Recommendations: May 2023

Jun 02, 2023

In a little burn out / sickness daze at the moment, the last month to six weeks have finally caught up with me! But it was all worth it. From the three weeks I spent in Berlin with the highlights including Marie Davidson at Panorama Bar for Léa’s birthday to finally seeing Marcel Dettmann in Berghain to spending a luscious day on the beach at Plötzensee for Fandango where CCL played a downtempo edit of the Macarena and I managed to get the entire room to follow my lead for the dance routine 🥲 (anyone who knows me will understand how big this is lol). I was one of the lost boys from Peter Pan, running around on little side quests and adventures. That was all in one weekend too! The following weekend was the first edition of REEF for the year where the likes of Kode9, Kampire, mi-el, Laksa, A Made Up Sound b2b Peverelist, re:ni, Esposito and Darwin (the REEF Queen) all played. It’s always the best night surrounded by amazing people and music in a space like Berghain - can’t make that shit up! There was a UK takeover for the afters as well with Leeds party Stretchy Dance Supply taking the reigns at Fitzroy which was incredibly silly. Taking place on one of the biggest weekends in Berlin - May Day - means there was no shortage of events and we ended up heading to the Redstone Press label night at Fitzroy on the Sunday night with Impurity, Bake, Kincaid, FYI Robyn and Lewis Lowe. Bake was a highlight for me with a head spinning set followed by early morning euphoria from Lewis. A blissful ending.

May was also the beginning of my festival season and those reading this newsletter have probably heard enough about Horst Music & Arts Festival by now but it really did live up to the hype. With Bitter Babe making her debut at Panorama Bar on the Friday evening with one of the best sets I’ve seen in that room (the energy was wild), we drove down to Horst on the Saturday and spent the rest of the weekend there. We only had one full day at the festival, which wasn’t enough as there’s so much to see from the thoughtful stage production to art installations and pockets of wonder dotted all around the site. I think I only saw three of the stages, the RA stage and EYES. EYES. baby being the highlights - the latter had a strobe light that swung over the crowd like Thor’s hammer!? Everything was so well executed and I’m so excited to go back next year. I haven’t stopped thinking about Donato Dozzy & dBridge’s epic closing set since, ending with this mammoth track. Special shoutout to Laura, Kia, Mark and Ameira for such a fun road trip <3

Ok one last party (🥵) to highlight is fam fem - a new club night which launched in London earlier this month and is ‘for women, femme-pres. nb & trans masc bbs’. The line-up included Machine Woman, Sketch, Surusinghe, Thempress and co-founder Cass. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a room like there surrounded by the cutest femme energy, with everyone completely lost in the music. They’ve created a space that feels so special and safe which is a rarity in London - I’m super excited to see where it’s heading. London bbs - follow their Instagram linked above for updates.

Side note: Minor Science’s Workahol gets an extra shoutout this month as I played the track on repeat during the last mile of the Hackney Half Marathon race a few weeks ago and it really was the only thing that was going to get me through it. That race was brutal but yay I completed it 🥲👯‍♀️

Basically, a lot of pinch me moments and tears on the dancefloor last month.

Listening Session