Concert Review: Sega Bodega at Hole 44

A small Berlin venue was on the European leg of his TEARS, TOURS & SIGHS tour

Last week, I saw Sega Bodega perform at Hole 44, a small venue in Berlin’s Neukölln district, on Hermannstraße. The venue is a former cinema, previously known as Globus, that has been converted into a concert space with a capacity of around 600 people.

For those of you unfamiliar with Sega Bodega, he is a left-of-center producer who has worked with artists like Shygirl, Arca, FKA Twigs, Caroline Polachek and others. In addition to running his own label, NUXXE, he has also been active as a solo artist, releasing three albums since 2020.

If you’re new to Sega Bodega I would recommend checking out the EP Reestablishing Connection. It’s a collection of vocoder covers of songs from the late ‘90s early ‘00s—pure nostalgia for millennials—and recorded during the pandemic. “Cool” and “White Flag” are worth checking out. If you’re into Imogen Heap’s vocoder-based “Hide and Seek,” you’ll probably love these tracks too.

Anyways, let’s move on with the concert per se.

The Concert

I came to the event a bit late and couldn’t find my ticket, which I had bought ages ago. I just couldn’t for the hell of me recall what email I had used to buy my tickets. In the blistering cold I was downloading the Ticketmaster and Eventbrite apps, only to find myself too incompetent to track down the tickets.

The bouncer had such pity on me fumbling around that he let me into the event without presenting my ticket, lol. Bless his soul.

Because of my ticket hiccup I couldn’t secure the best spot to observe the concert, but the one I finally gave me a fairly view of the stage. I eventually came around to enjoying the spot I had. Could have been worse!

Opening Act

The opening act was a hip-hop artist called Florence Sinclair. I hadn’t heard of them before this event.

After he left the stage Berliners were anxiously awaiting the main act.

Sega Bodega

The most mysterious part about the staging were small, lamp-like mechanical devices that were positioned across the stage. A fan standing next to me and I were speculating what the function of these boxes were going to be. Turned out they were strobes.

Ok, I’ll let the video clips do most of the talking now.

The track that opened the concert was Adulter8. You can see the strobes in action in this clip. Crowd full of anticipation. Disembodied voices, and then a hard pivot into the trance-laden song “Adulter8.” Sega Bodega enters the stage. The lights turn out to be synched to the music. Loved the start.

The song “Effeminacy” pivoting into “Kepko,” which starts off with an audio recording of a fan asking Sega Bodega to sample her voice. Nice detail with location placeholder in there—Berlin.

Pivot into a tremolo / trance-gated song I didn’t recognize, but enjoyed quite a lot:

The concert closed with the euphoric dance track “Deer Teeth.”

Gear

One great thing about he spot where I was standing was that it allowed me to identify the lighting and sound equipment.

I was most impressed by the lighting setup. Sega Bodega was surrounded by six upright lighting panels, plus one lying flat in front of him. The lights were JDC1s by the German company German Lighting Products (GLP). These lights were immaculately synced with the music, creating mesmerizing strobe effects.

In terms of audio gear, Sega Bodega primarily used a Roland SP-404MKII sampler, occasionally triggering audio samples to complement the live performance. He also had a MacBook Pro connected to a Novation Launch Control XL MK2, though he rarely interacted with either during the show. His audio interface appeared to be a Universal Audio Apollo X4.

The Exit

It took aaaages to get out, the cloakroom was oversubscribed.

Nice little detail on the way home: a nearby Späti was playing Sega Bodega from the loudspeakers in the hope that they might attract fans. I’m not sure they were successful, though.

Anyways that’s it! I hope some of you got a good impression of the concert & feel of the crowd and atmosphere. I have way more videos that I’ve uploaded to a Google Drive. Feel free to DM if you are interested in seeing the vids.