German Joys: DJ Hunee in dem House

So, weekend before last I was in Berlin and went to Cookies Cream, a restaurant that doesn't advertise, coyly hides its exact address, and moves from one minimally-renovated industrial space to another every few years. There's an enthusiastic English-language review of it here, and a jaded, dismissive German-language review from 2004 here, which finds the whole thing a bit too strenuously hip. The portions were indeed ludicrously small, but the food sound (I had the parmesan dumplings, a friend had something served with what the English-language menu called 'deadnettle').

People-watching was first-rate; aggressively louche writers (artists? ad copywriters?), what looked like a moderately famous band, and a dinner party for theater types that got amusingly out of hand as the night wore on. The slim, attractive, clueless waitstaff all seemed to be weathering emotional crises. One of them kept bumping into the music laptop, causing ear-shattering eruptions of feedback.

And then it was off to have a look-see into Crush, the nightclub next door. It's housed in a former movie theater, with many intact (and soiled, dusty) furnishings. The music, provided by a short Asian guy gyrating back and forth behind a turntable and mixing-deck, was first-rate. Obscure funk and soul, 80s classics with juicy synthesizer hits, and a little bit of hip-hop, all elegantly mixed. To use the patois so beloved of today's youth, the man was slicing off some phatt beatz. Who was that non-masked man?

After a bit of searching on the Interwebs, I was able to determine that he is DJ Hunee (l). Naturally, he's got a myspace page (his Myspace motto: "I wanna see all my friend at once"), complete mixes you can listen to online. The one that auto-loads when you visit the page doesn't push all my buttons, but if you page down, you can switch to other ones -- HandMadeMadness is one highlight. Even features a verions of 'Autumn Leaves' done by a human voice cunningly imitating a saxophone ('wa-pa-do-do-doo, bah-waa'). It's like seeing all your friend at once!