Defying boundaries between gig and club

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“’Off the Grid’ is a bit of a wild child”, Niclas jokingly admits, “but I think it will work.”
The event itself will stretch over two levels at mjut.
Off the Grid (OTG)

Ever been to a gig and fancied going clubbing after, but felt too lazy to hike all the way across to IFZ? Well, at mjut you won’t have to, because both worlds will be right at your fingertips in one place on Friday, 9 November.

Quarter past 10 in the morning. Cold, pounding beats are pouring out of former industrial buildings, and from the foggy lakes and forests outside town, people start to return back to reality.

Just a few miles across, Riso prints are peeling off the walls, the stage is empty, amps are gone, some microphones, beer bottles and merch still need collecting but this can wait until after breakfast – when a new day starts where it has just ended for others.

The gig and club scenes are two separate worlds that rarely collide, and yet they create the same orgiastic escape designed to satisfy the very core of the human condition: the deep desire to express, unite and belong.

“Off the Grid” (OTG) is a new event concept and brainchild of Niclas Kliebisch (Annihilate) and Adem Zor aka SHIKOBA (mjut, Planet Almanac), hoping to break with those boundaries.

SHIKOBA, "Off the Grid" co-creator and performer. (Photo courtesy of OTG) — SHIKOBA, “Off the Grid” co-creator and performer. (Photo courtesy of OTG)

While Adem’s background has always been firmly rooted in the club scenes of Stuttgart, Karlsruhe and Leipzig, Niclas is perhaps better known for his involvement in live bookings for the Leipzig-based Annihilate collective. His passion for the local FreeTekk scene has led to his engagement at mjut, a fairly new club in the east of Leipzig where Niclas and Adem met, clicked and immediately realized they wanted to create an event that defies preconceived expectations.

“’Off the Grid’ is a bit of a wild child”, Niclas jokingly admits, “but I think it will work.”

“We actually want to create a certain level of tension, chaos and disharmony,” he adds, and Adem continues:

“What all artists share is a level of experimental playfulness that defies rigid categorization. Judith Crasser, who I know from Pracht, for example, plays this kind of eerie, playful and often ambient sets you wouldn’t usually expect in a club context.”

The same is certainly true for the Kraut inspired anarchists of Camera, a Berlin-based band that will perform in a club context for the very first time.

“I could somehow always imagine them in a club”, says Niclas. “In a way, the setting at mjut is very similar to their early beginnings, when they would play iconic impromptu gigs on the underground U-Bahn platforms of Berlin. “There won’t be an actual stage separating the band from the audience, so this will be a very unique experience, closely followed by a harsher, electronic set that I will play upstairs.”

Dissonant as these genres may seem, it was the early experimentations of German Kraut bands in the late 60s that paved the way for later developments and diffusions of electronic music in Germany and beyond. The common source is evident in the repetitive, motoric beats also found in many of the tracks by Camera, who will play an extensive set of two hours that night.

The event itself will stretch over two levels at mjut.

Camera out and about. (Photo credit: Andreas Miranda)

Upstairs, Camera will be joined by DJ sets from opium (Niclas), XVII (IFZ) and NYT (Institut fuer Zukunft, amazing mono) while Judith Crasser (Pracht), Steffen Bennemann (Nachtdigital) and Adem aka SHIKOBA (mjut, Planet Almanac) will set the scene for more experimental sounds downstairs.

The clashing of the two scenes even seeped into the poster design for their event, a collaboration between Richard, member of the punk band PISSE, and Alex Brade, who designs most of the graphics for mjut. Maxim of the Leipzig collective WERT will return to collaborate with Niclas and contribute the live visuals for the night.

By Lydia-Marie Lafforgue