#real scenes

For many people techno is the sound that defined the 1990s. In Germany, Berlin was the epicentre of the new music genre, and before mass events like the Love Parade began, raves took place inside a fairly small circle of party-goers – and in some very unusual places.

Berlin’s party hungry hung on every word when Moni D., aka Monika Dietl, took to the mic. She hosted The Big Beatshow on youth radio station Radio 4U, where every Saturday night she sent out a coded message about where all the illegal techno parties were taking place. Moni D. closed her show by advising young ravers to “shut up and dance.” This slogan aptly describes why techno music took over 1990s Berlin. The mid-1980s swansong of punk and new wave had left Berlin’s club scene a bit lacklustre and dull. Then acid techno swept in, introducing a new party culture to the once-divided city. Initially only known to a small in-crowd, it seemed would-be dancers and partiers were hungry for a new groove, and the trend took off. The new raves had little in common with the more stylised parties of the 1980s, where cool guests leaned up against the bar, cocktail in hand. Now people jumped, jerked and jiggled in the blinking light of the techno strobe. Etiquette and outfit, ‘seeing and being seen’ receded into the background as the spotlight turned on dancing into a frenzied trance.

East and West Berlin techno fans joined forces the moment the Berlin Wall fell. “It took just two days to unify the techno scenes,” East Berlin DJ Paul van Dyk recalls. “The borders opened on a Thursday, and we threw a party together in the West Berlin cult club Ufo on Saturday.” The scene took advantage of the optimism generated by reunification to turn techno into a joint venture of sorts. Young people from East Berlin were looking to let off steam after all the oppression of the SED regime. So they threw in their lot with West Berlin’s techno kids to throw infamous raves at the darkest, dankest underground locations.

the guy: so, what’s your passion, what makes you move forward?

me, internally: M I L F S

Resident Advisor: Real Scenes: London (Documentary) 

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