BLOC Weekend has already been shaping up nicely, what with a raft of excellent people playing (this year’s event reads like a who’s-who of dance music delights) and the promise that its new London venue will be used in clever ways.
Now they’ve thrown a giant, grey, ship-shaped spanner into the works with the announcement that they’re to take command of the M.S. Stubnitz, a former German Democratic Republic deep-sea fishing vessel that’s been converted into a club. The ship – which BLOC cheerfully bill as "2,541 tonnes of ex-Communist nautical mayhem" – is 80 metres in length and will host two club spaces at her mooring near the main venue, London Pleasure Gardens. The story behind the ship itself is, it must be said, something worth re-telling in full…
"Urs Blaser (‘Blo’) is a Swiss-born sonic artist who spent the eighties touring Europe rigging
avant-garde art happenings in industrial spaces across the continent. When the Berlin wall
fell, Blo travelled to the port in Rostock where the DDR’s fleet was being catalogued to assess
its scrap value. The Stubnitz, the largest ship in the fleet, was existing in an ownership
vacuum between an ousted repressive regime and the future government of a reunited
Germany. Via a series of complex negotiations now lost to history, Blo took possession of the
Stubnitz in 1992 and quickly set to work."
According to his plans, a main dancefloor area with atrium gallery was created inside the ship, along with a second club space in the stern, and access to the deck. Oof. In advance of the festival, BLOC have created a film about the ship, which you can watch below.
BLOC have also confirmed that Heinrich Mueller, aka Gerald Donald, aka one half of electro legends Drexciya, is set to play a very rare show with Arpanet at the festival.
They join a line-up that already includes the likes of Richie Hawtin, Steve Reich, Snoop Dogg, Perc, Gary Numan, Flying Lotus, Carl Craig, Ricardo Villalobos, Perc, Appleblim, Objekt, Hype Williams and, err, pretty much everyone else you can think of currently making moves in dance music (or at least, so it feels).
For more information and the full line-up, check the BLOC website.
