Berlin Techno in Media

The 90s Techno Magazine That Shaped German Rave Culture

From dazed.com

With a guiding belief that techno was a way of life, the anarchic Frontpage magazine covered the country’s club scene with fun and flair

Few things paint a better portrait of 90s rave culture than German techno magazine Frontpage. Between its launch in 1989 and its final run in 1997, Frontpage was one of the leading voices of the country’s house and techno movement. As Stefan Weil, one of the magazine’s founding members, describes it, Frontpage was a “printed rave” and “graphic ecstacy”, chronicling the explosion of an entirely new subculture bound by a fixation on the music of the future.

Frontpage was first published in 1989 as the in-house fanzine for Technoclub, an influential party with an exclusively electronic soundtrack that used to take place at Disco Dorian Gray. a nightclub inspired by Studio 54 and located, unusually, in Frankfurt Airport. Alex Azary, Technoclub’s founder and a veteran of Frankfurt’s club scene, financed the early version of Frontpage as a local promotional tool, but its scope broadened over time. When Azary’s funding was exhausted, Frontpage contributor-turned-editor Jürgen Laarmann capitalised on the opportunity to move the magazine and its focus to what he viewed as a new, more progressive frontier – Berlin.

Frontpage was at the centre of a long held rivalry between Frankfurt and Berlin, with each city claiming techno for its own – despite varying definitions of the word. When Frontpage first launched, ‘techno’ in Germany referred to a Frankfurt sound whose backbone was formed by bands like DAF, Front 242, Neon Judgement, and The Klinik, but when Laarmann and other contributors relocated to West Berlin, they discovered an entirely new kind of techno subculture. Swapping established clubs and synth-punk bands for disused warehouses and acid house rhythms, the Frontpage editors found a scene that they felt was more forward-facing, where young East Germans would integrate into the West scene. “The impact of the GDR (East German) youth was massive on the movement. It was the sound of revolution… of liberation for them,” says Laarmann. “There was nowhere that German reunification worked better than in the techno scene. On the dancefloor, with smoke, strobes, and a Westbam soundtrack, you couldn’t tell who was East or West.”

Partying was the main occupation of Frontpage and its team of 24/7 rave reporters, who treated the magazine like “the newsroom for all forms of electronic music in the 90s”, as Weil puts it. They published stories about the emergence of new subgenres like trance and gabber, printed early stories on now-iconic artists like Joey Beltram, Westbam, Moby, and Aphex Twin, and mastered the ‘you heard it here first’ mentality with their extensive reviews of fresh releases. Serious music reviews were partnered with a very un-serious editorial voice characterised by an enthusiastic approach to self-destruction: Weil’s favourite columns were usually the craziest, with names like ‘Shopping on Speed’ and ‘Hardcore Decadence’. ‘Octopussies’, was a monthly column following a crew of female scenesters who Laarmann describes as “the Spice Girls before the Spice Girls”; the Octopussies were given a monthly editorial budget and encouraged to “attend parties, misbehave, and write about it”.

Underpinning the more outlandish ideas was the fundamental belief that techno was a way of life, not just a music genre. Beyond covering clubs, festivals, and raves, a Frontpage contributor’s job was to report on the “hot shit” in “wear and gear”, says Weil, and record stores, promoters, and club-wear labels became as much a part of the magazine as the articles themselves. The magazine was free for the taking, but only available in Frontpage-approved spots like the Tresor nightclub or Hard Wax Records.

Likewise, Frontpage’s aesthetic mirrored techno’s sonic innovation. In its early years, the magazine took inspiration from the DIY, cut’n’paste vibe of punk fanzines, but it soon honed a unique style of its own, with a maximalist layout and cutting edge art direction spearheaded by graphic designer Alexander Branczyk, whose over-the-top, ecstasy inspired designs virtually explode off the pages. “(Branczyk) translated the outstanding content and the attitude of the raving society into a very own graphic language,” says Weil. Frontpage was the first magazine in Germany to be created entirely on a Macintosh, and it shows: analogue photographs were manipulated, altered, and transformed, and every font during Branczyk’s five-year tenure as art director was a unique design.

“My inspiration was the dancefloor and the flickering lights in Berlin’s dirty clubs,” Branczyk says. “I wanted to make the design fucked up and messy.” Though Frontpage was a celebration of decadent partying, Branczyk’s time as art director was filled with more nights in than out. “I missed a lot of parties,” he says. “While the other guys were dancing, I was designing! I did it for myself and, usually, by myself.” According to Weil, “Branczyk was as important for electronic music, club culture, and rave as David Carson for indie, grunge, and post-rock.” The team’s obsession with new technology also led to Frontpage being one of the first ever magazines available online, under the the legendary domain techno.de.

Laarmann describes his Frontpage era romantically. After all, he and the team made a living having fun, and they have years worth of magazines to show for it. Naturally, Frontpage was more than just a magazine. Writers and editors also organized a number of parties, events, and tours – most notably Mayday, the first major rave in Germany, and the Love Parade, a techno and drug-fuelled march through the streets of Berlin. The combination of events in 1991 caught the attention of the media and became known as the ‘German Summer of Love’. “Berlin was known as the place where a number of devastating events took place,” Laarmann explains. “Wars, Nazism, and Communism. The techno movement was the first time in a long time that Berlin, and really Germany, were recognised for something in a positive light and had international appeal.”

Frontpage came to a close in 1997, but 30 years later, many of its ideas have gone mainstream – Berlin is recognised as Europe’s rave capital, and Germany is a techno haven. At the same time, with AfD starting to gain power in Germany and right-wing, nationalistic sentiments rising internationally, Laarmann still believes there is work to be done in realising the magazine’s utopian vision. “Techno became a universal language with its own values, like tolerance, and denouncing sexism and racism,” he says. “You know, being there back then, it felt perfect. We really believed we had a bright future of inclusion and freedom ahead of us. We have to ask ourselves what went to wrong in between.”

There aren't many images of the magazine online, and I looked into buying an
issue but they're pretty rare and expensive. Below is what I could find:

^ Advert for a rave in Switzerland inside one of the magazines. This probably looked very contemporary at the time but looks dated and almost humorous now. The layout of the DJ's names in the right hand column appears to have been inspired by electronic music equipment.

The above spread has similar visual language to DIY Punk zines - text and images are cut and pasted by hand and photocopied.

Alexander Branczyk's maximalist design created using early computer technology can be seen above.

Magazine covers often featured models sporting the kind of quirky clothes and hairstyles that ravers would wear to the clubs.

Tilman Brembs book - 

"THIS NEW PHOTO BOOK CAPTURES THE RAW ENERGY OF BERLIN'S 90S TECHNO SCENE"

Brembs took photos at German raves from 1991 - 1997.

The typography used for this book cover references the lofi graphics of 90s computers. The jagged edges of the letters are pixelated and the horizontal lines which fill each letter look like static. This aesthetic was likely chosen by the designer because of the electronic equipment which was used to create techno music in the 90s. The photos in the book remind me of the photography of Nan Goldin - the images aren't staged, and capture genuine moments of human expression. The photos also have a similar lofi, blurred look to them, probably due to the 'amateur' way the photographers have used the cameras.
by Nan Goldin

'No Photos on the Dance Floor! documents the history of Berlin's club scene since the fall of the Wall'
from creativeboom.com

Is the party finally coming to an end? That's the question posed by an exhibition in Berlin this month that documents and brings to life the history of the city's club scene since the fall of the Wall.

What makes this showcase of photographs and film so special is that it's unexpected. Because while photography is a central part of nightlife in other cities, in Berlin, most clubs have strict rules against taking pictures. There are two reasons for this: to allow dancers to lose themselves in the music without distraction and to protect clubgoers' freedom and privacy.

It's the kind of liberty we've come to expect from German's capital. After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, young squatters, artists, gallery owners, and DJs from the East and West took over the city, filling empty buildings, factories, and vacant lots with life. Clubs, bars, galleries, and studios began popping up everywhere. The club and cultural scene became the driving force behind the city's rejuvenation, pointing the way for a new generation of young creatives.

And while techno was not invented in Berlin, what was happening in the city during this period at events like Tekknozid and in clubs like Ufo, Tresor, and Planet can be seen as a kind of 'big bang' – the inception of the last major youth culture movement in Europe to date.

The visual effects and new artistic approaches of Berlin's club life brought together video, film, projections, and music. For many aspiring artists, the connection with art offered diverse possibilities for collaboration and new perspectives and spaces for communication, interaction, and celebration – outside the confines of reason and everyday life.

Berlin's club scene gained new momentum at the turn of the millennium. Cheap flights in Europe, together with a new wave of clubs like Bar 25, Watergate, and Berghain and parties that never seemed to stop drew increasing numbers of techno fans to the capital. Artists, party promoters, and record labels from around the world moved to Berlin, bringing new influences to the city's sound – a process that continues to this day. But now the spaces of seemingly infinite possibilities are narrowing, and the party appears to be coming to an end.

It seems like the right time to look back over thirty years and consider the evolution of Berlin's club culture and where it might be heading next, if anywhere. No Photos on the Dance Floor! Berlin 1989–Today runs until 30 November at C/O Berlin in the Amerika Haus.