"Der Klang der Familie: Berlin, Techno and the Fall of the Wall" [0] is a good book on the origins of the Berlin Techno scene. It's based on interviews and discussions by the people originally setting up the whole thing, making it a pretty breezy read that you don't necessarily have to go through chronologically.
No city can really replicate the absurd situation Berlin was in after the second world war. The absolute oppressive atmosphere, with one day the whole city getting flipped upside down. Anyone being able to take over a building on the East side and throw a party there. When before you could end up in a cell overnight for playing a boombox too loud on the street. The original location for Tresor (club) was the literal translation of the German word: A big old safe in a bank. That you had to climb down a ladder to get to.
An unexpected connection of cities is between Berlin and Detroit: Underground Resistance (a group of Detroit born Techno producers) among many others playing gigs in Tresor going back to the early nineties.
No, I was talking about the atmosphere before the wall came down, during the cold war. That paragraph was written in a bit of a confusing way now that I look at it, though.
According to many people, including record shop owners I’ve talked to, Berlin’s scene is actually not so underground and not so cool anymore as a result of tourism and immigration. Rich people nowadays buy property in Potsdam, and the scene is moving towards Leipzig.
In a more general sense the old rave cities are making way, and have been making way, to other cities. A movement spanning more than 20 years now, thanks to very active promoter teams, leads to Lyon, Prague, Zagreb, Thessaloniki and even Sofia.
I live in Berlin. This isn't true at all. Berlin's underground scene is still quite strong, perhaps just not as strong as it used to be. There's more "in the open" stuff due to the popularity, yes, but there's still plenty of (sometimes literal) underground raves happening.
I'd also argue that the most recent accelerator for the shift in culture in Berlin isn't so much the tourism, but the pandemic. People haven't really been the same since.
Tourism definitely wasn't a major drag on the techno scene. There's always been the tourist clubs and the clubs that were more underground. Berliners usually don't go to Berlin's best known clubs. (Who the hell goes to Watergate or Tresor? Old joke was that Tresor was the biggest club in Dresden.)
I think the biggest drag is actually rent prices. When I got to Berlin 20 years ago you could get a room in a shared flat for €100. That same room now would be €500. Same for music spaces: it was easy to rent unused warehouse space in the inner city 20 year ago. There are a lot of interesting things that happen to a city when rent is ridiculously low as it was in Berlin for a long time (there were more apartments than people).
There's still a lot going on in Berlin, but the character has very much changed. 20 years ago it was rare for clubs to be legal. Most of Berlin's well known clubs now started off as illegal clubs back then. But there were hundreds of other spaces that didn't survive and transition to being legal spaces. There's still some of that, but much, much less. Also back then just randomly setting up a sound system in a park in the summer was much more tolerated. "Open Airs" in Berlin were just kind of what you did in the summer.
Honestly, while I generally did not partake in such, the pandemic was the first time that I realized that came back some. Partying was illegal and the parties were moderately guarded secrets. I hadn't seen that much buzz around illegal parties in more than a decade.
Addendum: As a weird note, I don't even get the grandparent's comment about Potsdam? For the non-Berlin folks, it's a city just outside of Berlin's borders, but an hour away on the train from the more alternative bits of the city. It's neither known for its music scene, nor honestly as a place that rich people want to move. I know a couple of people that have moved there because of usual suburb reasons: they wanted a bigger place, and it's cheaper there. The other cities listed there are also weird. I've been out in all of them but Lyon and, yeah, there's some stuff, but to say the "scene" is moving there is really off. Three of the cities listed there are in the Balkans, but the best city for techno in the Balkans is undoubtedly Belgrade.
Yes - I absolutely agree, any DJ who is familiar with the scene knows that is the #1 place on the planet as far as talent goes…there are residents at CDV who fly to Chile and Berlin a few times a week
Nothing even compares to Berlin. Prague has basically 2 clubs and they are working partly because it's cheap and only 4hour train from Berlin so it's fun destination for both Berliners and Berlin DJS.
Athens is where lots of the techno scene (djs, producers) has been moving to but that's because property is cheap so they can run away from Berlin winter. It also has like 2 clubs.
In Berlin there are so many venues it's hard to remember them.
Total nonsense about Prague. There are 2 great techno clubs/bars on each Žižkov, Vršovice or Holešovice street, lol. It's mostly locals and expats listening to guys doing it for fun with no managers or marketing (or entrance fees), so yeah it makes sense you have no idea if you don't live there, but just walk around the city and listen.
Let me get you a list for your next Prague trip: Fuchs 2, Bike Jesus, Altenburg, Bukanýr, Ankali, Roxy, Onyx, Jilská 22, Swim, Centrála, Cross, Storm, Chapeau Rouge, Planeta Za, Wildt, Mecca, Studio ... That's just the very well known ones, then you have hundreds of random small unknown places with great unknown DJs all around the city, and many great rave events in places like nuclear bunkers, castles, churches, forests.
The mainstream event halls normally used for big artist concerts are now hosting raves too.
Is this specifically techno/underground clubs you mean? My pokey city in Aus has like a dozen "EDM" clubs that spin a decent breadth of techno to house to dnb etc. Perhaps I should count myself lucky?
It doesn't seem like "Berlin underground techno" is being recognized by Unesco, but rather just "Berlin Techno". So while the underground movement might be the grassroot for the mainstream, it would seem like they're recognizing techno in Berlin overall, not just the underground part.
You know, I didn’t want to get attacked by Berliner’s for saying this…but I was pretty….whelmed…by the techno scene when I was there for a month.
I’ve enjoyed far more raves in LA and Detroit, and lots of harder techno clubs in Chicago that felt a lot more authentic. The Berlin crowds were kind and chill, but there definitely was this odd feeling where it all kinda felt..scripted?
I hadn’t gone to Berlin up until two years ago, so I can only imagine it was pretty incredible a decade ago before tourism swamped them.
And before anyone asks, I was rolling with native berliners and service industry folks, so I was fortunate to get in to and attend a lot of the best parties while I was there. I’d love to go back, I do just feel like it was slightly overhyped before I got there :/.
Happy for them regardless, they deserve the recognition even if I didn’t get to really experience the best of it
Clarification requested: surely that's underwhelmed? Or are you saying that you were emotionally involved in it despite the 'scripted' feeling as you describe?
There's still quite a lot of illegal/semi-legal free party scene type stuff going on, especially in summer. A lot of the scene has been pushed outside of the ring, though.
Leipzig is lovely but tiny in comparision, you won't find even remotely as many clubs and parties.
It seems a constant that raves were better 10 years ago before everything became commercialized.
"It use to be about the music"
I remember hearing this 25 years ago.
Of course, what happens is that you get people who have been going to these things for 10 years and the novelty has worn off along with being 10 years older.
Most fun activities are better when you are 10 years younger with no expectations.
>Berlin’s scene is actually not so underground and not so cool anymore as a result of tourism and immigration.
In my experience, people who like things because they are hidden and exclusive tend to be shitty, shallow, superficial people. Many, many, varied decades of life lived all over the world, and I've never witnessed a counterexample so I hesitate to make it an absolute.
Same goes for people who think they like things more than others because they liked them first.
"In my experience, people who like things because they are hidden"
Sounds a bit like a strawmen. No one here said, they like something, because it is hidden.
But hidden places are quite free and can cultivate a very different culture, than one that plays by all the legal rules. And where money took over everything.
The best places I have been, were not listed in lonely planet. And I could not book them online. I had to find them.
How do you feel about Twitter vs Fediverse? People don't like Fediverse "because it's hidden", but they like it because of the qualities it has, many of which are influenced by it being hidden. If it was bigger and still had those qualities, that would be fine too.
Speaking as someone who's split ~half my time between Leipzig and Berlin for the last 5 years, this is not true.
Leipzig's club scene is an extension of its university population. It's younger, straighter, whiter, and about two orders of magnitude smaller. People visit the clubs while they're going to school there, then they graduate and move elsewhere. Often to Berlin.
Why does this illusion exist? Because Leipzig is about an hour away from Berlin by train. Berliners visit for a weekend and think "wow, it's like Berlin in the 90s! Still cheap! And look at all these cool young kids at these scrappy clubs -- so that's where the underground has gone!". Then they go back to Berlin and spread the word to credulous out-of-towners, who go on to repeat this truism to people who have never visited either city.
In reality, Berlin's club scene -- both "mainstream" and "underground" -- dwarfs that of any other city. Nothing short of an asteroid hit is likely to change that.
The main reason why Leipzig won't become the "next Berlin" is rents are increasing there, as fast as in Berlin. It is still cheaper, but not "let's try and find out" cheap.
I think, for a moment around 15 years ago, Leipzig was dirt cheap and had quite a bit of momentum, because you didn't need a business plan to try and make things happen. People, students from west Germany, payed 100€ for rent and 30€ for an atelier. Lots of raw excitement and empty buildings.
But the momentum died maybe 8 years ago. What's left is nothing like Berlin. Cheaper, but still expensive; liberal-ish, but all kartoffel. Leipzig doesn't feel exciting, but small now. And it's deep in enemy territory, very depressing region, the mere thought doesn't spark joy at all.
Well I can tell you in my totally anecdotal view that the underground scene here is alive and well, you just need to look a bit harder for it ;)
It’s true that mainstream media like Instagram and TikTok are bringing the worst of the scene and it’s true that there are now a lot of kids that think that the techno scene is to dress in fetish clothes and film yourself dancing waiting for “the drop”. But this is just capitalism and globalization doing its thing. Trends come and go. You can still go to awesome parties here in Berlin that won’t be filmed and uploaded to Facebook, and it’s also true that people complain a lot about the scene going mainstream but in reality if you want money from it, there’s so many mouths that the underground scene can feed.
I think a bigger problem for the club culture is the festival scene, but that’s a whole different discussion. There are cool initiatives coming from this such as ASlice so I don’t think it’s as bad as some old schoolers are claiming
This has been a meme forever, and while Leipzig has its own decent scene for its size, it is not remotely close to rivaling Berlin. Pick a decent sample of either established or up and coming DJs and compare how often they play in Berlin vs there to disuade yourself of that notion.
>and even Sofia.
Yeah, no. Just because a city has some parties here and there, it doesn't mean it should even be in the conversation in this context.
Well there's the problem. What you should compare is how many unknown new guys just making good music for fun in small unknown clubs visited by locals are there.
In my city I can go to a random non-descript bar with zero marketing or entrance fee, sit down peacefully with a drink, and hear world class techno together with few dozen strangers. Every evening. Doesn't feel that way in Berlin anymore, even if I pay it's all that global commercial style that the established DJs with promoter/management teams seem to fall into and the places are totally overcrowded.
Leipzig seems to be the new underground place in Germany from what I've heard and experienced.
I believe this is the usual cycle of cities going through: arts scene existing because it's a cheap place to live, artists congregate in places they can afford, create a cool scene, the cool scene brings some bars/cafés and slowly it erodes to gentrification since these places are cool and attract other crowds into it (higher income, and/or tourists), eventually it makes the place expensive and artists have to find a new place where it's cheaper to live, and create their spaces.
Very similar to the geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths essay on subcultures. [0]
But Leipzig doesn't have the same growth opportunity as Berlin. Leipzig is 1/8th the size of Berlin and as such its upper bound on how large a scene can become is massively capped.
Add to that that Berlin has been a place for internationals for generations, whereas Leipzig is entirely German.
For the record, I love Leipzig, I think it's gorgeous.
The usual cycle of capitalism going through cities. This thing where vultures move in and monetize things that other people created for free is a peculiarity of the way our economy works, not a universal truth (although it's a universal truth that it happens wherever it's allowed to, it's not universally allowed to happen).
Foreigners and tourists are different groups, albeit with significant overlap. The techno scene has a problem with tourists in particular, whether foreign or not. A Bavarian tourist booking an all-inclusive guided tour to pose on social media is going to stick out all the same. Meanwhile an Algerian on a student visa who spends more time partying than studying will fit right in.
This has nothing to do with foreigners and everything to do with outsiders/passerbys/tourists.
It is basically the techno scene version of gentrification (not talking about the impact or harm or whatever else being comparable between the two, just the mechanics of it), except it is happening with the techno scene instead of housing.
This is not incongruent with your observation about “somewhat leftist” techno scene people hating on outsiders destroying their tradition. It is very similar to the analogous complaints those “somewhat leftist” people would make about gentrification.
A very comparable similar example: Burning Man. Look at how it changed and what people who have been attending it since forever ago are saying. Very similar things, and it obviously has nothing to do with actual foreigners. It has everything to do with “gentrifying” the event, and it just slowly turning into a trust fund glamping larp.
I'm a foreigner, nobody cares about that. People coming in and recording their adventures, sitting in the corner texting, wearing fur boots or eye paint, etc are the ones that aren't so much appreciated. Nobody's ever had a problem with my shitty German as long as I've been partaking in the atmosphere as intended.
How exactly does the city and federal Government square this with their plan to build a huge (unwanted) freeway through the city and bulldoze multiple clubs and music venues?
Considering the US chose an interstate highway system in large part due to Eisenhower's exposure to the Autobahn during WWII, there's sort of a karmic quality to this.
atlanta is trying to fix this by building a park over the interstate in the city center. Only tangentially related but it blows me away how ambitious the project is. The stated goal is for reconnecting communities on either side
I mean they have to figure that out now. IIRC, having the UNESCO status as concrete evidence to point to in the future to prevent situations like this, where the club scene has to make was one of the main reasons the Berlin has advocated for that status.
The museum-ification of Europe continues unabated. I can't get into the mind of the people who thought that this award was a good idea, much less anyone who'd feel happy about receiving it (it's usually not the 'real' locals anyway, but people who are close enough to feel some connection but far enough to not be exposed to the reality; or people with financial interests).
The museum treatment is the end for any artform, IMHO; it's petrification. Did rock'n'roll grow and move and thrive after its Hall of Fame opened? I suppose there was grunge.
It freezes the artform in a certain state (and by who and how is that state chosen?) and defines it that way for eternity. That's death - growth and change are ended; like the dearly departed it's defined by memories of it, not who it will be today or tomorrow; it's no longer doing something new that will surprise you or make you uncomfortable; it's sometimes reenacted by people who try to represent it, who miss the point of art - to express something of your own.
This is not a museum. It doesn't prevent new things from happening or old things from closing down, although it may provide some legal weight to prevent them from being forced to close down or not happen (e.g. because the CDU wants to build a highway through the poor part of town, as it does right now).
Demoscene is on the same list, but that doesn't mean UNESCO is forcing demoparties to run a certain way or forcing demosceners to make demos a certain way or that any of it became a museum. It just means the government shouldn't try to shut it down. Maybe it enables the government to make some official demo archive in the future or something, but what's wrong with that? A demo museum can exist at the same time as an active scene, just like museums about the past of Berlin can exist at the same time as Berlin exists, and the same in techno.
Disclaimer: I live in Berlin currently but I've never been a techno person.
From what I hear from people who are, the clubs have become basically tourist traps that are unaffordable to locals and some have even been priced out of their original locations so not sure if this decision will help much.
Can't speak to London, but abandoned buildings are few and far between in today's Berlin. It's not the city it was even five or six years ago due to massive redevelopment. As regards forests, I guess there's the Grunwald, but good luck running a rave there, it's basically the backgarden for a whole bunch of old people's dachas.
They got much more expensive after the pandemic, in 2019 an expensive entrance was 18-20€, after it seems that some clubs are up to the 20-30€.
I remember in 2015 paying 10-15€, even Berghain would be around 15-18€ and that was expensive already.
The techno scene is still pretty good music-wise if you check the line-up and avoid the new fad of celebrity DJs from the past 8-10ish years. I'm very fond of my early techno days where you could barely see the DJ from the dancefloor, they would be spinning in the shadows and the focus was dancing (this in the early 2000s so not an OG at all to the scene from the 90s, and not in Berlin).
Berghain's door policy mostly still works: keeps the American tourists out and the club good times. It's starting to feel a bit dated in general, like the moment's moving past it, but it's always a good time.
I moved in Berlin in 2016, which isn't too long ago but the prices were much cheaper (for some places that means sub-10 vs over 20 euros now, for Berghain it means half the price back then), and even then locals were the minority. Foreigners self-select by coming especially for the scene, while the % of locals here who care for it isn't that much higher than the % of locals born in other cities.
Even at today's prices, Berghain is a fraction of what you'd pay on proper tourist hotspots like Ibiza (think $70 upward). Or what you'd pay in other cities like London.
I think night clubs are always mostly tourist traps in most cities in the world. In Berlin, like other places, there are a few cream-of-the-crop that attract the locals.
Interestingly, as an expat/immigrant I've met all my local Berlin friends clubbing, and most of my friends here are German. My colleagues who don't go clubbing seem to be in little bubbles of other expats.
This is happening everywhere and with everything. IMHO its a result of the inflated "elite class", that is people who are well off enough to spend their days with consumption only or they were overpaid.
As a result, these people go everywhere and do consumption and outcompete everyone who is not like them. Then everything gets adjusted to their pleasure and they consume all the resources(being housing, food, entertainment etc).
Also, the supply and demand are not able to stabilize because the money moves around the globe freely but working people can't. So when a cryptobro from Russia moves to Portugal he can consume all the Portuguese resources but he can't bring fellow Russians to work and re-supply. Why wouldn't Portuguese just work harder and make buck by increasing the supply to meet the demand? Well because the cryptobro demands luxury housing, luxury food, massages, cars and cocaine but the Portuguese in the location they moved in are maybe painters, taxi drivers, chemical engineers or doctors and they can't simply start doing this new stuff.
The folks are angry with working class immigrants but most of their troubles are actually due to a-few-millionaires who are not rich enough to do substantial long-term investment but are rich enough to consume like there's no tomorrow.
You write as if there is a finite supply of "entertainment" which comes out of thin air. If someone is consuming, then someone is supplying. You mentioned yourself that the ones supplying are the locals. So, in your analogy the locals are getting jobs in night clubs, restaurants and construction to feed the needs of this "consumption class". In economies without tourism, this is done by producing export goods.
We need an acknowledgment of the past, the origins, which may no longer be present. Detroit starting in the ‘80s and into the 90s would be the prime example. I wrote a short essay about the latter :
In the US it seems there's still a decent appetite to connect to the history of the genre. Carl Craig, Kevin Saunderson, Juan Atkins, Jeff Mills, etc. still tour regularly. In NYC, DJ Assault is currently holding a residency at Market Hotel. Nowadays has been running a series of "Foundations Nights" where they book a group of DJs representing the lineage of a particular style, which have been great. The Dweller festival has also been running for a few years which is a wonderful initiative (the name paying homage to Drexciya).
I agree that it's worth considering why Berlin has been chosen without acknowledgement to its roots (no shade to Berlin, I love that city and much of the music it has produced).
I enjoyed reading you essay. Coincidentally, U Street Music Hall was one of the venues that shaped my teenage years and served as my gateway into the electronic music scene.
It's pervasive in Berlin from what I see, understand, and have read about the 90's. Realistically it's not a pervasive fabric of even a place like Detroit. Most people in Detroit don't even know that techno is "from" there.
This is great, though it's hard to ignore that there's a bit of techno-industrial-complex going on there. Still, there's a proper industry for electronic music, nice people, good clubs, good music, good record stores and that sense of freedom that comes with long opening hours - not just in the clubs.
One of my favourite things about Berlin is just sitting in a bar with friends till you're done for the night, no pressure to move on - often this can drag till 4 in the morning, but it doesn't feel laboured.
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No city can really replicate the absurd situation Berlin was in after the second world war. The absolute oppressive atmosphere, with one day the whole city getting flipped upside down. Anyone being able to take over a building on the East side and throw a party there. When before you could end up in a cell overnight for playing a boombox too loud on the street. The original location for Tresor (club) was the literal translation of the German word: A big old safe in a bank. That you had to climb down a ladder to get to.
An unexpected connection of cities is between Berlin and Detroit: Underground Resistance (a group of Detroit born Techno producers) among many others playing gigs in Tresor going back to the early nineties.
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Klang-Familie-Felix-Denk/dp/373860429...
The ladder was into the cellar of the Fischbüro location somewhere in Kreuzberg 36. (these guys started Tresor later)
(Eimer (Bucket) was a really bad location several years later, you wouldn't have been able to get out of the basement if ...)
https://genius.com/Smut-peddlers-kreuzberg-36-lyrics
I think you mean the cold war.
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In a more general sense the old rave cities are making way, and have been making way, to other cities. A movement spanning more than 20 years now, thanks to very active promoter teams, leads to Lyon, Prague, Zagreb, Thessaloniki and even Sofia.
I'd also argue that the most recent accelerator for the shift in culture in Berlin isn't so much the tourism, but the pandemic. People haven't really been the same since.
I think the biggest drag is actually rent prices. When I got to Berlin 20 years ago you could get a room in a shared flat for €100. That same room now would be €500. Same for music spaces: it was easy to rent unused warehouse space in the inner city 20 year ago. There are a lot of interesting things that happen to a city when rent is ridiculously low as it was in Berlin for a long time (there were more apartments than people).
There's still a lot going on in Berlin, but the character has very much changed. 20 years ago it was rare for clubs to be legal. Most of Berlin's well known clubs now started off as illegal clubs back then. But there were hundreds of other spaces that didn't survive and transition to being legal spaces. There's still some of that, but much, much less. Also back then just randomly setting up a sound system in a park in the summer was much more tolerated. "Open Airs" in Berlin were just kind of what you did in the summer.
Honestly, while I generally did not partake in such, the pandemic was the first time that I realized that came back some. Partying was illegal and the parties were moderately guarded secrets. I hadn't seen that much buzz around illegal parties in more than a decade.
Addendum: As a weird note, I don't even get the grandparent's comment about Potsdam? For the non-Berlin folks, it's a city just outside of Berlin's borders, but an hour away on the train from the more alternative bits of the city. It's neither known for its music scene, nor honestly as a place that rich people want to move. I know a couple of people that have moved there because of usual suburb reasons: they wanted a bigger place, and it's cheaper there. The other cities listed there are also weird. I've been out in all of them but Lyon and, yeah, there's some stuff, but to say the "scene" is moving there is really off. Three of the cities listed there are in the Balkans, but the best city for techno in the Balkans is undoubtedly Belgrade.
Let me get you a list for your next Prague trip: Fuchs 2, Bike Jesus, Altenburg, Bukanýr, Ankali, Roxy, Onyx, Jilská 22, Swim, Centrála, Cross, Storm, Chapeau Rouge, Planeta Za, Wildt, Mecca, Studio ... That's just the very well known ones, then you have hundreds of random small unknown places with great unknown DJs all around the city, and many great rave events in places like nuclear bunkers, castles, churches, forests.
The mainstream event halls normally used for big artist concerts are now hosting raves too.
I’ve enjoyed far more raves in LA and Detroit, and lots of harder techno clubs in Chicago that felt a lot more authentic. The Berlin crowds were kind and chill, but there definitely was this odd feeling where it all kinda felt..scripted?
I hadn’t gone to Berlin up until two years ago, so I can only imagine it was pretty incredible a decade ago before tourism swamped them.
And before anyone asks, I was rolling with native berliners and service industry folks, so I was fortunate to get in to and attend a lot of the best parties while I was there. I’d love to go back, I do just feel like it was slightly overhyped before I got there :/.
Happy for them regardless, they deserve the recognition even if I didn’t get to really experience the best of it
Leipzig is lovely but tiny in comparision, you won't find even remotely as many clubs and parties.
That’s exactly what someone would say, to keep the tourists away :p
“No, there are no underground raves around here, nor have there ever been, nor will there ever be. Please stay away from this town.”
Where there is affordable housing, there be musicians doing brave new things instead of worrying about rent and rapping rants about gentrification.
Berlin is the biggest city in continental Europe, there's a lot of everything and there'll always be hidden little nooks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_in_...
"It use to be about the music"
I remember hearing this 25 years ago.
Of course, what happens is that you get people who have been going to these things for 10 years and the novelty has worn off along with being 10 years older.
Most fun activities are better when you are 10 years younger with no expectations.
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In my experience, people who like things because they are hidden and exclusive tend to be shitty, shallow, superficial people. Many, many, varied decades of life lived all over the world, and I've never witnessed a counterexample so I hesitate to make it an absolute.
Same goes for people who think they like things more than others because they liked them first.
Sounds a bit like a strawmen. No one here said, they like something, because it is hidden.
But hidden places are quite free and can cultivate a very different culture, than one that plays by all the legal rules. And where money took over everything.
The best places I have been, were not listed in lonely planet. And I could not book them online. I had to find them.
Speaking as someone who's split ~half my time between Leipzig and Berlin for the last 5 years, this is not true.
Leipzig's club scene is an extension of its university population. It's younger, straighter, whiter, and about two orders of magnitude smaller. People visit the clubs while they're going to school there, then they graduate and move elsewhere. Often to Berlin.
Why does this illusion exist? Because Leipzig is about an hour away from Berlin by train. Berliners visit for a weekend and think "wow, it's like Berlin in the 90s! Still cheap! And look at all these cool young kids at these scrappy clubs -- so that's where the underground has gone!". Then they go back to Berlin and spread the word to credulous out-of-towners, who go on to repeat this truism to people who have never visited either city.
In reality, Berlin's club scene -- both "mainstream" and "underground" -- dwarfs that of any other city. Nothing short of an asteroid hit is likely to change that.
I think, for a moment around 15 years ago, Leipzig was dirt cheap and had quite a bit of momentum, because you didn't need a business plan to try and make things happen. People, students from west Germany, payed 100€ for rent and 30€ for an atelier. Lots of raw excitement and empty buildings.
But the momentum died maybe 8 years ago. What's left is nothing like Berlin. Cheaper, but still expensive; liberal-ish, but all kartoffel. Leipzig doesn't feel exciting, but small now. And it's deep in enemy territory, very depressing region, the mere thought doesn't spark joy at all.
Berlin can have the heritage, NOW it’s not there anymore, do u get it?
Or maybe that people got too busy that they can only afford to party when it’s a proper vacation.
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This has been a meme forever, and while Leipzig has its own decent scene for its size, it is not remotely close to rivaling Berlin. Pick a decent sample of either established or up and coming DJs and compare how often they play in Berlin vs there to disuade yourself of that notion.
>and even Sofia.
Yeah, no. Just because a city has some parties here and there, it doesn't mean it should even be in the conversation in this context.
Well there's the problem. What you should compare is how many unknown new guys just making good music for fun in small unknown clubs visited by locals are there.
In my city I can go to a random non-descript bar with zero marketing or entrance fee, sit down peacefully with a drink, and hear world class techno together with few dozen strangers. Every evening. Doesn't feel that way in Berlin anymore, even if I pay it's all that global commercial style that the established DJs with promoter/management teams seem to fall into and the places are totally overcrowded.
I believe this is the usual cycle of cities going through: arts scene existing because it's a cheap place to live, artists congregate in places they can afford, create a cool scene, the cool scene brings some bars/cafés and slowly it erodes to gentrification since these places are cool and attract other crowds into it (higher income, and/or tourists), eventually it makes the place expensive and artists have to find a new place where it's cheaper to live, and create their spaces.
Very similar to the geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths essay on subcultures. [0]
[0] https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
Add to that that Berlin has been a place for internationals for generations, whereas Leipzig is entirely German.
For the record, I love Leipzig, I think it's gorgeous.
Dead Comment
It's funny how the (somewhat leftist) techno scene hates on foreigners destroying their tradition. Berlin and Bavaria aren't so far apart after all.
It is basically the techno scene version of gentrification (not talking about the impact or harm or whatever else being comparable between the two, just the mechanics of it), except it is happening with the techno scene instead of housing.
This is not incongruent with your observation about “somewhat leftist” techno scene people hating on outsiders destroying their tradition. It is very similar to the analogous complaints those “somewhat leftist” people would make about gentrification.
A very comparable similar example: Burning Man. Look at how it changed and what people who have been attending it since forever ago are saying. Very similar things, and it obviously has nothing to do with actual foreigners. It has everything to do with “gentrifying” the event, and it just slowly turning into a trust fund glamping larp.
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Dead Comment
The same thing is being done to hiphop in a similar way.
This is the kind of mistake that we made in the US decades ago, and the results are plain to see today in any neighborhood bisected by a freeway.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/11/syracus...
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cairo-flats-are-handy-for...
The museum treatment is the end for any artform, IMHO; it's petrification. Did rock'n'roll grow and move and thrive after its Hall of Fame opened? I suppose there was grunge.
It freezes the artform in a certain state (and by who and how is that state chosen?) and defines it that way for eternity. That's death - growth and change are ended; like the dearly departed it's defined by memories of it, not who it will be today or tomorrow; it's no longer doing something new that will surprise you or make you uncomfortable; it's sometimes reenacted by people who try to represent it, who miss the point of art - to express something of your own.
Demoscene is on the same list, but that doesn't mean UNESCO is forcing demoparties to run a certain way or forcing demosceners to make demos a certain way or that any of it became a museum. It just means the government shouldn't try to shut it down. Maybe it enables the government to make some official demo archive in the future or something, but what's wrong with that? A demo museum can exist at the same time as an active scene, just like museums about the past of Berlin can exist at the same time as Berlin exists, and the same in techno.
Demoscene
https://www.unesco.de/en/culture-and-nature/intangible-cultu...
From what I hear from people who are, the clubs have become basically tourist traps that are unaffordable to locals and some have even been priced out of their original locations so not sure if this decision will help much.
I remember in 2015 paying 10-15€, even Berghain would be around 15-18€ and that was expensive already.
The techno scene is still pretty good music-wise if you check the line-up and avoid the new fad of celebrity DJs from the past 8-10ish years. I'm very fond of my early techno days where you could barely see the DJ from the dancefloor, they would be spinning in the shadows and the focus was dancing (this in the early 2000s so not an OG at all to the scene from the 90s, and not in Berlin).
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Interestingly, as an expat/immigrant I've met all my local Berlin friends clubbing, and most of my friends here are German. My colleagues who don't go clubbing seem to be in little bubbles of other expats.
As a result, these people go everywhere and do consumption and outcompete everyone who is not like them. Then everything gets adjusted to their pleasure and they consume all the resources(being housing, food, entertainment etc).
Also, the supply and demand are not able to stabilize because the money moves around the globe freely but working people can't. So when a cryptobro from Russia moves to Portugal he can consume all the Portuguese resources but he can't bring fellow Russians to work and re-supply. Why wouldn't Portuguese just work harder and make buck by increasing the supply to meet the demand? Well because the cryptobro demands luxury housing, luxury food, massages, cars and cocaine but the Portuguese in the location they moved in are maybe painters, taxi drivers, chemical engineers or doctors and they can't simply start doing this new stuff.
The folks are angry with working class immigrants but most of their troubles are actually due to a-few-millionaires who are not rich enough to do substantial long-term investment but are rich enough to consume like there's no tomorrow.
https://technotarek.com/shows/richie-hawtin
I agree that it's worth considering why Berlin has been chosen without acknowledgement to its roots (no shade to Berlin, I love that city and much of the music it has produced).
I enjoyed reading you essay. Coincidentally, U Street Music Hall was one of the venues that shaped my teenage years and served as my gateway into the electronic music scene.
One of my favourite things about Berlin is just sitting in a bar with friends till you're done for the night, no pressure to move on - often this can drag till 4 in the morning, but it doesn't feel laboured.