The Strange Devirtualization of Techno
haywirez.com
haywirez.com
For those who didn't or aren't going to read it, this is the point.
I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. I understand the feeling of having your niche diluted, but that's what happens whenever a niche is "good enough" to be influential. The mainstream isn't static, and would be worse for everyone if it were.
It is a curious coincidence that the birth of the WWW (the part of the internet that enabled this) is temporally close to the collapse of the alternative system and thus the establishing of the "only viable alternative" (capitalism):
> This malaise, the feeling that there is nothing new, is itself nothing new of course. We find ourselves at the notorious ‘end of history’ trumpeted by Francis Fukuyama after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Fukuyama’s thesis that history has climaxed with liberal capitalism may have been widely derided, but it is accepted, even assumed, at the level of the cultural unconscious.[1].
[1] Quoted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_Realism p. 6.
> The earliest producers of this music dreamt of “arranging energy”, of being conduits for the anti-social/inhuman, to “combat the mediocre audio and visual programming being fed to the inhabitants of Earth”. Gone are all the elements with clever blocks of alien dissonance, driving paranoia or ecstatic release. None of the tracks is pulled forward by second order rhythms of swinging, high-octane percussion that make them groove.
This makes no sense to me. Techno is broader, deeper, and weirder than it's ever been. I think the author is just going to the wrong clubs and listening to the wrong producers.
Then how it's just like everyone constantly asking for drugs.
In my mind raves were actually illegal, like in a construction site, abandoned warehouses or trespassing in school gymnasiums and the people putting them on were actually the ones selling the drugs, and people asked if you wanted anything, not the other way around.
The states are different in some ways I'm sure, but the techno scene here sounds exactly like what he's describing, legal, sanctioned events mimicking the underground where the DJs and staff want to be known. And that's a very active and very fun scene and sometimes there are still "secret" events and clubs that don't open until 6 AM etc. It's still full of people asking for drugs and request for Ketamine are common which is like the antithesis of partying drug.
The people that introduced me to raves and thrive on underground have moved on, the underground stuff at least where I'm at is split into two types in my experience. It's a little bit edgier, but casual sex and drugs were edgy 30 years ago, now there's tinder and darknet markets. It's fun for sure, but if you're old enough to have been around when raves were underground you feel way too old to be at these events, except in my case many of the people I see involved in them I know for a fact are older than me.
Takeover events, that basically morph from street racing to partying in a random location, running from the cops in a group of 100+ cars, regrouping, partying again and repeating that over the course of an entire weekend. The main organizers are a mix of basically just the organizers and drug dealers often times there in stolen cars and pretty well armed. The police take a hands off approach generally. Partying in a random parking garage with 1000+ people while a police helicopter thumps in the background isn't uncommon. Weed has replaced cigarettes and cocaine is ubiquitous. Celebrities and wealthy foreigners will pop up from time to time.
The other is side by sides and there's a lot of overlap of the same people with takeovers having more black and asian and the sXs being white and hispanic. sXs is more music focused for sure with artists being the promotores and organizers. Sometimes they are at official parks and other times it's illegally on government or corporate land. Basically impromptu music festivals for one or two days and more often in the week than on the weekend. Drugs are everywhere but most people are either blackout drunk or openly smoking meth. Sometimes if the same spot is used over and over police will be active, most of the time if they show up, it's a couple in cruisers that can't do anything to 4000 rzrs and a host of atvs and dirtbikes. You can find out about the events from the companies that rent those toys. Wrecks, injuries and fights are typical, people will be listening to techno and random dj might do some sets at some point, but the main acts are the new combination country/rap artists with occasional big name rappers or country stars doing a feature.
Both of these events seemed to thrive and grow during the pandemic and haven't slowed down very much. The most shocking thing to me though is that the demographic diversity though, it's reminiscent of how the early raves were big way of bringing random people together.
A couple videos to show more.
takeovers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDooquh9P3o
idea of the side-by-side event and music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tPsQo4TIiU
>Celebrating the Æsthetic Collapse of a Xoomer Subculture
He seems to be alluding to how the scene changed in the late 90s and does so throughout the article while giving a brief history of it all. The rave scene became the club scene and became a commodity which are things antithetical to what the rave scene was. The rave scene of gen-x is dead and what we have now is very different. I get a strong feeling he is trying to be the Hunter S. Thompson of rave with this piece and he does not quite pull it off.
It’s even acknowledged that the particular party was rather mediocre
I’m sure things were cooler before, old man.
The 10 dollar words in his work don’t impress me much, but there’s something of substance here. It’s gonzo and authentic. I like it.
I don’t live in Berlin, never have, probably never will… but I’ve visited. And I was fortunate enough to visit Berghain, Ohm, Katerblau, Tausend and the Fuck Parade. All the “cool” spots in a very short set of trips over some years. I also framed my outings in my mind as “research”, with a cheeky grin. So there’s my pedigree that aligns with the motif of a neophyte Berlin experience.
Some of these scenes are inclusive in the LBGTQ, racial, and identity sense, but exclusive in the attitude / personality sense. It’s not what you’re born with. It’s what you do with it. What a weird paradox. Inclusively exclusive.
So, look, some of you reading this don’t want to go to things like this and take drugs (you don’t have to) and let loose. Some of you do. Some of you would be welcome and you’d “get it”. And some of you wouldn’t. And Sven Marqhardt [https://www.gq.com/story/berghain-bouncer-sven-marquardt-int...] isn’t psychic but he’s good at his job. (He pretended to try to tick me off by telling me cigarettes aren’t allowed when I knew they sold them upstairs.)
And all that’s ok. The most striking part of Berlin’s music and party culture to me is the comfort with being bluntly but fairly critical. Of eachother, of music, of clothing and fashion… in order to create a time and a place for something we don’t even know what it is yet. That something has been created and then appropriated over and over again. They didn’t invite everyone to these parties for a reason, but due to the internet and their success? Here’s everyone! And there was I. But I tried my best to contribute positive vibes and make real human connections and memories. Not to just promote consumption and capitalism and some shitty clothing from SHEIN.
The author was on a mission to journal the truth. They did a good job. What positive message one could take away from this is to be comfortable in yourself and what you like and remember that art of surfeit has hunger, and such is a fun way to while away your time before you die.
What Berlin offers, by having one of the biggest and oldest legacies, borders on collective self-awareness of such. It knows some of both what makes parties a business, and also what makes them cool. And in the current era, it's been revitalized around new norms. It doesn't have to be a designated "cool party" to be that - it just has to have the "right kind of person" showing up and making it cool. And I think the article does get that across, even if it wanders a bit to do so.