Germany’s engagement with American underground dance music during the 1980s paralleled that in the UK. By 1987 a German party scene based around the Chicago sound was well established. The following year (1988) saw acid house making as significant an impact on popular consciousness in Germany as it had in England. In 1989 German DJs Westbam and Dr. Motte established the Ufo club, an illegal party venue, and co-founded the Love Parade. After the Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989, free underground techno parties mushroomed in East Berlin, and a rave scene comparable to that in the UK was established.
In 1991 a number of party venues closed, including Ufo, and the Berlin Techno scene centered itself around three locations close to the foundations of the Berlin Wall: Planet (later renamed E-Werk by Paul van Dyk), Der Bunker, and the relatively long-lived Tresor. It was in Tresor at this time that a trend in paramilitary clothing was established (amongst the techno fraternity) by a DJ called Tanith. possibly as an expression of a commitment to the underground aesthetic of the music, or perhaps influenced by UR’s paramilitary posturing.[110] In the same period, German DJs began intensifying the speed and abrasiveness of the sound, as an acid infused techno began transmuting into hardcore DJ Tanith commented at the time that “Berlin was always hardcore, hardcore hippie, hardcore punk, and now we have a very hardcore house sound.”[107] This emerging sound is thought to have been influenced by Dutch gabber and Belgian hardcore; styles that were in their own perverse way paying homage to Underground Resistance and Richie Hawtin’s Plus 8 Records. Other influences on the development of this style were European Electronic Body Music (EBM) groups of the mid-1980s such as DAF, Front 242, and Nitzer Ebb.
Changes were also taking place in Frankfurt during the same period but it did not share the egalitarian approach found in the Berlin party scene. It was instead very much centred around discothèques and existing arrangements with various club owners. In 1988, after the Omen opened, the Frankfurt dance music scene was allegedly dominated by the club’s management and they made it difficult for other promoters to get a start. By the early 1990s Sven Väth had become perhaps the first DJ in Germany to be worshipped like a rock star. He performed centre stage with his fans facing him, and as co-owner of Omen, he is believed to have been the first techno DJ to run his own club. One of the few real alternatives then was The Bruckenkopf in Mainz, underneath a Rhine bridge, a venue that offered a non-commercial alternative to Frankfurt’s discothèque-based clubs. Other notable underground parties were those run by Force Inc. Music Works and Ata & Heiko from Playhouse records (Ongaku Musik). By 1992 DJ Dag & Torsten Fenslau were running a Sunday morning session at Dorian Gray, a plush discothèque near the Frankfurt airport. They initially played a mix of different styles including Belgian new beat, Deep House, Chicago House, and synthpop such as Kraftwerk and Yello and it was out of this blend of styles that the Frankfurt trance scene is believed to have emerged.
In 1993-94 rave became a mainstream music phenomenon in Germany, seeing with it a return to “melody, New Age elements, insistently kitsch harmonies and timbres”. This undermining of the German underground sound lead to the consolidation of a German “rave establishment,” spearheaded by the party organisation Mayday, with its record label Low Spirit, DJ Westbam, Marusha, and a music channel called VIVA. At this time the German popular music charts were riddled with Low Spirit “pop-Tekno” German folk music reinterpretations of tunes such as “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” and “Tears Don’t Lie”, many of which became hits. At the same time, in Frankfurt, a supposed alternative was a music characterised by Simon Reynolds as “moribund, middlebrow Electro-Trance music, as represented by Frankfurt’s own Sven Väth and his Harthouse label.”
End of part 1.
Source: Wikipedia, Magnetic Mag, US Music History, Detroit Techno City