408 pages Edited by Théo Lessour Text(s) by Théo Lessour 21 x 14,8 cm Language: French Paperback Publisher: Le Mot et le Reste 2022
History has struck Berlin like few other cities, and this book sets out to guide the reader through its musical labyrinth. The city danced on the edge of the volcano of hyperinflation and the postwar years to the sounds of Kurt Weill’s cabaret and The Blue Angel, musical expressionism, and Dada. Swing was played there clandestinely under the Nazi dictatorship and the Allied bombs, and later rock under the communist regime.
Its status as a capitalist island behind the Iron Curtain made it a haven for deviant sounds: krautrock, the cosmic ambient music of Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, the furious excesses of Einstürzende Neubauten, Blixa Bargeld and the movement of “brilliant dilettantes,” as well as Nick Cave’s blues. After the fall of the Wall, taking advantage of its vast empty spaces, the city quite naturally reinvented itself as the European capital of techno.
