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Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

theguardian.com

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Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#101

Post by vidarh »

earthnail wrote: post #76
vidarh wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are urban areas. If you instead count by city limits, Berlin is bigger by a large margin [1]. This is the perpetual problem with defining "biggest" - to some the urban area of Paris might still be "Paris" but the vast majority of it is outside the city limits. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_the_European...

But Berlin stops entirely at its city limits. There is almost nothing beyond it. That's just a consequence of its history with the east/west divide. More people live in Munich's metropolitan area (i.e. where underground and overground take you) than Berlin. Still, Berlin feels like a proper city and Munich like a large village. Berlin vs Munich is where your metric (people who live inside city boundaries) works to de…

Sure, but the point is you will get different results depending on which metric you pick. It's not that one is inherently more correct than the other.

Often there are cultural aspects at play too. I live in London. I also live in Croydon - it'd be one of the largest cities in the UK in its own right if it was separate to London (and on more than one occasion the council has tried to make that happen). Most of the borough is part of the same urban area, but some are fairly well separated. Several parts of the borough are really separate towns, separated not just from London but from Croydon by "relatively rural" land (by our standards), with their own town centers, train stations, and culturally distinct.

All of this is within the administrative city limits of Greater London ("London" doesn't really exist as an entity of its own - and before anyone else says City of London, that's one tiny constituent part of Greater London - nobody means City when they say London)

So when you say Berlin, everything might be within city limits, when you say London, odds are you wouldn't think of every part within the actual city limits as part of it, nor even a city, but the Greater London urban area includes tendrils extending beyond Greater London too that nobody other than perhaps extra audacious real estate agents would call London. When you say Paris, odds are you might include some parts beyond the formal city limits but very unlikely the entire urban area.

Even then, you won't even get people living each place to agree where the line goes.

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#102

Post by jackcosgrove »

picadores wrote: post #70
jamil7 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Eh, because they do not want people there, who listen to promotions and whatever the socialsewersystems carries as hip to them. Where there is affordable housing, there be musicians doing brave new things instead of worrying about rent and rapping rants about gentrification.

> Where there is affordable housing, there be musicians doing brave new things instead of worrying about rent and rapping rants about gentrification.

So I am not a techno aficionado, and I'm curious what the state of Detroit techno is now. It seems like it should be more notable (maybe it is and I'm not in the scene to know) given the history and cost of living.

I regret the US turning away from house and techno, compared to Europe.

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#103

Post by input_sh »

ricksunny wrote: post #78
earthnail wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDM isn't Techno. It's a bit like saying that hard rock is like metal (somewhat bad analogy, but I hope you get the point). I know you listed a range of genres but it's important to note that the Berlin techno scene would never consider itself part of EDM. In Europe, most EDM is happening in Amsterdam.

Can you distinguish these two? In my head EDM & techno occupy the same space.

> In my head EDM & techno occupy the same space.

That's the case for a lot of "normies", but it really feels insulting to the electronic music fans in general. Unlike say rock nobody's gonna ask you to know every band in existence and every album they put out decades ago, but you should be able to distinguish between major electronic music genres like house, techno, drum and bass, trance, hardstyle and what not. Sometimes the line gets really blurry, sure, but 90% of the time it's pretty easy to know what you're listening to.

The vibe is different, the tempo is different, the people that go to those places are different, pretty much everyone develops some sort of a very specific preference, and European countries kinda "specialize" based off of that. If you want techno, you go to Berlin. If you want grime, you go to London. If you're into house, you go to a beach in Croatia. I'd say the Netherlands are a bit all over the place, but what really sets them apart is hardstyle, which is pretty much not a thing anywhere else. And so on, and so on.

That's not to say you can't find other things in those places, but they're always gonna be a bit more niche and you kinda have to know what you're looking for to find them.

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#104

Post by cmrdporcupine »

throwaway2562 wrote: post #30
cookiemonsieur wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is immensely ironic considering that modern house and techno is an invention of African Americans in Chicago. We've truly come full circle. The same thing is being done to hiphop in a similar way.

Nonsense. Jeff Mills was a Skinny Puppy fan, and you can hear it. All the Belleville Three were heavily influenced by Kraftwerk and euro-electro, and you can hear that too. All of them namecheck a much richer and diverse set of influences than Chicago house, itself a refinement of disco, a far from strictly racially-defined movement. The UK was the first to wake up to US techno, long before the US did, if you actuall…

> Jeff Mills was a Skinny Puppy fan, and you can hear it

Totally. I have somewhere in my pile of neglected vinyl one of the "Final Cut" releases, which was a straight-up wax-trax style EBM/industrial thing which Jeff Mills was involved in. Late 80s/early-90s.

> The UK was the first to wake up to US techno, long before the US did

Arguably, the US never really did. Most people here in North America remain clueless to what techno is and can't distinguish from EDM or other dance music forms. In Detroit itself, there was obviously an active scene, but much smaller than anything you'd find in most European cities (Detroit itself is a fairly small city, population wise), and much smaller than its own hip-hop scene. Back in the 90s when I was much more into this scene, it was very much a niche underground thing. Active scene participants here in southern Ontario/Toronto (3rd/4th largest city in North America) were a few hundred people at most and we pretty much all knew each other. Detroit techno producers and DJs spent most of their time touring in Europe (where they could get paid), not here in North America.

The Detroit Electronic Music Festival events were kind of a rare acknowledgement by a larger audience (I went to the first two only, though).

All said though, the "Detroit" "authenticity" pole in techno served as a counteracting force against the unbearable soul-less, drug-rush-focused, "whiteness" of trance, progressive house, etc.

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#105

Post by pantalaimon »

mrtksn wrote: post #84
epups wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is a finite supply that can be build upon over time. That's why the prices are going up. If everyone suddenly had the same amount of money as the "consumption class", some of the millionaire would have had to prepare the food and clean the toilets. The whole idea of money is that it is something you are supposed to receive for creating value and use it to extract value from others by trading it. Fiat, gold, crypto…

The finite supply is space, not DJs. And that’s a mostly political problem as it’s not like there is a lack of space in general, but what you are allowed to do with that space.

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#107

Post by mytailorisrich »

vidarh wrote: post #63
L_226 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bigger than Paris? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_Eur...

Those are urban areas. If you instead count by city limits, Berlin is bigger by a large margin [1]. This is the perpetual problem with defining "biggest" - to some the urban area of Paris might still be "Paris" but the vast majority of it is outside the city limits. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_the_European...

The urban area is what matters. Paris is larger than Berlin and the largest in the EU.

Paris has the specificity of having small limits for the city proper but it does not make sense to use that metric for comparison because nowadays the city only stops at the administrative limits for adminsitrative purposes and nothing else. You won't even notice you've crossed the limit if not for the ring road.

In fact, Moscow is also larger than Berlin however you look at it we we're talking about "continental Europe" (which I take as a way to exclude London, which is also larger than Berlin...).

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#108

Post by Annatar »

larodi wrote: post #4

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, thank…

[dead]

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#109

Post by diggan »

pantalaimon wrote: post #39
mat0 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 capi…

I feel like the growing festival scene is a direct result of properties getting scarce in the city. Or maybe that people got too busy that they can only afford to party when it’s a proper vacation.

> I feel like the growing festival scene is a direct result of properties getting scarce in the city.

On the hand, Barcelona is as cramped as ever (with rents showing it too) but there is plenty of festivals in the city, especially around Port Forum (a marina) which have huge open spaces and is right before the city limits.

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#110

Post by pantalaimon »

huseyinkeles wrote: post #9
world2vec wrote: post #2

Going on a cultural trip to Berlin this next May, with some of my best friends. What are your most favourite underrated techno clubs in Berlin? I've been to the big ones already, keen to explore the fringe places.

I enjoyed Zur Klappe when I visited Berlin pre-pandemic times. It's literally underground and used to be a public toilet. And it's very close to the famous Mustafa's Gemuse Kebab, so you can try that afterwards.

Just don’t queue an hour at Mustafa's - it’s good Kebap, but it’s not that extraordinary. Rüya(m), Superhahn or Servet's make the same style of Gemüsekebap and are just as good.
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