Techno Worlds
From Tresor to Loveparade – the golden era of techno
Techno – it was the spirit of dance and of life itself in the nineties. Tilman Brembs was right there with his camera: a photographic journey through the rave era.
By Sarah Klein
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Looking back at the 1990s, it was a decade with three main music genres influencing teenagers and young people in their twenties: hiphop, grunge and techno. Visually the fans were easy to tell apart, with one group in the typical low-lying baggy pants and hoodies, the other sporting ripped jeans and checked shirts, and the techno fans in a motley mix of eccentric gear, adorned with accessories such as gas masks, glitter and wacky spectacles. Yep, those were cool times.
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One of the places where it all started in the early 1990s was the Tresor club in Berlin. Tresor means treasury, and originally it was actually intended to be a strongroom for the Wertheim department store. After opening in 1991 it quickly gained fame beyond national frontiers and eventually became one of the most iconic techno temples ever. The club also had its own record label in the form of “Tresor Records”, which would go on to be a particular influence on the scene in Germany and Europe.
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Tresor was not the only techno club for long – E-Werk, the former Buchhändlerhof electricity substation, was considered another influential scene location from 1993 to 1997.
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E-Werk boasted resident DJs whose fame extended far beyond Germany, including Paul van Dyk, Kid Paul, DJ Clé and DJ Disko.
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Techno induced a kind of euphoria in the ravers - they often danced for days on end, as pictured here at E-Werk in 1994. Many resorted to energy drinks or took ecstasy, the popular drug of its day, for stamina.
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These sunglasses – known as Mind Machines or Brain Machines – also induced a kind of euphoria back then. They projected light pulses onto the eyes and the idea was to get ravers into the right frame of mind. Stroboscopes were joined by yet more flashing lights – that was when the party really got going for some people.
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There were cult clubs in Frankfurt am Main too, for example Dorian Gray at the airport terminal. This place is regarded as the birthplace of the “Sound of Frankfurt”. Dancers typically took smoking breaks in the toilets in those days, something you don’t often see now.
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In the Ruhr region, they celebrated techno culture at a May dance with a difference: “Rave Olympia” was the slogan for Mayday 1994, at which 24,000 festival-goers partied in the Westfalenhallen in Dortmund. The Mayday events are still held on 30th April each year, with an assortment of high-profile techno DJs in their line-ups.
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The first Loveparade in 1989 was a techno carnival organised by techno DJ Dr. Motte in 1989 – with just 150 attendees – that processed through the streets of Berlin and was attracting interest beyond the region by 1991. These three were amongst the participants that year – who already numbered 6,000 at that point.
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Over the years, Loveparade increasingly became a centre of attraction for international techno fans. In 1996 the procession route included the Berlin Siegessäule. However by 1999, when visitor numbers reached a peak at around 1.5 million, criticism from within the scene was rife – the event had become too commercialised, they said, and many of the DJs turned their backs on Loveparade.
Tilman Brembs
