With Berlin’s club scene closed at the moment, this documentary recaps the good old days…

The impact of the coronavirus crisis on the clubbing community can be seen by browsing Resident Advisor’s listings pages for a particular city – while the club nights are all present and correct, each comes with a parentheses: that clubbing, as we know it, is firmly on pause.

This is particularly evident when browsing the listings for Berlin – in a parallel universe, clubbers would just be emerging from the likes of Ritter Butzke, Watergate and Tresor’s basement dungeon, or lining up outside Berghain’s imposing facade for a Sunday afternoon’s entertainment from Etapp Kyle, Henning Baer and Len Faki. 🙂

At least there’s the internet to take us back to the good old days.

A couple of years back, Berlin label Embassy One put together a documentary that delved into the reasons why the German capital has emerged as the epicentre of electronic music – The Sound of Berlin.

It charts the period from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the development of clubs such as UFO and Tresor, the rise of the Love Parade, and the ‘mass-marketification’ of the club scene in the 2000s and beyond.

Featuring interviews with Juan Atkins, Dr. Motte, Nela, Pan-Pot, Tresor founder Dimitri Hegemann and many more, and with a pumping soundtrack from Minus artist Marc Houle, it’s a cracking watch for a lazy Sunday afternoon.

“It won’t shift to another city,” Marc Houle explains at one point. “If this scene is going to continue anywhere, it’s going to continue here. It’s got the foundation for it here.”

And once this coronavirus scare blows over, its time will come again.