The post-punk duo have been tearing up Berlin’s warehouses, art pop-ups, and dive bars for several years now. Comprising songwriters Valentina Alexander and Drake Elliott, Nylon Club’s new-wave edge and razor-sharp lyrical delivery make them one of Berlin’s most entertaining acts. Their latest release, Nylon Club Vol. II, is a heroic dose of 80s-influenced synth-pop.
How did you get together and why?
Drake and I met when we were next-door neighbours in California, [and became] childhood best friends. I moved to Berlin, and in 2022, we reunited and cranked out a six-song EP in the span of three weeks. We still do all the writing as a duo, but the current incarnation of the live band consists of our killer Icelandic-Iranian bassist Dagur Kaveh, drummer Finnian Charlton Jones, and Lukas May-Floor on synths.
Describe your sound in one sentence.
Euphonious pop-vocal melodies in the style of Kim Wilde or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, intertwined with defiant, wiry guitar riffs in the vein of Gang of Four.
What topics do you deal with in your music?
I tend to write about settings and places a lot, and lists of objects and architectural elements – silly, unpoetic things such as household appliances, descriptions of moulding and wallpaper, et cetera. I try to capture a slice of life through snapshots of mundane day-to-day things. On a more cerebral level, I write about things like partying, sex, mental issues,…
How would you describe Berlin’s music scene?
There’s always something to do here. Rarely have I experienced a night where I was unable to find a gig to swing by. It’s also a rather older crowd. I moved here when I was 16 and was used to a very mixed, intermingling range of age groups in the scene. It’s not quite the insular, juvenile and gnarly vibe we are used to back in the Bay Area.
What are some of your favourite venues to play in Berlin?
Hinterraum, OGH [formerly Autobahn], Urban Spree.
Are there any Berlin artists you’d like to collaborate with?
Peaches or Einstürzende Neubauten would be cool too, even though their sound is way more serious and sophisticated than ours.
You can pick a support slot for any artist, dead or alive. Who is it and why?
Drake would want to open for Thin Lizzy. As far as contemporary bands go, I would love to play with Shitkid or Stiff Richards. Last year, we opened for Guitar Wolf at Lido, and for me that was like opening for KISS.
What’s something unexpected or strange that inspires your music?
A lot of my writing is pretty stream-of-consciousness, but sometimes books – Eve Babitz and Bill Buford have been inspiration sources – and photography. A lot of melodies have come to me in dreams. I sleepily hum them into my voice memo app and try to decipher them at a later date.
If Berlin was a song, it would be…
‘Eisbär’ by Grauzone.
Are there any unexpected benefits of being a musician in Berlin?
We’ve been lucky to have access to an abundance of pretty decent practice spaces to work in. There are so many inspiring people here with the express purpose of doing art and music. It’s pretty easy to reverberate off other people’s creativity and allow it to engage with your own.
What are you currently working on?
[In November,] we rather spontaneously released our first full-length album. We still have a lot of songs that didn’t make it onto this album, so you can expect more frequent releases from us in the near future as we work through our backlogged catalogue.
