Hellp! Dimes Square is Leaking

Jesse Carpenter reviews: the hellp, live at Astra Kulturhaus 12/03/26

As SURG’s Foreign Correspondent, a coveted position that I recently made up, I went to see The Hellp live at Astra Kulturhaus in Berlin for the strict purpose of ethnographic study of the greater Schaeffer library scene. My findings: scientific, objective, and without self awareness nor humour, are presented below. I am forever indebted to the Sydney University Department of Applied Musicology and Dark Woke Aesthetics for the grant that paid for my concert ticket.

Writing this, I wonder how to broach the subject of who The Hellp are. There is a little embarrassment, I think, with not knowing. Having #niche #ug taste entails a familiarity with The Hellp and associated acts (Ear, Worldpeace DMT, Bassvictim and an artist with 2000 monthly listeners who produces folktronic sleazepop and moonlights at Palantir), and unfortunately this obsessive need to be in the loop and tapped in does not invite the reflexive shame it should. Anyway, Chandler Lucy and Noah Dillon look exactly how one would expect a duo of electronic NY musicians to look, complete with overgrown and dubiously clean bangs. The music is really good, though. It kind of has to be to justify the kitschness of the 2010s’ Pinterest electroclash (indie sleaze, if you want to show your hand) revival, but I was surprised by how emotively and sincerely the overblown production and filtered vocals were done live. 

The music…kind of has to be [goood] to justify the kitschness of the 2010s’ Pinterest electroclash (indie sleaze, if you want to show your hand) revival, but I was surprised by how emotively and sincerely the overblown production and filtered vocals were done live. 

It’s tough to play music live that fits somewhere between the broad spectrum of DJ set and band while not leaving attendees feeling like they got too much of either. I really appreciated the way that The Hellp carved out a distinct sound from their music on streaming through extended outros and intros, reverberating chants, rattling snares, and adlibs that cut through the beat and the fervour of the crowd. Other highlights included the three encores and the constant edging of ‘Ssx’: in between songs, Dillon would occasionally yell ‘I need horses like you need drugs‘ to a crazy burst of cheers before playing one of the less popular tracks on Riviera accompanied with a questionably timed request to change the EQs on the mix. The best part of the night, however, was the sweat. As soon as they came on stage, I was separated from the group I came with and pushed to the front, sandwiched between tall men with a lone ear piercing, eyelinered women, and nonbinary people wearing skirts over jeans, all dancing together. 

Who could’ve guessed such a diverse crowd could be united by glitchy synths?

Anyway, I now see a sincerity in The Hellp that I think I overlooked before. Waking up the next day covered in makeup and listening to ‘Cortt’ or ‘Here I Am’ conjured images of them hunched over, screaming into the microphone and slamming the effect keys; still frames, but ones charged with potential and movement like drops of water about to fall. It’s not that when I listened to them previously I felt or saw nothing –  somewhat shamefully, ‘Ssx’ has played a formative role in many of my teenage relationships and reflections upon them – but rather that it’s easy to discredit, say, the pastoral American nostalgia of songs like ‘Country Road’ or the many lyrics that pine over lost love as derivative and uninspired.

it’s easy to discredit, say, the pastoral American nostalgia of songs like ‘Country Road’ or the many lyrics that pine over lost love as derivative and uninspired.

The image The Hellp cultivates perhaps aids in that, but I think seeing the concert added a depth and texture to the detached, disaffected air I previously perceived in them. I really enjoyed the concert, and I can’t wait to see them again in Sydney if and when they make it over. However, as much as Thursday night revealed the dimension and beauty of The Hellp, and made me conscious of my own stereotyping and pigeonholing, the afterparty was a different story. Here, my profiling was spot on. Rejoice! 

The afterparty was at Studio1111, and was both free and exclusive –– you have to be a member of Takt. Naturally, the next question is: What is Takt? Membership, requiring an application, costs 10 euro a month and opens the door to a series of exclusive as well as discounted or guestlisted entry for other events in Berlin.  Joining it felt like a public humiliation ritual – Look at me! I’m pretty! I’m niche! Can I pretty please come? 

Two days after The Hellp, I saw Damon Rush. By the time this is out, I will have seen phreshboyswag and attended events titled things like hoemies, xoxo swag party and dyketopia, all through Takt. I think the target audience is quite clear. I was quite nervous about joining –– firstly for feeling like a sucker, but also in trying to pitch myself to something ‘cool’ that really reeks of pretentious lameness (my job: student/math tutor, my favourite event: lecken in Berlin, or Centered Love Bodies in Sydney; my favourite song right now: ‘Sick Kunt’ by Sidney Phillips) entails a worry that you are in fact chopped and unc, and the thing that you think is beneath you is actually above you. Anyway, I got a ticket. The concert ends at 11 and I get to the after party by 12 via a meandering series of trams and trains and a lone uber, including a stop to bounce on trampolines at the park.

I enter, and right away I am struck by the hotness of everyone in here. Not to be blue, but wow. It was crazy. Like if the UN gave a country to Hinge standouts. I can’t put my finger on it, but there was something really unnerving about a space being visually curated like that (I will refrain from any comments on 20th-century German history here), where hotness and swag are the criteria for entry. Isn’t dancing for everyone?

Well, I don’t know. It really seemed like these hot people don’t know how to have any fun. Sure, people were making out and doing mephe and ghb and smoking, but it felt like pretty much no one was dancing, even though the place was packed. One of the sets there was probably the best I’ve ever seen. My friend and I were dancing on the stage behind the decks, overlooking a rather anaesthetised crowd to ridiculous mixes of electronic faves by a beautiful DJ in the coolest bug-eyed glasses ever. After a transition, they turned over and start talking to us. We complimented their set, and they introduced themselves as Dorian. I remembered they had just played ‘We Invented Love’. I asked: ‘Are you Dorian Electra?‘ They said: ‘Yes‘. I screamed real loud. Over the 2-hour set, there was plenty of screaming on my part: when ‘Flatline’ or ‘Fuck My Computer’ came on, when The Hellp signed my copy of Naked Lunch, and I danced so much that I felt like I was going to pass out due to dehydration, despite being (mostly) sober. I was mostly dancing alone – the floor (perhaps due to ambient stickiness?) seemed to make people fonder of standing and occasionally tapping a head than dancing. If I may, I think this is a problem. At the risk of beating the well and truly dead performative/pretentious/young-people-are-asocial horse, I think the alternative music scene is affected by some sort of psychic fungus (if I could get away with blaming Clavicular and fellow looksmaxxers, rather than post-teenage insecurity and nebulous sexual drives, I would) that compels people to aurafarm and handrolled-cigarette-mog rather than dance. 

I think the alternative music scene is affected by some sort of psychic fungus…that compels people to aurafarm and handrolled-cigarette-mog rather than dance. 

But it’s the afterparty! Most of the people were at the concert! I know you like the music; I know you danced to it –– so why not now? The Hellp played the last hour of their set to a crowd of about 25 people, and I stayed until closing.

It’s 4:30, and I’m exhausted. I consider mentally plotting myself and other attendees on a graph with the x-axis labelled androgyny and the y-axis esotericism. I drink a blue Powerade on the U-Bahn home. It tastes like love. ‘California Dream Girls’ plays on repeat. Words jaywalk across my mind: I think you guys might be thinking about yourselves too much.