Totentanz.
Christoffer, one of the organizers, is also the guitarist and singer of Metro Cult, whom we´ve seen a couple of times in Berlin already. We stayed at his place and he took care of us by walking through the city and enlightening us on all aspect of the Copenhagen goth and DIY scene. It was fascinating and fun, I am always interested in the scene in other countries.
Aside from that there was a ton of live gigs in only 2 nights at lovely squats which we were happy to find out existed.

On our way walking around, a (potentially drunk) guy approached us and wanted to take a picture of us for his "almost like people of NYC project", people of Copenhagen (Typer i København). Little did he know that he´s caught quite an eclectic bunch consisting mainly of people from Berlin originally not from Berlin at all. The picture if my favorite from the entire trip, I am thinking of printing it because of how amusing we look:

me, Boris, Paw who hid himself, Sergej, Trish and Christoffer.

On our second day we walked some more, before hitting the squat that was hosting our gig. I helped making veggie burgers for the bands, it was fun and satisfying. We´ve started drinking that day while having way too much fun with this boxing arena, located on the ever so adolescent "red square" in the city.

What else did we find in the red square? This:

The sign says "Moskvich" in Russian, meaning "a person who came from Moscow", it was also a car company.

So between all the booze, bulge shopping of unusual flavored fish, beautiful people with unpronounceable Danish names and some more booze, Totenwald played their gig, I took photos and videos, and an hour later we were on the bus back, 7 hours ahead of us before we reached Berlin. The trip was so much fun, the scene in K-Town is alive and kicking, the people were so nice and we can´t wait to visit there again!

Here is a video of a new song, Stereotypes:

Now we are getting ready for a trip to a completely different country. I cannot wait to see my grandparents and my parents who arrived there already from Israel. So next update will be probably in October.

I wish everyone a pleasant and adventurous Autumn!

N. Finsternis

Dancing Video from latest The Wings Of Desire gig

I´ve got my hand on uploading the video from the latest The Wings Of Desire gig, which I´ve blogged about here.

The band has been missing a descent concert video ever since the amazing Lena joined as a clarinet player. We got lucky with the sound in the video, though it´s too dark for you to see some parts of my dancing.
We had a lot of fun at this concert, I am so happy to dance, it feels amazing. Hope to hear your opinion on this :)

The Wings Of Desire / Kingdom

Boris is working on recording an EP, so let´s hope it won´t take too long and we could share the music with you!

Also, this thursday we are going to Copenhagen, where Boris´ other band Totenwald will play at Totentanz, a frequent goth event with gigs and parties. We are so excited to go abroad again, not to mention we are doing the trip by bus! 7 hour ride here we come!

I will indeed take lots of pictures and hopefully videos too, so if I won´t blog till then, I will return to you next week. By now I hope to stop having a sudden fever, kind of sucks :/ but at least I´m sick now and not in the middle of the trip XD

picture from the concert which is a visual representation of being on acid. Can you spot Lena in the pic?

N. Finsternis

How we went to see Lee Scratch Perry +picture heavy+

Having a day out in the city with a picnic by the river, of course!

Boris and I have decided to spent the entire day outdoors and enjoy the wonderful weather. We packed sandwiches and a juice + vodka mix and went to sit near the Dome and museum area on the grass by the river. 

We are absolutely in love with the center of the city, the museum island, Alexanderplatz etc etc. despite the numerous times we´ve been walking there it always looks so beautiful and magical to us, urban but not cold. It makes us feel very happy and free when we walk the usual sightseeing places. I just can´t explain why!

This was my outfit and face of the day:

 Bleached my roots since a week, last time was 2 months ago!
Plus my Etsy orders have arrived (moon necklace + another one that I am not wearing here) and I will do a review on them!

bought this skirt from H&M last week. It´s exactly the "simple mini basic but interestingly high waist to all styles manageable" skirt I needed!

Boris having fun with a peach.

Fun Fact: the upper right picture is the only picture of us kissing, ever! In 7 years of relationship we actually have never took a kissing picture, because we thought it was lame. I actually really love this one XD

Some more together pics, we have so few of these! And you can see my tooth in this one, haha!

By now you have probably figured out that there are no pics from Perry´s concert. But the gig was really cool, Lee Scratch Perry is either somewhere in the the clouds of his mind or he is just trolling us all the way... I was a bit disappointed that he didn´t sing his songs with the actual lyrics but mumbled random synonyms (as he always does) and the only way I could recognize a song was by the band who accompanied him. But critic aside, Perry was good live and is very spiritual and Jah preaching live ;)  I was unfortunately very tired the entire time and the venue was packed, so I had to sit outside a couple of songs to breath some fresh air...

By the way, guess who stole a poster from the show? 

Have a wonderful week everyone!

N. Finsternis

Lee Scratch Perry and Instagram!

Weekend has been weird; parties were unpleasant and expensive, the atmosphere was so odd that Boris and I had a white night walking through the Berlin streets instead of wasting our time at some venue.
We did however visit a cool concert in the squat Köpi. Somehow after visiting squats witht heir super cheap drinks/ entry fees it´s a shame to go to a more expensive club and waste your money there. You kind of feel belong to squats the more you visit them.

Anyhow, the band we saw at Köpi was a post punk trio from London, Shopping. We went to see them because we didn´t want to go to a party because concerts can provide support to the scene so much better, and after listening to their music online they´ve sounded not like the usually punk stuff we saw at Köpi before! So we were curious.
If you love post punk and (even) post punk revival, you would find this band interesting.

This saturday Boris and I are also going to see Lee Scratch Perry, perhaps the inventer of dub music, who has been active since the 70s and is probably 100 years old, so we just had to see him while we can! Boris has been listening to a lot of dub these past months, and although we couldn´t attend Andy Horace´s gig last month, we sure couldn´t miss Perry. It was my late birthday present for Boris. I gave him a ticket to Portishead last year ;)
We are excited for the gig, to see someone so historic as Perry, and to feel the somewhat darkness of dub music live!

Due to very boring classes I´ve now opened and Instagram! Yay me, more of my beautiful self for the world to witness! As that was the last thing I needed when I actually can´t concentrate almost in any class (yet going over the material at home by myself makes me very interested and I do learn a lot).

Here is the link, I´ve also added it to my link list in the sidebar.

So far so good, I have officially found a new job and started working yesterday! 3 shift of 4 hours each week in a pleasent atmosphere where I can wear whatever I want and not shred my body to pieces from exhaustion in the process was exactly what I needd!

Wish you a lovely rest of the week, and I hope you are enjoying the beautiful warm days and not wasting them in different facilities getting your head educated! :D

 

N. Finsternis

Totenwald - new dark punk band, photos and videos!

I can finally have a little show and tell about Totenwald, a new Berlin based band where Boris plays guitar in. Sergej (former Tanzkommandi Untergang basist) made the band, and his (everso riot grrl doll) girlfriend Trish Tank is the singer.
I´ve finally had the chance to take photos at their concert (because Squats), and so I´ve decided to shove a video of another concert in Hamburg they´ve had. Last month they´ve warmed up Metro Cult and Dystopian Society (and this post).

Some photos from this week´s concert. I was so happy to attend one, because this week is nothing but a mindfuck, yet I was so damn tired and had a stupid Seminar the day after so we had to leave early.

And of course I can share some music with you!!! Shot by a dear friend from a different concert which I didn´t attend, but I was so excited to see that the sound was quite good :)

Totenwald / Gentrification X

Totenwald / Cosmic Loneliness

Hope you´ve enjoyed, have a punk weekend and free time! I certainly hope to have some fun this sunday, we will be celebrating Boris´ birthday!

N. Finsternis

Totenwald, Dystopian Society and Metro Culr @ Köpi

Last night we had  a triple punk gig at the infamous house project, Köpi.
I was very excited to see Dystopian Society and Metro Cult for the second time! The warm up band were Totenwald, a brand new project which Boris takes part in playing guitar. I´ve heard their music for the first time, and they were really awesome on stage! The drum machine sounded really well and full, not giving away that it was electronic at all!
The energy and vibes were great, I mostly jumped myself to exhaustion at Dystopian Society until I had no breath left! Seriously, they absolutely kicked ass and I felt like crawling up the stage and singing all the words to all the songs, since I´m listening to their album Cages  very frequently(and their new material is great as well). I love how their music is catchy, punk and dark at the same time (a bonus entertainment is me copying the band´s italian accent. I should be punished for this...).
Metro Cult were very unique, their music sounded more complex to me than the last time I saw them, so it was an interesting surprise. I loved how they´ve made post punk to sound so progressive and the synth provided by Joannah were very fitting!

I definitely recommend you guys to check both bands out, because DIY! :P

the poster I´ve made for the gig!

Unfortunately there were failing conditions to take photos. Köpi do not allow photography in general, and the only way I could take pictures was from the second floor where the sound men were sitting, and strictly without flash (reason for my love-hate relationship with the place). I gave up on the idea of taking photos because of that.... nonetheless, Totenwald will play this Tuesday in Tommy House (another house project) and I will blast a ton of photos for sure!

I did take some selfies before I left though...

N. Finsternis

The Wings Of Desire + Gruftschlampen concert

I had a pretty busy week, and completely forgot to share here the photos from last weekend.
Boris had another concert with The Wings Of Desire, this time with our lovely friends Brita and Kokel of the Gruftschlampen.
The night was just great, both bands played very well, the music was awesome but most importantly- the atmosphere was very personal and warm, thanks to the people of course :)
Unlike my previous dismay from society mention after the first The Wings Of Desire gig, this concert was very positive, kicking and powerful. I literary wanted more after the bands finished playing.
I also put my small share in decorating the place using wool to make it look like spiderwebs. The organizer of the event was so stoked about it he helped me a lot, what made it look perfect :)

Here are some pics:

The batcave spiderweb! Wasn't too seen in other photos since it was too dark.

Gruftschlampen:

The Wings Of Desire:

 

Boris only decided to post a few pictures for now, and save the most for later on.

I've also made a video of one of his songs! It was unfortunately too dark to have a descent video recording, so I've edited it a bit so one could actually see more than just a black screen:

Please do check the bands on Facebook! Your support is what makes us alive :)

Other fun photos and outfit of that night will follow!

Have a calm weekend everyone!

N. Finsternis

The Wings Of Desire Concert Video!

I had lots of fun helping and documenting Boris' first ever concert in Berlin with his post punk project, The Wings Of Desire.
It was the main reason Boris [and I] wanted to move to Berlin- it is to make music and live the scene.
The concert was more of a "friend gig" because it was held in a really small pub, had to be quiet because of the neighbors around and because it was Boris' first entry and he was on his own, about 10 people came.

But you see, this was exactly the opposite from when Boris did concerts in Israel. Back then, when the number of people in the audience outnumbered the one person on stage I would sigh in relief. And when the gig would be over I would become very anxious and angry at the world, because in a small [old school]gothic-sunbculturally deserted place like Israel, even your "alternative" friends who've cried that there had been nothing interesting ever happening in your city, never came. And after the gig I would have absolutely no enthusiasm in making future concerts, because there was almost zero feedback from human beings. Almost.

But this time, even though there weren't a lot of people, the atmosphere was great. Boris made a very good performance [slightly awkward in the beginning as expected, but very very powerful and charismatic towards the end] and everyone said they liked it. I felt like thanking everyone personally a thousand times for coming, because it wasn't taken for granted AT ALL! Not to mention we stayed at the pub for like 4 hours afterwards just chatting with everyone. The after-feeling was amazing. I couldn't recall another The Wings Of Desire concert that's left so much hope and happiness in my heart.

Here are a few pics that I've made.

 Outfit post next time, don't worry...

Boris has styled himself, by the way. He even told me what makeup he wanted :)

I've also made a video of 2 songs, one of which we've decided to post, despite planning on keeping it a super awesome rare footage for centuries later [silly us] XP

Alas:

Divers.

I really love his performance, the lightning was great and added a lot to the video.

I am still excited that things have went so good. Oh and note, I am not the official part of the band, I am only head of visual crap, because I really love helping Boris with his music, and I love bringing weird ideas to the stage! I already have a set for the next gig on the 29th!

Please sure your support by liking The Wings Of Desire Facebook Page, because we're traumatized from lack of support back in Israel we need to know you're there with us! :D

Have a great week everyone!

N. Finsternis