There is something about the environment of Berlin that breeds serendipitous happenings. Case in point: On Tuesday night I found myself enjoying a glass of wine at CCCP bar and as I came out of the bar to sit at an outside table, a well-dressed gentleman smiled at me and jokingly pretended that he didn’t know which way to go. A half hour later, that same man was sitting across from me at the bar at the LEE Jean’s fashion part at Kitty Cheng Bar.

Let me set the scene for you. The streets were busy with various fashion week parties along Torstrasse, but inside Kitty Cheng Bar one found Heisskalt waiting to perform as Lee Jeans hung from the bar and the ceiling alongside a blinding discoball; it was clearly the choice of the evening, which was noted by the line out front.  From the coasters to the napkins, the event was branded. Even the bartenders were wearing their best denim outfits.

As I was sitting outside enjoying a whiskey and cola, a man came outside to usher everyone inside “The band is starting. Come inside. Come inside.”  No hesitation was present, the entire outside crowd crammed into the tiny Kitty Cheng Bar: a space not particularly made for rock concerts.  The front row of the room was filled mostly with the band’s fans and not Berlin Fashion Week attendees, already proving a desirable, if unlikely, combination as the energy was quickly shared between the two parties.

Heisskalt jumped right into their set. The drums vibrated the entire room and I could literally feel the music from my cowboy boots to the glass in my hand. Heisskalt’s vocalist, Mathias Bloech, has crafted the stereotypically harsh German language into a version of musical poetry, only allowing for it to be harsh when he wishes it to be: the screams that take one by surprise in the midst of “Schatz”, a fairly calm love song or in the chorus of “Hallo”, where the screams couple with the bass drum to create an noticeable impact.

The band’s motto sums it up well in several lines: “Wir sind das eine Bier zuviel. Wir sind die Zigarette danach. Wir sind der Kuss im Regen.Wir sind der gute Rat von Mutti. Wir sind der Döner um Fünf. Wir sind der Föhn in der Badewanne deiner Schwiegermutter. Wir sind wie Sex, nur lauter. Wir haben heute Nacht mit dir geschlafen. Wir sind Heisskalt!" Or, roughly, in English: “We are one beer too many. We are the cigarette after, We are the kiss in the rain. We are the good advice from mother. We are the Döner (late night food) at 5 am. We are the hair dryer in the bathtub of your motherinlaw. We are like sex, only louder. And tonight we sleep with you.  We are HeissKalt!”  The evening did go a bit something like that. No one left the building without sweating or without a ringing in their ears. I happened to come home still humming the melody of “Dezemberluft”. 

Berlin is an electric place in the summertime: beers on park benches, outside concerts, palpable creative energies; there isn't much more that one could want.  I first came across Radio Dead Ones at a Core Tex outdoor concert for the First of May.  Their energy and their particular brand of punk rock that has found them on bills alongside such bands as Backyard Babies, Mad Sin, and Beatstakes, grabbed my attention and made me wade through the crowd. The Berlin music scene can prove difficult to navigate...sometimes serendipity takes over and a compass (or an extensive web search) is not needed. This was one of those times. Several weeks later, I found myself on a bench outside of Core Tex drinking Beck's with Bev and Rik and chatting about what makes Radio Dead Ones tick.  

How did the band form?
Bev: Rik is my brother and we have been singing together forever. And one of my best friends...we went to nursery school together, so we have known each other for forever as well. And then our drummer is also a schoolmate. Then ten or eleven years ago we moved to Berlin from Magdeburg, which became famous because of Tokio Hotel (a bit of laughter). They are from the same city. But there was nothing else going on, aside from the one band. We decided to move to Berlin to get something started.

What made you want to make music?
Bev: It was so boring in that city where we grew up, that we were just sitting at home listening to records. There was nothing else to do. Only listening to music. We were so focused on music that we decided we had to make a band. It was a good excuse to move to Berlin because we didn’t want to work or anything. But we always had the excuse: “Yeah, but we are in a band.”
  
Can you describe your songwriting process a little bit?
Bev: Not really because we are not really songwriters at all. We are just punk rockers who...
Rik: We just do it all together. With everyone. But on our first record, our drummer wrote most of the songs because he can play every instrument: bass guitar, drums. Everything.
Bev: It is always kind of luck. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not.

Why the decision to write your lyrics in English and not in German?
Bev: Because German sounds horrible. (laughs)
Rik: We don’t listen to German music at all.
Bev: We were never listening to German bands at all. Most of the music, like 99% of the music that we listen to is in English. The Clash. The Sex Pistols. The Ramones. Those are the bands that we started with and it was all in English. I don’t know, I don’t like the German bands. It sounds too intelligent, you know? English just sounds better; the focus is more on the emotional side and you don’t have to use your brain always.
Rik: We wrote one German song, but he (Bev) doesn’t like to sing it anymore.
Bev: It’s just so embarrassing. We never recorded any German song before and the first three words everyone was just laughing the whole time.

What are your influences aside from music?
Rik: Alcohol.
Bev: Yeah, it’s sad but true. Alcohol is a big influence. Ordinary life.
Rik: Our drummer is really into movies.
Bev: Really into movies. He is just sitting at home and watching movies all the time. But for us, it is working. Even working can be really influential.  We are working in hostels, so there is always something going on. Sometimes there are people who steal stuff and then I get really, really angry and it inspires you to write a song. Ordinary stuff.

What are your thoughts on the Berlin music scene?
Bev: It’s got a few good bands and a lot of boring bands. It’s still a good scene. It’s a lot of nice people and even if you don’t like the music of every band, most of the people in the bands are very nice people. 
Rik: It’s so easy to meet people.
Bev: Every club is very open to everything. You don’t have to be a psychobilly guy to go to a psychobilly show. Everything is very open-minded. I used to have long hair for three years and they would make jokes and call me “the hippy”, but it would never get serious. Small cities, you have long hair and go to a show where there are skinheads and they might beat you up just because of your hair. But not in Berlin. That makes Berlin open-minded. The music scene itself, Germany doesn’t have a music scene. We have a lot of friends in London and it is so hard to survive there: you work six days a week and still can’t pay your rent because it is so expensive there. But in Berlin everything is really cheap. That makes the people here really spoiled...they just hang around.  In London, you have to work your ass off to get something done for your band. In Germany the promoters pay really well and it’s easy to go on tour. It’s easy to be in a band in Germany and you can really feel that in the music.

How would you describe your live show?
Bev: Sometimes we have talked about how we really want to see our show from in front of the stage. You just see a video afterwards and you can’t really recognize yourself. Being on stage is so automatic. We don’t think too much about it or time when we are all going to jump.  We always try to bring a party, even if it’s only five people...we try to push it to the limit.

How do you prepare for a live show?
Bev: That depends. When we have Pfeffi, that peppermint liquor, we drink that before the show.
Rik: We always drink that before a show.
Bev: It is not always available. 

How do you decide on your set list?
Bev: We are a punk rock band, it’s not that we have a big hit that we play at the end of the set. You play a few fast songs and then maybe a slow one.  We used to play covers of the Ramones. I like the slower ones better than the faster ones.
Rik: Of course playing the new songs is the best.
Bev: We just recorded a record in December and that was just so much more fun. We put a lot more energy into writing the songs. Before it was just something we did in between and we were always touring. For almost six years, we didn’t have a break and we just made two records in that time.  Not even writing, it was more just recording something. But this time we took a break for a whole year.
Rik: And we only played five shows.
Bev: So I like the newer stuff. It’s much better.

What were some of the difficulties with the recording process?
Bev: I think the chemistry between the people, the band. That is the hardest job. It was 13 days.
Rik: No. Three weeks. With three days off. And we had a producer for the first time.
Bev: Yeah, and he was from London. So we had to speak in English all the time. We have known each other for our whole lives, so it is really hard to not speak German to each other.  But this time we had to speak in English. And when you have a really bad argument and you really have to get to the point, it gets lost in translation.

Did having a producer to help with the process:
Bev: Working with a producer was really helpful. When you do everything on your own, you get to the point where you are not sure if it is completely bullshit or if it is good. If you should keep working on it or just throw it away.
Rik: We tuned our guitars for the first time. It just sounded so much better. 

Check out Radio Dead Ones @ http://radiodeadones.de

There is an odd pattern that you have to get used to in Berlin. Amidst the abandoned buildings and numerous displays of street art on whatever surfaces happen to be empty and begging for a bit of artistic decoration, lie empty spaces that become home to the palpable creative energy that lives underneath the grey skies of Berlin. I wandered into one such space the other day. There was no signage, but I could hear the hum of music. Not being able to ignore my natural instincts, I let me feet lead me through an empty courtyard and past the broken windows signaling an abandoned space.  A rather bright light in a doorway caught my attention and I ventured over. It was the entrance. They were only asking for a couple euros as entry, which seemed a fair trade off. The building was sparsely populated. Its charm lay in the exposed pipes, the small stage overcrowded with gear, the graffiti covered walls, and the 3 Euro glasses of wine served in chipped crystal glasses.

The night started of with an awkward man in a trendy bowtie playing acoustic guitar and singing about astronauts.  He reminded me of an accented Jeff Buckley as he crooned on high notes and apologized for his broken English.  No one seemed to care much for they were already enamored. As was I.   He played a few songs, his voice growing stronger and rawer with every note that he strained to hit.  And then stepped aside to make room for a full band; a band in which he was the guitar player. Adam Evald is an aesthetically unassuming man; his angular haircut and twinkling eyes are no match for his palpable energy.  There is something about him that doesn’t allow you to look away. He sways back and forth on stage, limbs surrendering to the music as dandelions do to the spring breeze.

A wine glass pops under someone’s feet as the cello drones during a song that whispers of lots lovers and a lack of regret for the ending. A couple of drunken old techo scene men have found their way in. Not quite blending in with the environment, but certainly not unwelcome.  They dance rigidly in direct contrast with the melodies filling the room. Melodies and cigarette smoke becoming one and heading towards the various forms of exits: ceiling cracks, doorways, along the length of guitar cables, ear canals.  The older men shout “Das ist schön” every so often. The repetition of the phrase causes the words to lose meaning and become faint, nearly inaudible.

The show might have ended. But there is a vinyl sitting in the corner of my temporary room here in Berlin. With a simplistic graphic of a bird against a stark white background. I don’t have a turntable here. But it is almost a good thing – the secrets of the album will have to be unlocked once I return “home”. And the memories will flood back as my ears here the recorded notes and my heart misses the abandoned, but loved, spaces of Berlin.