Reeperbahn perfects the formula for showcase festivals

If you’re also a fan of Romanesque churches, Art Nouveau buildings and behemoth world war two bunkers, you’ll also be in heaven too, with over 700 shows spread across more than 70 incredible spaces in and around Hamburg’s red light district.

It’s an event that took shape after a a trip to Texas over 25 years ago. Inspired by what SXSW had done in Austin, record label owner Alexander Schulz returned to Hamburg intent on setting up his own version. Eying up one of the city’s less salubrious areas – known as the 'sinful mile' – Schulz saw an infrastructure he felt could work and in 2006 the festival finally launched.

On the first night, an opening ceremony in the Operettenhaus brings the street corner outside Spielbudenplatz to a standstill with a red carpet, TV cameras and queues down the block. Inside, Clara Amfo emcees while Florence Road perform with a temporary fifth member: a fuckton of pyro. A few hundred metres across the street - dodging sex clubs and sex workers – German popstar Nina Chuba plays on a moving riser platform atop a stage made up of shipping containers in the festival’s shanty-town style village while streamer cannons announce her to a thousand or so of the city’s younger music fans, with more piled up outside.

It’s a welcome spectacle to see a showcase festival like this – so heavily industry-focused – find a space for the city’s own residents, who dart between sets in the Festival Village and another sizeable outdoor stage on Spielbudenplatz.

Away from the main drag, some of the long weekend’s best sets happen in more serene – and surreal – spaces. Iceland is already showing strong here this week with Reykjavíkudætur spin-off project Cyber and last year’s Airwaves breakouts Inspector Spacetime putting in the work. But it’s the ever reliable Jófríður Ákadóttir aka JFDR – playing in an enormous WWII bunker on Feldstrasse – who really brings the first heart-stopping moment of the festival. Previewing a few teasers from her next to-be-recorded project, she’s here in the Resonanze Room, a few floors up in a building which looks more like an end-of-level fortress or Bond villian’s lair.

‘The Bunker’ remains intact because because Western allies feared that razing the hulking concrete edifice, which doubled as an anti-aircraft tower and civilian shelter, might risk destroying the surrounding neighbourhood. The top six stories of the restored building now house a hotel courtesy of the Hard Rock empire but that doesn’t detract from its quite rudely brutalist domination of the skyline.

Two of the area’s churches are another welcome diversion during the evening’s programming. At the modest St Pauli Kirche - which gave the district that become home to the festival it’s name back in 1833 – sets by Mabe Fratti and Hector Tosta’s Titantic project and Louisiana R&B singer I Am Roze bookend my short walks away from from the bustle and red lights of the Reeperbahn. Amping up the ornate quite spectacularly, the baroque marvel St. Michaelis Kirche is a perfect space for the likes of Alice Phoebe Lou to showcase her considerable her introspective songwriting. The Cape Town-born singer and songwriter is a month away from her sixth album in nine years - all of them self-funded – and Oblivion will also be her first as producer.

From the UK side, I check in on Silver Gore, RIP Magic, Westside Cowboy, TTSSFU and Man/Woman/Chainsaw, who continue their glorious raze through every single festival this year. With a show count well into three figures at this point, Man/Woman/Chainsaw remain the UK’s best new live band, continually levelling up month-by-month, while TTSSFU doubles down on her rep as of new music’s most eccentric and talented personalities.

There’s a healthy contingent from Canada and Australia here too: Full Flower Moon Band channel Patti Smith’s brattier rock n roll moments in a package that never ever oversteps into cliche. They're as polished and tight as most Australia bands making the leap overseas tend to be too, with the commanding and utterly brilliant figure of Kate 'Babyshakes' Dillon as their true USP.

Bouncing from club to basement to bunker through a thicket of people, I hit the Canadian showcase for Annie Claude Deschenes, who blurs the line between audience and performer in a way that’s beautifully uncomfortable as it is artistically playful - there’s whipped cream involved and a very complicit crowd.

A 30-second walk away, in the compact Schmidt Theater, I find British Nigerian composer Tony Njoku turning in on of the festival's more affecting sets. The experimental musician is really breaking new ground with his approach to composition and performance, in an exciting convergence of classical, ambient and electronic that puts identity at the centre.

In another perfect pairing of performer and space, Lebanese songwriter Yasmin Hamdam is here playing her first show in a very long time, kicking off a tour to mark new record Remember, I Forget. In a career spanning 20 years, she’s released just three album, with a seven-year gap since her last, released on the day of her show at Reeperbahn. With a band in perfect step with one another – and Hamdam's translucent vocal – it's set that genuinely reduces the room to absolute jaw-drops.

The acoustically perfect Mojo Club feels like something out of a movie – it’s Thomas Baecker-designed wood and concrete interior contains no corners or edges and feels like a miniature opera house with the vibe of a dystopian club. Once a legendary dance club based in a bowling alley, it moved to its current subterranean location in 2013 and has hosted the likes of Tyler, Dua, Twigs and Janelle as well as Roy Ayers, Robert Glasper, Nubya Garcia and Jill Scott.

Alongside the shows, Reeperbahn's Anchor Award is one of a number of competitions playing out over the festival. With the likes of Laurie Anderson on the judging panel, jazz/indie J-pop artist Mei Semones triumphs over the likes of Cara Rose, RIP Magic, and Sorvina to win lighting and sound equipment worth 20,000 euros, and a tour bus for her band to use for a month. The festival's also responsible for of the few remaining awards for music journalism, with Joe Muggs snagging the top prize for his deep dive into Sade on Disco Pogo.