If techno was born in Detroit and house music in Chicago, why
has Berlin become the epicenter of club music? According to Ellen
Allien, it was the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent
availability of cheap venue space for rent on the suddenly open east
side of the city. With a swell of creative youth itching for an outlet,
and the emergence of a new style of music specifically engineered for
partying, a scene started bubbling up and a community took hold.
“Electronic music united East and West,” she says.
Allien was born in Berlin. She lived in London for a year in the
late 1980s, but quickly became homesick, luckily not before being
exposed to acid house, which sparked an interest in dance music. She
returned to Berlin with enthusiasm at a time when there was exactly one
club catering to the new style of electronic music. Allien started
DJing there and at other venues as they sprung up. She also started her
own radio show, popular club night, and successful record label, BPitch
Control. Fast approaching its 10-year anniversary, the label is
prolific—almost 200 releases in a decade—yet still true to
its original plan to represent a diversity of styles.
Seemingly based on Allien’s early model for DJing—crossing
genres to bridge gaps in the crowd—BPitch releases range from
lovely, quiet tracks with wispy vocals to peak-hour electro-beat
bangers, and while the songs may be seriously divergent in tone, the
BPitch Control roster is carefully filtered to convey the distinct
sound of Berlin.
Allien’s own sound has changed over the years. “As a producer, music
is a playback of my emotions and moods. I tease them out of me with
alternating technical devices,” she says. Her first LP, the very dance
floor-oriented Stadtkind, evokes the feeling of being inside a
club while listening to it, which is fitting considering the album is a
dedication to her true love, the city of Berlin. The recently released
full-length Sool is more mature and introspective than her
previous work. The sound is deep, experimental, and ambient throughout
while still delivering some of the driving dance beats that people
expect from the dynamic producer.
In addition to her large pile of solo releases, Allien has also
collaborated with an impressive list of musicians including Apparat,
Mochipet, and T.Raumschmiere. She is currently touring with labelmate
Sascha Funke in support of her new mix, Boogiebytes, Vol. 4, a
collection of BPitch Control tracks. Funke, who has the coolest name in
all of European techno, has been getting well-deserved praise for his
recently released Mango, a thoughtful and lush album that, like
Sool, is a more serious, grown-up take on the club sound.
With their solid new releases and ever-growing popularity, Allien
and Funke are at the top of their game. Having experimented and evolved
in tandem with the German political system and cultural environment,
their sound is refined and minimal, with a certain groove that keeps
people moving on a dance floor. They embody the essence of Berlin, a
once struggling and conflicted city that now finds itself on the
international “it” list.