It’s the never-ending question: can we rebound from the setbacks and challenges the pandemic has brought? In the case of Superbooth Berlin, the answer is a resounding yes, thanks to a resilient synth community — that’ll be you. Here’s the news, plus some videos featuring highlights of performances and gear. (Getting to play was definitely a highlight for me!)
The Superbooth team are being open on this one. After the pandemic canceled editions and 2022 came back at reduced scale, everything hinged on the 2023 event. The event responded in scale, reach, and impact, with 250 exhibitors and over 9000 visitors and participants – eclipsing even 2019 (aka “the beforetimes”). That’s also big enough to really feel like a festival, but small enough to get to actually know folks. And it’s also been great watching Superbooth reach out to kids and balance out some of its diversity, even if there’s more work to do. That doesn’t happen on its own; it was a result of efforts by the organizers including the “Minibooth” for children and adolescents, workshops for women and nonbinary people, and quotas on gender balance in bookings. (This stuff isn’t as well documented – apologies for that being missing below.) It meant a lot to me personally seeing friends’ kids connect and seeing folks from Ukraine get to enjoy the event.
Berlin without Superbooth would feel like the Grinch stole Christmas and the Galactic Empire took over, so – 100% there for the return.
Some highlights for me featured in the videos below – and yeah, getting to play was particularly a highlight, joining my friend Benjamin Weiss aka Nerk, who also has a background both in instrument creation and music tech journalism. (Check our recent releases on his V-Records and CDM’s Establishment.)
But of course, I get to hear me play whenever I want – wow, this Trovarsi show!
Joranalogue Delay was one of the big hits of the show:
Deluge is a natural for the show’s Gesprächskonzert format, combining demos with, yes, playing your machine:
Mark Verbos was everywhere, including showing his “physical interface”:
And you can’t miss Dreadbox!
Sonic State took everyone on a walkthrough:
That’s not the most representative slice of everything that was there, but at least some good moments. I was getting over being sick or would have covered more myself – another reason to look forward to 2024.