TEA on Tour - Part 2

Amongst bleating cattle I boarded Easy Jet flight 5415 to Berlin to take part in Tobias Rapp's Berlin and the Easy Jet Set (plus a few extra days). As I stared onto the concourse I found myself conjuring up excuses of how I could exempt myself from Rapp’s cliché, I am staying for 6 days, I do have friends in Berlin, I’m not just going to Berghain, I can count to zehn in Deutsch... A slight delay had me land at Schoenefeld Airport around 10:00pm and thanks to some touristic errors I made my Frankfuter Tor destination by 11:30pm-ish. Bags dropped and two (novelty size if your Australian, the norm if your German) Weißbier’s later I was on my way by foot along Karl Marx Allee (excitedly poster spotting along the way) to Weekend to see Ed Davenport and Oliver Deutschman.

Up the elevator with not a word spoken to the hazy lift attendant I entered Weekend unknowingly walking straight through eight friends arm in arm posing for a photo, not exactly Berghain. I looked on as Davenport banged out some hard hitting house with some trademark E-D bottom end to boot. El Carlsberg flowed and before I knew it was was nigh on 5:00am and time to make tracks back down the Karl Marx.

TV Tower en route to Weekend.

Friday morning saw a shower, coffee, croissant and trip Weinmeisterstraße for some new threads with old mate Fred Perry. Feeling almost dapper with my three new purchases a late lunch at Monsieur Vuong’s Indochina cafe called as I indulged in a light Vietnamese laksa and some green tea. Feeling human again I made the short trip south to Gneisenaustraße for some record shopping at Space Hall. Around 2 hours and fifteen records later I was U-Bahn-ing it back to HQ for some rest, pizza & biers and rest before hitting Henning Baer’s Grounded Theory 12 with Ben Klock, Delta Funktionen, Vault Series (Live) and Mr Grounded Theory himself Henning Baer.

Arena Club just south east of Berlins Mitte near Treptow was originally designed and built in 1927 for the intention of housing the omnibuses of Berlin’s public transport services, but was then re-assigned as a weapon’s arsenal for the Third Reich. Arena Club is tucked in amongst a barrack of industrial framework and was unusually quite on approach, leading me to think had I come to the right address. Those thoughts were quickly dispelled as lowly muffled throbs pulsed through Arena’s brick walls. A hushed line up consited of some whispered conversation where not surpringly the only distinctive voice to be heard was a group of American’s, their saving grace being a conversation about DJ Harvey. Nothing beats the feeling of entering a club when the night is young and this time I entered Arena to Henning Baer playing Conrad Van Orton's - Shattered, an artist I had funnily enough been telling friends about that day. Arena’s club was already quite full and a packing a friendly vibe, even when the bar ran out of beer. Beers were soon flowing again and so were Subjected and Moerbeck performing live as Vault Series and as to be expected were heavy on the four four German-ness to the rampant applause of Grounded Theory.

Rubbing shoulders with many of the artists whom have featured on TEA and the enthusiasm of Arena in general was a nice lead up to the start of big 'n' bustling Ben Klock's set. Oozing techno, Klock kept his first half very melodic, with comparable sounds to his Compression Session EP. The second half had Ben bring it home to the delight of one patron swinging his shirt swing above his head for the greater part of his set. I'd be lying if I said I didn't experience a Ben Klock moment like so many of us have. I took respite from a more crowded part of the dancefloor and pushed my way to the rear where I managed to find a small stepper elevating me above the dancefloor. What I saw next turned me from stoned face techno obsessive blogger to blushing prepubescent school boy as 3 german girls exchanged heats of passion, which to be honest it was a welcomed change from the usual same sex debauchery seen on German dance floors.

I took further respite on Arena’s viewing deck as Klock finished off his set to the cheers and hurrahs of a party not close to finishing. Delta Funktionen took over from Klock with some heavy hitting, deep and "Nu Skool" electro easing in from Klock’s thunder and lightening. Calling it a night I was handed a copy of Vault Series Vol.7 by Subjected a former interviewee and podcaster for TEA capping of night two of my Easyjet Set adventure.

Talk of Berghain at the moment is about as worn out a screen print T-Shirts of Kate Moss sold at Camden Market, so I'll keep it brief. Disappointingly missing out on Shifted's set I caught Planetary Assault Systems bang out Rip The Cut, Kray Squid, Bell Blocker (A DJ's favourite) and Wriss, followed by some loopy James Ruskin techno. High fives all round to Ruskin for dropping Thomas Bangalter’s - Outrun. Nearing my 8th hour inside Norman Nodge lived up to the reputation of what a Berghain resident should and his mix of Blawaan’s What You Do With What You Have was certainly a work out.

Berlin Purchases.

My remaining three days in Berlin essentially only consisted of rest, record shopping, donor kebap munchings und eine kaffe’s. This was my fourth trip to Berlin so I can confidently say that I had seen enough of the cities touristic attractions to not feel guilty about dusting up the knuckles for three days. Hardwax was my first port of call and I arrived at 11:00am, a little too keen, let's say one hour too keen as Hardwax opens at 12:00pm. I took a stroll along the Spree and made sure my return to Hardwax was at 12:15pm, don't want to look to keen right? gimme gimme gimme.

Two hours later I was mechanically and unemotionally processed at the register with what was close to 150 euro’s worth of records. Next up was the very friendly OYE Records located just off Schonhauser Allee up from Senefelderplatz. Listening to some records at my listening booth I was politely interrupted by a woman who explained to me that a German news crew were filming in the shop and that I would be in the background whilst the presenter did her thing. If any one reading this happens to see a German news story on OYE Records please let me know as I'd love to see it. I remember listening to this during filming. Last stop was Mitte Musik just off Warschauerstraße, a bulging bag full of records had me telling myself to relax and not buy everything on sight but the Mitte Musik guys had me at hello with their impressive Fachwerk selection, sold.

Weighing in at?

Wednesday I managed to quickly catch up with Henning Baer for a quick coffee and was treated to a sneak peak inside K209's studio, it’s no lie when they say techno made in a Berlin basement. As I hopped the S9 headed back to Schonfeld I huffed and puffed breaking into a small sweat lugging around what was in total close to 50 records. I packed light for Berlin knowing I would be bringing back some records, only I didnt expect my binge to be as big as it was, or at least I told myself that. I made my way to counter to check in my bag and attemped to casually lift it on the weigher, I wasn’t fooling anyone as I no doubt looked like an olympian weight lifter about to buckle, pulsating vien in the middle of the forehead is always a good too. I ended up checking in at 19.6 Kg’s, 0.4 Kg's under the limit, not bad going considering I had more in my hand luggage.

Tobias Rapp Interview

A book that took me under 5 days to read (no it wasnt R.L. Stine's Goosebumps) will be featured at Kim Bar in Berlins Mitte via a special reading and discussion presented by EXBERLINER on thursday the 11th of March.

This book was Tobias Rapp's 'Lost and Sound: Berlin, Techno and the Easyjet Set'

As the book suggests techno was declared ‘dead’ by the turn of the century; the 1990s euphoria of the postunification Berlin scene had lost steam. Tobias Rapp's book Lost and Sound: Berlin, Techno und der Easyjetset, wanted to show the world that techno and club culture was still alive and kicking in Berlin.

After a reading from the book, a panel of DJs and promoters from the Berlin club scene will discuss the theme of the book: the rise of Berlin's extraordinary club culture surrounding the techno scene. Alongside Tobias, the book's translator Paul Sabin, EXBERLINER music editor D.Strauss, Dixon of label Innervision, and Leo Olofsson of Awesome Agency will join the discussion. Exciting!

Here is the interview from www.exberliner.com

How did you first make the connection between easyJet and Berlin nightlife?

Around 2003, while I was standing in queues waiting to get into clubs, I began to notice that more and more people were speaking all kinds of different languages: they were coming from somewhere else. It was at about that time that a lot of low-cost airlines started flying to Berlin. I estimate about 10,000 people fly to Berlin every weekend just to go clubbing. The good thing about easyJet is that it’s like a cab… as if Milan or Birmingham were suburbs of Berlin, and the other way around. That’s the great thing about it that made this scene possible. And the thing about the Easyjet set is that if fuel gets more expensive, then it’s over. 

 

There is so much nightlife here – so many different clubs – that you can hear everything from heavy metal to folk, Balkan beats to Britpop every weekend. What’s unique about the techno scene?

I think it’s better here than anywhere else. Berlin is a techno city. It’s not a heavy metal or folk city. In New York, jazz and hip hop and Latin music communicate the reality of the place. I lived in New York in the early noughties, and what I really liked was the way that hip hop communicated within the city. In London, you have similar things with all the pirate radio stations and all the different music styles that are communicated this way. Coming back to Berlin, I realised that we have that too, but it’s techno here.

In the book, you describe how Detroit techno came over here in the early 1990s and was developed in places like Tresor into this pounding music that was a kind of celebration of reunification. There were a lot of East Germans involved, and by the late 1990s, it had burned out. The Love Parade had become huge, then lost steam and moved to another city (Dortmund). But the flame of Berlin techno was somehow kept alive by a few clubs. Everyone thought Peaches and electroclash were going to be big and that techno was over. But by 2003 or 2004, it somehow re-exploded. How did that happen?

In the 1990s, techno was a typical pop-cultural movement. Everyone wants to participate when it’s growing, but when it stops growing, it collapses very quickly because the growth was the most important thing about it. If you look at who runs the clubs now, most of them were already around in the 1990s. They learned from their mistakes. Nobody believes in the “raving society” anymore – that was the catchphrase from the 1990s: the illusion that everyone was going to be a raver.

When you see 3,000 people go into a club, is that ‘underground’?

That’s an interesting question. In the East German techno scene, you have two developments. You have partying to techno music as a sort of mainstream social behaviour – lots of people accept this as a leisure time activity. The underground thing is the artistic content. In the 1990s, you had techno in the charts... That’s over: the music has become very underground. There aren’t as many record stores, and not as many people care about the music. That’s why the DJs are so important – they are the mediators between lots of people who want to go out and the very few people who are interested in the music. DJs are the ones who have to communicate this music to a mainstream audience. And, amazingly, it works.

 

For how long can minimal techno remain the dominant style?

Forever! No, really – I can’t answer that. It’s a type of music that is very simple but at the same time has infinite possibilities. It’s like a haiku. It’s a very simple form, but you can fill it with an endless number of sounds. Let’s put it this way: I’m not seeing young people coming up with something categorically different. That was our aim in the early 1990s, but it was an illusion. Techno was the child of disco music, so it wasn’t new, but it felt new. And we felt we wanted to have it because we didn’t like the other stuff. ‘Fuck off, guitars, we don’t want you!’ – I’m not seeing that anywhere now. Maybe it’s over, this idea of revolutionising pop culture through the murder of the father; maybe it doesn’t work anymore. I feel a little lost when I start to think about the future, because I have just started to understand the present. It’s very difficult to realize what it means to have access to all the music that exists on the internet.

 

You also write about Ableton, the Berlin music software company that grew out of the techno scene. With Ableton Live, you can play music on your laptop with practically every sound known to man. Do you think this is actually going to kill off creativity in the long run?

I don’t think so. I’m an optimist. Why should creativity endnow after thousands of years of world history? The tools are changing. I think humans always find new ways of connecting their subjectivity to the new tools. When I grew up, I learned to think in genres and epochs and all these things have just disappeared into one platform. It’s all there. And the fact that it’s all there isn’t new anymore. The territory is charted. I haven’t seen the rocket that is going to take us to the next level of music.

What about the future of Berlin as a location for this culture? Is the Club-Meile along the Spree really threatened by gentrification and development?

Some clubs are and some are not. The big clubs like Berghain, Watergate and Weekend all have long-running contracts. They have invested a lot of money. They are going to be there in five, 10 years’ time. I have already twice witnessed everyone saying, “Ah, now it’s over.” And it never was. It was over in one part of the city and moved to another part. I think the city of Berlin still has enough spaces and enough empty buildings to maintain an interesting nightlife. The people who know how to make a great club out of a building, they’re there – that’s what’s important.

 

You stress in the book how important the club scene is for Berlin’s economy. Do you really think the government is aware of its significance?

It’s a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s good that the government cares about the club scene a little bit. It doesn’t see it as an enemy as most other city governments do. On the other hand, I don’t know what the club scene has to gain now that the government has discovered the attractiveness of its nightlife. There are some embraces that can choke you. I was at a conference last fall organised by Berlin Tourism Marketing and I had the feeling that, in a way, my book scripted the marketing campaign for them.

 

Do you want to be part of that? No, I felt very uncomfortable in that kind of situation. If the city comes along and starts to treat club culture like ‘culture’, then the problems begin. I think it’s a good thing if the Senat for economy deals with clubs, not the department of culture. If the city comes up with a worldwide marketing campaign that says, “Hey everybody, the nightlife is so great”, then at a certain point Berliners’ hatred of tourists will be justified. The good thing about the tourists that come now is that they really come because they care about it. Most of them have more knowledge of techno culture than the Berliners do. These people are always welcome. But if people come because of a certain image of the city and everything has to be explained to them, then the club scene will suffer. That’s the danger.

 

In the book, there is a chapter about a 39-yearold woman who is still a passionate clubber; her 19-year-old daughter had a pretty unconventional upbringing. Why did you include that part?

 She’s a good friend of mine. I included it because I wanted to show that this whole techno scene is about the way we live. It’s very controversial: I’ve had lots of conversations about it. But the people who continue clubbing and don’t stop are a reality. I’m 38, too. You have to adjust it to the rest of your life – your job, your family. But it’s still part of your life. 

 

Tobias Rapp will be discussing his book at a special EXBERLINER reading at Kim Bar (Brunnenstr. 10, Mitte, U-Bhf Rosenthaler Platz) on Thursday, March 11, at 21.00.