Enlarge image At ohrenhoch - The Noise Shop in Berlin's Neukölln both the sounds and their source may hold surprises. (© ohrenhoch) Picture your Sunday afternoon. Does it involve static-overlain tones squelching out of homemade speakers? Probably not. But it may involve a little walk. And if that walk goes down the streets of Berlin, you can hear exactly such experimental music inside a small shop called “ohrenhoch – The Noise Shop.” Ohrenhoch is a Berlin sound gallery, which, among other things, presents experimental compositions every Sunday afternoon and offers musical instruction to children. They also have a specialty tea and some snacks to accompany your listening, or to fuel your walk should you decide to go. One comforting thing for the listener at ohrenhoch, who may want to spend a few hours or pass just a minute, is that restrictions and expectations are seemingly nonexistent.

Ohrenhoch is located in the southeast Berlin borough of Neukölln, a once somewhat blighted neighborhood that has risen up, from edges to middle, to become one of the city's ever-shifting “in”-spots. A pair of Swiss-come-Berliners, Knut Remond and Katharina Moos, opened up shop in 2008. And ever since they have been re-opening every Sunday from 2 till 9 for anyone who wants to sample whatever composition is currently pulsating from speakers that Knut wired up himself. The sounds are as free as the form, and the music, as the website often reminds you, plays on loop with neither beginning nor end.

Enlarge image Some of the ohrenhoch-kids at school. (© ohrenhoch) Or perhaps you have a budding sound artist on your hands, just waiting to cut his or her teeth on music-altering gadgets that will bleed out mechanized, rarely melodious bleepy-bloops? Well, if your junior experimentalist is between 7 and 14, there's ohrenhochKIDS, a music school that meets once per week to teach your kid about electronic music and audiovisual art. Children can play with anything from reel-to-reels to samplers, mixing sound without rules or theory, and producing work which they present on three occasions per year. Have an even younger savant running round? For 5-7 year-olds there is ohrenhochYOUNGSTERS.

And if you just happen to be enjoying a hot beverage between the resplendent white walls of ohrenhoch on an autumnal Sunday, thinking you'd like to participate, too, but simultaneously realizing that you're far too tall and bearded to pass for 14, ohrenhoch offers space for performance – but only if your equipment fits into a handbag. That is correct – it must fit in a purse. Leave your Marshall stacks at home, or maybe just buy some equipment straight from Knut or Katharina. They've that, too.

A noise shop: surely not everyone's cup of tea. But what this pair has provided Berlin-Neukölln is a chance for anyone from casual streetwalkers to hardened hipsters to saunter inside a shop on a Sunday's stroll for a splash of unexpected culture. Stay as long as you like. And, who knows, perhaps even without a taste seasoned by noise or power electronics you'll stick around for a warm cup of tea.