Thursday 22 July 2010

time-lock

The other day, H and I watched a bitter-sweet documentary "The Vault and the Electronic Frontier" about the singular Berlin discothek whose celebration paralleled the razing of the Wall and German reunification. It was particularly interesting how the MoTown influence in techno was fostered in Germany and then re-exported to the States. The reporting and interviews covered the final months of Tresor through its financial problems and eventual wrecking, which was pretty sad and indignant to see, in 2005 at the hands of a dastardly developer. I remember years ago when I visited Berlin for the Love Parade seeing the low-clearance and sleek letters of Tresor's entryway and regretted not having seen it back then--though, apparently, it was reincarnated in 2007 in an East Berlin electric company. In a related torch-song, the Wall Street Journal had a quirky, brief on the discography of one of Disco's unremembered heroes, Walter Gibbons. I really want to check our this jungle-music album, pioneered at a time before Disco had really gelled as a genre and co-opted by bigger labels.  Though these styles have been formalized into very different, divergent things, techno and Disco, I really appreciate them both--anything with a beat that you can dance to, like the characters from Peanuts breaking into their peculiar routines on the floor when the music plays.