I'd also argue that the most recent accelerator for the shift in culture in Berlin isn't so much the tourism, but the pandemic. People haven't really been the same since.

I think the biggest drag is actually rent prices. When I got to Berlin 20 years ago you could get a room in a shared flat for €100. That same room now would be €500. Same for music spaces: it was easy to rent unused warehouse space in the inner city 20 year ago. There are a lot of interesting things that happen to a city when rent is ridiculously low as it was in Berlin for a long time (there were more apartments than people).

There's still a lot going on in Berlin, but the character has very much changed. 20 years ago it was rare for clubs to be legal. Most of Berlin's well known clubs now started off as illegal clubs back then. But there were hundreds of other spaces that didn't survive and transition to being legal spaces. There's still some of that, but much, much less. Also back then just randomly setting up a sound system in a park in the summer was much more tolerated. "Open Airs" in Berlin were just kind of what you did in the summer.

Honestly, while I generally did not partake in such, the pandemic was the first time that I realized that came back some. Partying was illegal and the parties were moderately guarded secrets. I hadn't seen that much buzz around illegal parties in more than a decade.

Addendum: As a weird note, I don't even get the grandparent's comment about Potsdam? For the non-Berlin folks, it's a city just outside of Berlin's borders, but an hour away on the train from the more alternative bits of the city. It's neither known for its music scene, nor honestly as a place that rich people want to move. I know a couple of people that have moved there because of usual suburb reasons: they wanted a bigger place, and it's cheaper there. The other cities listed there are also weird. I've been out in all of them but Lyon and, yeah, there's some stuff, but to say the "scene" is moving there is really off. Three of the cities listed there are in the Balkans, but the best city for techno in the Balkans is undoubtedly Belgrade.

Also, often tourists aren't accustomed to Berlin's marathon club opening times (some clubs don't close on weekends) and end up too trashed and are annoying. So, yeah, tourists have a harder time at the doors.

Honestly, I've only been to Tresor once. It's kind of a misnomer since it's named after a very famous, very important long-closed club in a different part of Berlin with a totally different vibe. The current incarnation ... it's probably fine. Like, there are a handful of clubs in Berlin that actually feel a lot like the clubs Berliners do go to, but are mostly there for tourists. You can spot them because ... you can spot them. ;-) (Good rule of thumb in Berlin: if you can easily find the entrance, it's for tourists. Most of the more scene-y clubs don't have a sign.)

I'm travelling there for the first time, as a woman alone I wouldn't like to have nasty looks tbh (or even be yelled at as other user suggested), not want to bother, know to behave and just want to get to know the city along with other places in Europe.

I think the yelling at tourists is mainly going to be if you're doing something stupid (though some of those are non-obvious: e.g. taking pictures in clubs is mostly a no-no). I probably wouldn't mess with trying to get in to Berghain. Other places you'll have a decent shot. If you want to go like a pro, show up from 4-6 a.m. instead of midnight with the tourists. The pros come out late, and the lines are shorter and the dancefloors are less packed -- if you actually like to dance, later is better. I'll sometimes even go out on Sunday afternoon.

It's not about just line length, you would have to fit in and seem non-tourist to get into Berghain, and then you'd need to actually enjoy a dark, brutal, kink and techno club full of intentional degeneracy. I would absolutely go, for the music, but wouldn't be as much into the kink side, which I think is escalated somewhat from what Tresor was?

There's a good documentary on the history of Tresor: "Sub Berlin - The Story Of Tresor" which appears to even have a re-cut version on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiuJhq-z2LE

I get it though, where I live we have desert undergrounds and parties up in the mountains with a vibe that is threatening to be overrun by tourists. To say nothing of all the plug-in camps popping up at Burning Man...

Also be prepared to be denied entry. It's allowed and not uncommon, especially for some specific clubs.

So research where you're going first! Helped me get in without having to say a word!

I think, no citizen of any larger city likes tourists and the way tourism shapes the city. It's mostly ugly, tasteless entertainment venues and ever the same groups of people standing in your way, the same questions asked. Don't expect anyone to be enthusiastic about your week long expedition through their lived reality. Do your own research.

You have to behave like a "tourist" to be noticeable as one. If you are disgustingly drunk and obviously in "don't be gentle, it's a rental" mode, you may not get into some clubs, tourist or not. Some legendary clubs are very sex/kink positive, and/or queer spaces, bouncers take their job serious and filter out people who may disturb the peace or don't fit the general vibe. It's not a zoo. As a "tourist", or really anyone not in the scene, you likely won't get the info on anything "underground" going on.

That said, Berlin's tourism really isn't that bad compared to e.g. Paris or Prague. The city feels very much like actual people are living there. Speaking English won't get you "flagged" per se and you won't have trouble communicating. Mind you, the "expat" type isn't exactly liked either...

My advice, to get an authentic feel for Berlin: Explore the city by bike! Rent or cheaply buy one for the time being there. Traffic is intimidating, but the city is much, much less overwhelming and exhausting on a bike. (Don't clog the bike lanes, tho!) Berlin is incredibly green and got several lakes (!) inside and around, where you can swim and hang-out. It's also very explorable, meaning you can discover nice, or odd places and things just by walking around, in many areas. Don't get too focused on certain locations.

Thanks for the tips :) ! Will make sure to rent a bike while there.

No. Maybe some, but not many I've personally met.

> Im travelling to Berlin and was recommended Tresor

Not a bad club, not particular popular with people here. It is well known, though.

Sooner or later, the Berlin scene will just feel like the one in Brooklyn. Everything will be properly gentrified.

Belgrade is long way from Europe although the scene is good, but I’d say Croatia and Albania are much more preferred by promoters

Imagine a guy comes around to your house every month and demands $1000 or else he breaks your kneecaps. You'd be quite motivated to ensure you can make that $1000 each month and you'd not be left with as much energy for doing everything else you might want to do. That's essentially the economic effect of rent. At least taxes are indexed to your income, so you can always afford to pay them; rent is not.

I moved to Berlin 15 years ago in my mid 20s. Back then we didn’t work very much, we constantly had hangovers, we were constantly out, running around Neukölln and Kreuzberg.

Whenever I chat to that age group now, while they often look the part, they’re actually tired, overworked, cash-strapped, and living far from the center of the city.

A good weird party scene needs that bad-judgment-high-enthusiasm energy of the young, and now there’s much less of it.

I've seen the pattern in several other places as well: arts thrive in the affordable undesirable edges of society until it generates enough buzz for capitalists to notice it and move in seeking to profit off of it. The problem is that culture is not valued in capitalism because it has no landlord.

Most of the places they shut down were mostly fine.

intellectual property is the way to monetize intangible culture

This is a super common cycle. City gets economically depressed -> rents drop a lot -> lots of young people and artists, etc. move in -> great "scene" develops -> people with money start moving in because of the scene -> rents rise -> young people and artists move elsewhere -> scene slows or stagnates.

Obviously that's an oversimplification, and just becoming cheap to live in isn't enough by itself, and just becoming more expensive isn't the death knell.

Charlottenburg, Steglitz, Wilmersdorf or Wedding were never known for "the scene" but prices still got way higher. And places like Prenzlauer Berg were already gentrified when prices got even crazier.

In Europe, most EDM is happening in Amsterdam.

Genre elitism is why I stopped spinning, it is such a boring thing to bike shed over and contributes zero to the music.

Almost immediately after the term started being used, though, it became strongly associated with a particular type of dance music -- namely the mainstream house music that got played at big "EDM" festivals -- think David Guetta and Afrojack and Avicii and Tiesto... They used a blanket term when putting the festival together because the festival booked all kinds of dance music, but the main stages were dominated by a particular kind of dance music, so for most people that went to those festivals, that was the kind of music they associated with EDM.

"Techno" went through a similar evolution. It was originally a term for a particular subgenre of disco and kraftwerk influenced dance music coming out of detroit in the 1980s, around the same time that house music was starting up in Chicago and garage music started up in New York. It pushed further into pure electronic sounds than house and garage did (at first) and early techno compilations solidified in people's minds that electronic music was "techno", especially in america, so "techno" for a while became a catch-all term for all kinds of electronic music. That faded away when "electronica" and then "edm" sort of took on that role, and techno continued as a subgenre of music by itself.

So, I think, properly, techno is a _sub genre_ of "electronic dance music" in the general sense, but is a different genre than what a lot of people think of as EDM (the kind of house music played at large festivals).

Crazy to think it’s been a thing since the 90s when it was built in Flash!

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.

Plenty of people are able to enjoy music without getting caught up in nomenclature. The idea that those people aren't real fans always feels very snobbish.

I listen to a lot of "classical". People will generally dump centuries of music into that label, or into the slightly better "baroque/classical/romantic/etc" bins.

But composers often have phases where their music can change considerably. Even with in a work (say, Dvorak's 9th symphony) individual movements can be very different. Yet I don't see classical music enthusiasts trying to place every single work into tiny bins (or maybe they do?). They just enjoy them.

I've come across plenty of classical music that I enjoy but I don't know where to begin to find more of it.

If I am being uncharitable, some people just want to differentiate to feel special. Elitism in genres is nothing new either, rock and jazz have their own blend of genre snobbery and I am sure even Classical had people trying to look down on others from adjascent, equal height high horses.

If you can't differentiate between neurofunk and liquid, you're probably not a big dnb fan.

That doesn't mean you can't enjoy it, but enjoying something and being a fan of something can be quite distinct things.

I'll be honest with you, I thought this was satire before I read the next line.

It may just come down to whether one uses the watered down meaning of “fan” or the original.

I also reckon that being a fan connotes something different from merely enjoying the sound when you happen to come across it. But I guess there's room for disagreement there.

When I tell this to normal people they think I'm a superfan, but I am not even in the same conversation as actual train fans. I doubt I could even hold a conversation about trains with a train fan.

It is the same for music, and I have the benefit of having been both a superfan and now later just a regular person who loves the music. I have an in depth love for the music, and no one can take that from my heart. But I don't give a lick about genres anymore.

And don't assume that people in other cities don't get it. There's lots of underground clubs where people that go out are 100% into it for the music and "get it" and aren't just going for bottle service and VIP or whatever.

I'm not at all in the Amsterdam EDM or hardstyle scene (just not my music), but I had indirectly got the feeling that it was slowly declining (ADE excepted), I could be quite wrong though, maybe they're just all in NDSM or something.

Which is a hang up that they should work on, because we are all just trying to love the same thing. I agree with your descriptions of the distinctions mind you. Genres are important to find and discuss music you like, but it gets wrapped up in the ego of the listener, and that can get expressed negatively through elitism and gate keeping.

* Plastikman: Spastik: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TYsOMYaz6E (minimal techno)

* Fred Again: Pull Me Out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl6Rz1Uvi2M (house / "EDM")

(EDM is more a US term than a European one, IME.)

I think the differences in style are quite obvious.

A friend was playing this in a bar last night and it took me back.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yWOtCXu6dCE&pp=ygUTc3lzdGVtIDc...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0-hvjV2A5Y

Music, events, and culture in general should be diverse. It would be a fucking bleak future if the world converges on the single right way to party, detach, relax, or feel.

Rather than popping over a city to enjoy a different scene, we try to sprinkle a bit of all scenes into the one city.

I am sure we don't hold a candle to the scene in Berlin, but I think my takeaway is that I'll be thankful we get a sampler of many scenes here.

Let me get you a list for your next Prague trip: Fuchs 2, Bike Jesus, Altenburg, Bukanýr, Ankali, Roxy, Onyx, Jilská 22, Swim, Centrála, Cross, Storm, Chapeau Rouge, Planeta Za, Wildt, Mecca, Studio ... That's just the very well known ones, then you have hundreds of random small unknown places with great unknown DJs all around the city, and many great rave events in places like nuclear bunkers, castles, churches, forests.

The mainstream event halls normally used for big artist concerts are now hosting raves too.

Leipzig is lovely but tiny in comparision, you won't find even remotely as many clubs and parties.

That’s exactly what someone would say, to keep the tourists away :p

“No, there are no underground raves around here, nor have there ever been, nor will there ever be. Please stay away from this town.”

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.

https://www.payscale.com/cost-of-living-calculator/Michigan-...

https://www.axios.com/local/detroit/2023/11/21/cost-of-livin...

Still got it, never lost it.

Are people there talking about this?

Berlin is the biggest city in continental Europe, there's a lot of everything and there'll always be hidden little nooks.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_the_European...

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 describe the metropolitan effect.

Paris, on the other hand, is on another level entirely. When you travel from Paris to Berlin, Berlin feels like a small town. And here, the metric of people who live inside city boundaries just doesn't describe the feeling of the cities at all.

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.

For this discussion (cultural centers of Europe), Greater Paris, Greater London and Berlin (they have roughly similar areas) are what you want to compare, and Berlin is clearly the smallest one population-wise out of these three (and it's not even close).

If we want to shorten the name of City of London, the short form is the City, not London. The only people who ever calls City by the name of London is people who have just learnt of the oddity.

Greater London makes up the formal boundaries of London. It's the legal and administrative boundary, and the city limits of London. Unusually, unlike the city limits of many other cities, you'll find plenty of people including people who live here who not quite consider the outer parts to be part of London. People where I live sometimes still consider it part of Surrey even though it's been part of London since 1965.

There are forests and agricultural areas almost entirely separating parts of the borough I live in from the rest of London.

Yet in other areas, the Greater London urban area expands well past what anyone would call London, including e.g. entirely separate towns in other counties, like Watford in Hertfordshire, Gravesend in Kent, Epsom and Guildford in Surrey.

So yes, these comparisons are tricky but that is the point.

E.g culturally, London is likely reasonably described as smaller than it's city limits, while indeed some other cities are often larger than them, but rarely as large as the urban area they are within. It's extremely common for towns on the outskirts of large cities to have their own separate identities and not be considered part of the adjoining city, but still form part of the same urban area.

Depending on what you want to compare and which cities you are comparing, different measures will be more or less appropriate, and may require different considerations.

This seems almost obnoxiously confusing when talking online to people from all over the world.

[And, yes, this means there was a 14 year period when the UK had a capital without a government, nor indeed any administrative unit - effectively "(Greater) London" as a political and administrative entity didn't exist during that period -, largely for political reasons - Thatchers government was strongly at odds with the then particularly left wing Greater London Council]

But really, the reason for contracting City of London to "City" rather than London is to minimise confusion, because it means London fairly unambiguously, though not entirely, refers to Greater London.

You can have these differences within one city as well, on the district level or even individual streets.

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...).

It might well still be the biggest in the EU if you drew limits based on what people considered part of the city - I don't know - but it certainly would not be as big as its urban area.

In fact, I'd argue you're unlikely to find any major city anywhere in the world where most people would agree that every part of the outer boundaries of the urban area are part of "the city" (or even "a city"; parts of urban areas will still often be considered fairly rural by those who live there or in the nearby city) even in a loose colloquial or cultural sense. Even coming close would be exceedingly rare. This because the ways urban areas are designated by design tends to include commuter regions far outside, with their own identities, and often very separated from the biggest city in the urban area.

So while going by city limits will be misleading, so will going by urban area. Unfortunately, no single metric will be accurate for these things.

I live outside of London, howver you define 'London', but still in London's area of influence considering how many people commute into London from here every day.

At the same time it's specifically meant to be aligned to OECD and Eurostats definition of a Functional Urban Area, which is a definition meant to ensure comparable statistics across countries, which neither the "old style" urban nor metropolitan area terms provide...

Which really just goes back to the main point that you can get pretty much whichever result you want here unless you narrow it down to the specific criteria that actually matter to you...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_in_...

Great, then we don't need to hear from these people. They don't need opinions or view points about things they were never intersted in, never learned about, and couldn't be bothered to remember.

"Europe" is very commonly used as a synonym for the EEA or even just EU many places today, no matter how incorrect that is.

The term was very specifically "Continental Europe".

> The term was very specifically "Continental Europe".

And "continental" in Europe very often is just used as a "but not the UK" modifier.

You can argue about the correct meaning all you want, but it is entirely irrelevant to whether or not that is how it was actually being used.

I don't care what you think about me.

Also comparing city populations within city limits is exactly being too pedantic, because Paris is one example where the administrative city is much smaller than the real city.

There's a ring of sbahn commuter rail around the center. From east to west that's about 16km and from north to south about 10km. Anything inside that could definitely be considered as the center. Walking east to west would take about three hours or so. You'll pass through a lot of interesting neighborhoods, each with their own little centers. You'll pass lots of landmarks. The former east and west berlin "centers" are about 9 km apart. A lot of the traditional landmarks and hotspots are spread out throughout that zone. And then you have a lot of gentrified spots that are becoming hotspots in their own right.

I use the word center loosely of course because there really is no such thing in Berlin. It's all spread out over a huge area. There are probably about well over a dozen areas that can lay claim to being a center of something. And frankly, most of the interesting bits are outside of what the tourists flock to these days.

Outside the ring, the city continues in pretty much all directions for quite some distance. And some of those areas are quite nice as well. But most would not consider that the center. I've lived here for about fifteen years and there are huge parts of the city that I've simply never even been to because it would take like an hour plus to get there and there isn't much in terms of landmarks, etc. to draw me there.

Technically Berlin is actually a city state (within the federation of Germany) that includes the capital and a few suburbs. Total population is still smaller than it was before WW II (3.5M people vs 4M people then). So there's a lot of open space, huge parks, two decommissioned airports (Tempelhof, Tegel), etc. all within the city limits. Tempelhof is huge. About 2km by 2km of open space in the middle of a big city with two decomissioned runways. It was the site of the cold war air bridge. You have Kreuzberg to the north, Neuköln to the east and Alt Tempelhof just outside the ring on the south west side. And that's just one corner of the city. All in former west Berlin.

The population is growing for the last decades at a pretty decent rate (about 50K new people per year or so). But it will take some time to catch up to pre WW II era levels.

"It use to be about the music"

I remember hearing this 25 years ago.

Of course, what happens is that you get people who have been going to these things for 10 years and the novelty has worn off along with being 10 years older.

Most fun activities are better when you are 10 years younger with no expectations.

Or maybe that people got too busy that they can only afford to party when it’s a proper vacation.

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.

This has been a meme forever, and while Leipzig has its own decent scene for its size, it is not remotely close to rivaling Berlin. Pick a decent sample of either established or up and coming DJs and compare how often they play in Berlin vs there to disuade yourself of that notion.

>and even Sofia.

Yeah, no. Just because a city has some parties here and there, it doesn't mean it should even be in the conversation in this context.

Well there's the problem. What you should compare is how many unknown new guys just making good music for fun in small unknown clubs visited by locals are there.

In my city I can go to a random non-descript bar with zero marketing or entrance fee, sit down peacefully with a drink, and hear world class techno together with few dozen strangers. Every evening. Doesn't feel that way in Berlin anymore, even if I pay it's all that global commercial style that the established DJs with promoter/management teams seem to fall into and the places are totally overcrowded.

Speaking as someone who's split ~half my time between Leipzig and Berlin for the last 5 years, this is not true.

Leipzig's club scene is an extension of its university population. It's younger, straighter, whiter, and about two orders of magnitude smaller. People visit the clubs while they're going to school there, then they graduate and move elsewhere. Often to Berlin.

Why does this illusion exist? Because Leipzig is about an hour away from Berlin by train. Berliners visit for a weekend and think "wow, it's like Berlin in the 90s! Still cheap! And look at all these cool young kids at these scrappy clubs -- so that's where the underground has gone!". Then they go back to Berlin and spread the word to credulous out-of-towners, who go on to repeat this truism to people who have never visited either city.

In reality, Berlin's club scene -- both "mainstream" and "underground" -- dwarfs that of any other city. Nothing short of an asteroid hit is likely to change that.

I think, for a moment around 15 years ago, Leipzig was dirt cheap and had quite a bit of momentum, because you didn't need a business plan to try and make things happen. People, students from west Germany, payed 100€ for rent and 30€ for an atelier. Lots of raw excitement and empty buildings.

But the momentum died maybe 8 years ago. What's left is nothing like Berlin. Cheaper, but still expensive; liberal-ish, but all kartoffel. Leipzig doesn't feel exciting, but small now. And it's deep in enemy territory, very depressing region, the mere thought doesn't spark joy at all.

Berlin can have the heritage, NOW it’s not there anymore, do u get it?

I believe this is the usual cycle of cities going through: arts scene existing because it's a cheap place to live, artists congregate in places they can afford, create a cool scene, the cool scene brings some bars/cafés and slowly it erodes to gentrification since these places are cool and attract other crowds into it (higher income, and/or tourists), eventually it makes the place expensive and artists have to find a new place where it's cheaper to live, and create their spaces.

Very similar to the geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths essay on subcultures. [0]

[0] https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

Add to that that Berlin has been a place for internationals for generations, whereas Leipzig is entirely German.

For the record, I love Leipzig, I think it's gorgeous.

It's funny how the (somewhat leftist) techno scene hates on foreigners destroying their tradition. Berlin and Bavaria aren't so far apart after all.

It is basically the techno scene version of gentrification (not talking about the impact or harm or whatever else being comparable between the two, just the mechanics of it), except it is happening with the techno scene instead of housing.

This is not incongruent with your observation about “somewhat leftist” techno scene people hating on outsiders destroying their tradition. It is very similar to the analogous complaints those “somewhat leftist” people would make about gentrification.

A very comparable similar example: Burning Man. Look at how it changed and what people who have been attending it since forever ago are saying. Very similar things, and it obviously has nothing to do with actual foreigners. It has everything to do with “gentrifying” the event, and it just slowly turning into a trust fund glamping larp.

Berghain antics aside, the point I was trying to make it's that Berlin club scene isn't exactly as "welcoming" of outsiders as a whole as the OP was suggesting.

Whom?

The same thing is being done to hiphop in a similar way.

But I agree that there's a lot of cross influence.

The whole damn point was people dancing in a room together, not whatever authenticity tests you have in mind.

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.

That was a great moment. I recall the Stacey Pullen set being great, too. I'd seen both those people before and not been impressed, actually. But at DEMF it was amazing.

And in that complaint I don't see any irony.

Techno came from an already gentrified African-American community in Detroit, the Belleville Three [0] were from a more affluent part of Detroit at the time, inspired by the 70s/80s German and Japanese electronic music scene, it was never like the roots of hip-hop...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Belleville_Three

Lol. Lmao. Belleville is Juggalo country, cuz. Ypsituckians working in auto parts factories.

That's funny, Detroit lays claim to the same thing.

In my experience, people who like things because they are hidden and exclusive tend to be shitty, shallow, superficial people. Many, many, varied decades of life lived all over the world, and I've never witnessed a counterexample so I hesitate to make it an absolute.

Same goes for people who think they like things more than others because they liked them first.

Sounds a bit like a strawmen. No one here said, they like something, because it is hidden.

But hidden places are quite free and can cultivate a very different culture, than one that plays by all the legal rules. And where money took over everything.

The best places I have been, were not listed in lonely planet. And I could not book them online. I had to find them.

I’ve enjoyed far more raves in LA and Detroit, and lots of harder techno clubs in Chicago that felt a lot more authentic. The Berlin crowds were kind and chill, but there definitely was this odd feeling where it all kinda felt..scripted?

I hadn’t gone to Berlin up until two years ago, so I can only imagine it was pretty incredible a decade ago before tourism swamped them.

And before anyone asks, I was rolling with native berliners and service industry folks, so I was fortunate to get in to and attend a lot of the best parties while I was there. I’d love to go back, I do just feel like it was slightly overhyped before I got there :/.

Happy for them regardless, they deserve the recognition even if I didn’t get to really experience the best of it

I just had this possibly _too_ high expectation of the Berlin techno club/party scene before I got there, and it just didn’t wow me like I had heard it would (despite having a great time and no issues).

Berlin as a city, however, exceeded my expectations..which definitely adds to my confusion on my overall sentiment towards everything