Adam Munnings Is Back with tracey, Berlin’s Newest Queer Party

By Alexander Cheves | @badalexcheves

It’s 10:30 p.m. in Hong Kong. Adam Munnings has been on tour since January 18—Bangkok, Tokyo, and now here—and he is, despite the hour, energetic and in good spirits.

On the video call, I see buildings of Hong Kong through the window behind him—at first, I think the myriad apartment windows are stars.

Munnings is a Tasmanian-born DJ, filmmaker, and creative director based in Berlin. For four years, he was co-founder and creative force behind Lunchbox Candy, the queer party series he launched in 2021 with DJ and producer Elninodiablo (Stephanos Pantelas).

The party—nicknamed LBC among queer ravers—was, for many, the queer party series of the city—loud, joyful, strange, with drag performances, a sober party series, and a “come as your inner child” spirit that cut through the city’s techno scene with a dose of joy. The party found a home at ÆDEN and, later, Kreuzwerk and became something rare: a genuinely beloved space.

Then, on 21 January 2026, co-founder Pantelas posted a statement announcing the party was over. The 8 November anniversary party—which no one knew would be the last—featured live performances by Peaches and Zebra Katz and was called “CHOOSE NOW.” In retrospect, it was goodbye.

The community response was immediate and tender. Hinterhaus published an in memoriam in January; the reader response was some of the strongest we had seen.

Now, three months later, Munnings has a new project called tracey—all lowercase—and it debuts in a few days, on April 5 at Kreuzwerk.

Who is tracey?

“tracey is the answer,” Adam says. “tracey is the antidote, the recipe. tracey is moving forward for the community. Everyone needs a little tracey energy.”

The name came in the hard, cold stretch of January, one of Berlin’s coldest winters on record. Pantelas had sent round an email that he had chosen to stop Lunchbox Candy; for Adam, the shock hadn’t quite settled. At the time, Munnings was flying between cities, calling collaborators across time zones, and trying to figure out what was next and what to call it.

“Naming something is difficult,” he says. “With Lunchbox Candy, the name came as a silly idea that really grew into something. The party had good name recognition. With the start of a new party, we felt the pressure to have a name that hit all the boxes. It was too much.”

The pressure built. In the end, “tracey” was tossed out casually and just felt right.

Adam wanted to give the party a character, a personality. He wanted it to be a kind of fictional bestie. “

From a conceptual view, we thought it would be fun to personify the project. Like a person, it can “take its own form, and people can have their own opinions.”

The mythology, he says, isn’t written yet—tracey can still be anything.

What really happened with Lunchbox Candy?

Here, Adam Munnings gets quiet. It’s not really a fair question; Adam was not the one who ended it. Pantelas announced the closure unilaterally; his statement said his “energy had moved in a different direction”.

Munnings doesn’t want to excavate the internal mechanics at play, not anymore. It’s the past.

He had to sit people down, one by one, through the month of December, and deliver news that wasn’t really his to deliver.

He watched them move through shock, anger, sadness, optimism, excitement, then back to sadness. Being on tour helped. In Berlin, strangers who loved the party approached him in the street. Adam needed distance.

“It was nice to say goodbye from on tour while we built something new.”

What do you hope people most remember from LBC?

As a whole, Adam Munnings wants people to remember the euphoria of being queer and feeling the real sense of belonging that those parties fostered.

“So many people have told me how the party was where they could be who they wanted to be.”

What do you hope tracey will be like?

“The brief,” he says, “is that tracey is a new project, built by me and some of the people who were involved with Lunchbox Candy.” He says this is a careful, crucial distinction.

tracey is not Lunchbox Candy under a new name. It is its own thing, built from scratch, carrying “four years of experience of great parties” and “hard-won knowledge,” but a new project.

It will, he says, develop differently from Lunchbox Candy—LBC is truly over. The people who developed it with Adam want to try new things.

What he hopes will carry over is the artistry, production value, and queerness. “The joy of playing, the intention, the spontaneity, and everyone who gives a thousand per cent.”

The most concrete change Adam Munnings can tell me is sonic. tracey will include an ambient and experimental music space alongside the main dancefloors—a “lower-sensory” space, in his words.

On booking: tracey will not chase “big names”—a relative beginner with the right energy will be prioritised over big headliners. “There are so many great DJs in Berlin, people we look up to, love, and support,” he says. “I want tracey to be a place where they can play and do their thing.”

Are sober raves coming back?

Sugar Free—LBC’s beloved sober party series—was, to many I interviewed for the Hinterhaus memoriam, the defining core of Lunchbox Candy. People who described themselves as lifelong hedonists told me, independently, that those nights were their favourite version of Berlin nightlife.

tracey is continuing the tradition. The sober events will be called tracey zero, running twice a year at ÆDEN—the planned events are scheduled for 10 May and 11 October of this year.

“This is something we achieved in a special way,” he says. “It was truly a turning point for many people. It will always be a community for us.”

He calls it “a harder party to organise”—sober raves are, he admits, not as profitable as ones with alcohol sales—”but the win is incredible.”

Tell me about the musical!

In January, while processing the collapse of one thing and building another, Munnings did what he does when overwhelmed: he made something.

“I received the email that LBC was ending in December,” he says. After tracey was decided on, he got together with writer Michael Lane and performer Nancy Nutter to write and compose a ten-minute musical film. The brief was simple:

The short musical-film, titled GAGGY, is streaming at tracey.club as the party’s premiere campaign. It is also, reading between the lines, collective grief management—the LBC family sitting parodying the situation, laughing at it, and getting back to work.

How does running a party like LBC and tracey work?

The LBC parties had themes that were not always public-facing, Adam Munnings tells me. This was “an internal logic that shaped each party”.

Munnings describes the 2025 (final) season: March was “Evolution.” May was “Cosmic.” September was “Coming Home.” November was “Now.” Each theme ran through the flyer language, event copy, artist selection, and performances. He admits sometimes “the audience didn’t know it, but I hope they felt it.”

In the event copy for “CHOOSE NOW,” which ended up being the last LBC party, Adam Munnings wrote something that, in retrospect, reads like a prophecy—and makes him feel a bit guilty.

“For that party, I wrote that Lunchbox Candy isn’t immortal, and neither are we. Let’s approach this party like it will be the last time we enter. The last orgasm in the love room.”

Here, he pauses. “Now, sometimes I wonder if I jinxed it, if I unintentionally led to the closure.”

He doesn’t say yes or no.

How do you know a night is working?

“There are some metrics,” he says. “The experience we have as a collective, how things flow, and the feedback are so important.”

Logistically, Adam says, some parties go more smoothly than others. Sometimes the line moves well, sometimes not. No sound or technical problems are always nice. But the real metric, Adam says, is a feeling, and it always arrives at a specific moment.

After that, the night takes care of itself.

“For the first two hours, I’m stressed out,” he says. “Then comes the first performance, or the first moment where you can see someone putting it all on the line, whether a DJ or a performer.” After that, he’s good.

How do you curate a queer crowd?

Munnings knows his people in the room. For comparison, he describes a night in Bangkok at what was decidedly not a queer party—to play there, he had to zero in on someone with queer vibes in the room.

Thankfully, “there is always someone right by the booth,” someone wearing “tiny sunglasses” that give him a feeling like maybe—maybe—this is a queer person connecting to his music. “I think: okay, my love, this is for you.”

But a queer crowd—drawn to a purposefully queer party—has its own energy and language.

I tell him it’s a question I ask all artists—how they know when they’ve hooked a room.

Adam Munnings isn’t so sure about how he knows when he has the crowd, so he asks how other DJs have answered.

One, I tell him, watches for sweat; a room hot enough to glisten means the temperature has risen, and at that point, the crowd is alive. Another doesn’t like looking at the crowd at all—too much stimuli. Everyone answers differently.

He smiles. “I just love messing with people, in the best way.”

tracey debuts at Kreuzwerk in Berlin on April 5. The full 2026 season is listed at tracey.club. The launch film GAGGY is streaming on the site now.

Words: Alexander Cheves

Images: provided by Adam Munnings