Haus am Kollnischen Park

There’s this specific desperation you feel in the days before throwing a party you actually care about. The 23rd was locked—Simian Mobile Disco, Metronomy, Boy 8-Bit, Les Gillettes at Haus am Kollnischen Park in Berlin. Somewhere in that week I was probably begging people to vote for us in some competition, throwing around whatever language felt urgent enough to make it stick. That’s what you do. You’ll say anything to get bodies in the room when the night happens, to make people understand why this matters.

The truth is I genuinely believed in the lineup. That’s not hype—Simian Mobile Disco could make any room feel significant, Metronomy had that deadpan English cool that either completely works or dies, Boy 8-Bit and Les Gillettes understood what the night was supposed to feel like in their bones. When you get those pieces right, the desperation feels less pathetic and more just… honest. Necessary, even.

There’s an anxiety in that week where you’re completely exposed. You’ve staked something into this and now you’re waiting to find out if other people care even a fraction as much as you do. It’s vulnerable in a stupid way. But it’s also the moment right before something good happens—before the floor gets sticky, before the air fills with sweat and beer and that metallic electricity of a room full of people who stopped thinking and started feeling.

I don’t remember how many people voted or showed up. What stays with me is that week. The mix of conviction and desperation, both feeding each other. The belief that what we’d put together mattered, completely tangled up with the actual terror that maybe we were the only ones who thought so.