Music lecture Futurit: #Berlin
Germans found their expression in electronic music after war. Electro seemed to be what corresponded with the thinking and mentality of that particular time and space the best. In the seventies it was Krautrock, nineties brought Techno to Berlin and was there to stay. In eighties Industrial was played alongside the naughty Neue Deutsche Welle and the Berlin of today produces music impossible to be separated into genre boxes. Today it seems like the whole world lives in Berlin and its inhabitants are more active and more woke than people from other places. And everything is political: even sex and the right to party.
We start our peek into Berlin scene in the half of the seventies. Germany is a divided country that is still facing the aftermath of the war. The capital is cut through by the wall and controlled heavily. Both sides of the wall are ruled by disillusion and sense of destruction. These circumstances though are tempting for unconventional people to explore – for those who somehow can’t settle to become a part of the system – queer people, artists, or those who refuse to recruit. They are welcomed by destroyed leftovers of buildings, smokey Trabant car and socialist architecture on the East side and bars full of Berliners drinking their past away on the West side.
Depression has its weird charm. In this chaos, where the traditions were destroyed, new yet unheard sounds are emerging. This is where experimental Krautrock came to life perhaps the most typical of the electronic music genres for Germans. That’s what Kraftwerk was playing on their first three albums. The atmosphere of the eighties Berlin is best to be heart through the industrial sound of the west part – Einstürzende Neubauten. In their music there’s nihilism, destruction and revolt and radicalization to be heard.
The decay of the place and time and the local electronic music lured David Bowie into escaping his drug addiction to Berlin. He remade and recorded three of his albums here – they became to be known as the Berlin trilogy and are considered to be his most important creations – Low, Heroes and Lodger. There were more musicians to come to go through the Bowie Berlin experience.
The occupation troops in the west brought louder British radio signal and so welcomed punk and new wave in Germany. It began to form a new genre in the German conditions called Neue Deutsche Welle – the music of the gray walls. After the fall of the Berlin Wall many of the NDW musicians became the leaders of the new movement that pasted both Berlin sides together again through occupying the destroyed buildings and forming a freshly united city culture.
In these famous days people spontaneously celebrated the newly gained freedom and unity directly on the streets or in the abandoned buildings. The soundtrack of the time was techno. Techno came to life in american Detroit but found its home right in Berlin. They simple called the number they found on the record of Jeff Mills and invited him to play in Berlin. That’s how simply the link Detroit – Berlin happened and the advantages of this connection were often used by other cities in Europe – like our Bratislava for example, too.
In the past thirty years techno went through different waves, peaks and falls. In Berlin techno has a rich infrastructure built already amongst labels, clubs and ravers who live it. Techno is autonomous, puristic and taken seriously. Berlin Techno is almost something of a trademark that tempts many tourists to come here and party like in the nineties.
Today Berlin is the home to various scenes, opinion movements and progressive labels such as PAN. Activism and civil society work well here and it’s fertile ground for many new unconventional projects and ideas – and it to this day produces lots of original and innovative music. Music lecture Futurit: #Berlin
Germans found their expression in electronic music after war. Electro seemed to be what corresponded with the thinking and mentality of that particular time and space the best. In the seventies it was Krautrock, nineties brought Techno to Berlin and was there to stay. In eighties Industrial was played alongside the naughty Neue Deutsche Welle and the Berlin of today produces music impossible to be separated into genre boxes.
Today it seems like the whole world lives in Berlin and its inhabitants are more active and more woke than people from other places. And everything is political: even sex and the right to party.
We start our peek into Berlin scene in the half of the seventies. Germany is a divided country that is still facing the aftermath of the war. The capital is cut through by the wall and controlled heavily. Both sides of the wall are ruled by disillusion and sense of destruction. These circumstances though are tempting for unconventional people to explore – for those who somehow can’t settle to become a part of the system – queer people, artists, or those who refuse to recruit. They are welcomed by destroyed leftovers of buildings, smokey Trabant car and socialist architecture on the East side and bars full of Berliners drinking their past away on the West side.
Depression has its weird charm. In this chaos, where the traditions were destroyed, new yet unheard sounds are emerging. This is where experimental Krautrock came to life perhaps the most typical of the electronic music genres for Germans. That’s what Kraftwerk was playing on their first three albums. The atmosphere of the eighties Berlin is best to be heart through the industrial sound of the west part – Einstürzende Neubauten. In their music there’s nihilism, destruction and revolt and radicalization to be heard.
The decay of the place and time and the local electronic music lured David Bowie into escaping his drug addiction to Berlin. He remade and recorded three of his albums here – they became to be known as the Berlin trilogy and are considered to be his most important creations – Low, Heroes and Lodger. There were more musicians to come to go through the Bowie Berlin experience.
The occupation troops in the west brought louder British radio signal and so welcomed punk and new wave in Germany. It began to form a new genre in the German conditions called Neue Deutsche Welle – the music of the gray walls. After the fall of the Berlin Wall many of the NDW musicians became the leaders of the new movement that pasted both Berlin sides together again through occupying the destroyed buildings and forming a freshly united city culture.
In these famous days people spontaneously celebrated the newly gained freedom and unity directly on the streets or in the abandoned buildings. The soundtrack of the time was techno. Techno came to life in american Detroit but found its home right in Berlin. They simple called the number they found on the record of Jeff Mills and invited him to play in Berlin. That’s how simply the link Detroit – Berlin happened and the advantages of this connection were often used by other cities in Europe – like our Bratislava for example, too.
In the past thirty years techno went through different waves, peaks and falls. In Berlin techno has a rich infrastructure built already amongst labels, clubs and ravers who live it. Techno is autonomous, puristic and taken seriously. Berlin Techno is almost something of a trademark that tempts many tourists to come here and party like in the nineties.
Today Berlin is the home to various scenes, opinion movements and progressive labels such as PAN. Activism and civil society work well here and it’s fertile ground for many new unconventional projects and ideas – and it to this day produces lots of original and innovative music.