Berlin 90´s underground scene

Berlin Underground Scene 1989–2010

Shaped by the perspectives of participants and various observers, the book Echtzeitmusik Berlin – Self-Defining a Scene investigates, documents, and reflects on a multilayered phenomenon within Berlin’s musical culture, a phenomenon whose influence and meaning has effects that extend far beyond Berlin itself. Having emerged in the open spaces of the city’s east side after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and rooted in a cultural coordinate system made up of squats and free improvisation, punk and New Music, social experimentation and performance art, the Echtzeitmusik scene has passed through an eventful history of musical and social development and matured into a wide spectrum of predominantly experimental forms of music, bordering on fields as varied as noise, electronica, trash pop, free jazz, and contemporary composed music, not to mention performance and sound art.

This book is a theoretical approach to a scene that constituates itself through practice, that describes itself with every single contribution here, that invents, defines, and positions itself through writing. It is a verbal act of uncovering. There is not the history, but a myriad of histories, not the theory, but the widest range of somewhat discordant conceptions and approaches. Echtzeitmusik – Self-Defining a Scene mirrors this multiperspectivity. It is more than a mere documentation of the history of Echtzeitmusik, it might be considered a part of this history.

_Burkhard Beins, Christian Kesten, Gisela Nauck, Andrea Neumann 

https://improvisersnetworks.online/books/item/598-echtzeitmusik-berlin

The magic existe

The dream is over

Everything has a beginning and an end, but what starts well usually has a more fortunate path. Especially if you act honestly, even if it seems like an unequal struggle.

I don't intend to write a professional chronicle, but rather a kind of remembrance and tribute to all those who participated from their limited personal perspective and lived experiences. The fact that it's public only serves to share it with friends and colleagues.

Some moments are historic and special, like Paris in the 1930s and California in the 1960s.

Back in the late 1980s, a group of Argentine musicians sought a local path to free themselves from the shackles of "canned" music, whose air of openness only reached them through channels that had barely opened after the terror and cultural restrictions of the last dictatorship in Argentina. 

 Improvisation Group "Tercer mundo":

Formed 1985, Argentina

Members:

Marcelo Peralta (tenor saxophone),

Jorge Mancini (electric guitar, electric bass),

Mariana Potenza (percussion, vocals),

Victor Da Cunha (percussion)

Those of us inspired by those liberating winds began to project music with a strong and inevitable flavor to the village and the dream of transforming it into a global village.

The pressure of the bloody war against Nicaragua had borne fruit for the empire. We also attempted the impossible.

Thus, the Wancara trio was formed, injecting the liberating virus into schools in the Buenos Aires suburbs and some cultural centers.

The motto is:

No restrictions of any kind. 

This project travels to Berlin in 1990, after the fall of the Wall. A place and moment of cultural effervescence that is now legendary.

Berlin has always been a magnet for artists, freaks, and freedom seekers, but after the fall of the Wall in 1989, the city exploded into an underground scene that redefined what it meant to make art and music without rules. Between squats, decadent clubs, and improvised galleries, an ecosystem was born where noise, raw techno, and extreme experimentation mingled with warm beer and graffiti-covered walls. 

The 90's: Chaos and Freedom

With reunification, East Berlin became a squatter's paradise. Abandoned buildings like Tacheles—a former apartment building occupied by artists—became symbols of a scene where art was as ephemeral as nonexistent rental contracts. Music wasn't left behind: post-punk and industrial bands played in basements, while techno began to take over empty factories.

The Tresor club (opened in 1991 in an abandoned vault) became the cathedral of the Berlin sound, but it wasn't all electronic beats, Anorak in the squatter´s house Dunckerstraße 14, In bars like Kaffee Burger or Wild at Heart, noise rock and free jazz bands improvised until dawn, inheriting the anarchic spirit of the Geniale Dilletanten of the 1980s.

2000s: Reductionism and Radical Experimentation

By the 2000s, Berlin was already a global techno mecca, but darker, more minimalist sounds were brewing beneath the surface. Collectives like Cologne's A-Musik and labels like Raster-Noton took electronica to reductionist territory, where silence and white noise were as important as rhythm. Artists like Alva Noto and Frank Bretschneider explored microsound, while in places like Ausland or West Germany, free improvisation and drone reigned supreme.

Performance art also mutated: actions in underground galleries blended noise with absurdist theater, following the tradition of Fluxus but with a Berlin twist (more beer, less pretension). Collectives like Echtzeitmusik organized jam sessions where a saxophonist could end up in an acoustic duel with a blender.

Legacy: Was the Magic Lost?

By 2010, gentrification was already looming, but the underground continued to hold out in corners like Kunsthaus ACUD and About blank. What made Berlin unique in those decades was the mix of urgency and freedom: no one played to become famous, but because there was no other option. From post-Wall chaos to cerebral minimalism, the city proved that authentic art emerges when there is nothing to gain or lose.

Today, many yearn for that era, but as the old-timers of the scene say: Berlin always reinvents itself… even if a beer now costs 10 euros.

Experiencing the Berlin underground scene between the 90s and 2000s was like being in a hurricane of spray paint, amplifier feedback, and gut-wrenching beats. 

The Squats: Where Art Smelled of Chocolate, Coal, and Rebellion

Do you remember arriving at a half-ruined building in Mitte or Friedrichshain, climbing stairs with rusty handrails, and entering a loft where someone had set up a bar with a camping table and crates of warm beer? Tacheles was the epicenter, but there were dozens more: the Köpi (Köpenicker Straße) with its walls covered in anarchist slogans, the Brunnenstraße 183 where afterparties lasted three days… Even the least hardcore of us ended up in a squat at some point, if only because it was the only place that served Pfand at 5 AM.

"Is this legal?"

"Nothing is legal here, but everything is allowed."

Music: From Techno to Teeth-Rattlers

Tresor: The basement that throbbed with '90s techno, where the smoke was so thick you could cut it with a razor. Jeff Mills, Juan Atkins... but also experimental sets that sounded like a washing machine full of screws.

Club der Visionäre before it was cool: Those days of raw minimalism on a barge, with the sun rising over the Spree and someone discreetly vomiting in the reeds.

Kaffee Burger: Where a punk-klezmer band might play after a Soviet electroacoustic DJ set. And then, of course, Russendisko.

And the venues that no longer exist? Like WMF (before it was closed due to legal issues), where techno fused with performance art, or Bar 25, back when it was still an illegal beach bar with hammocks, not a theme park for influencers. 

Squats: Life in the Cultural Trenches

Köpi (Köpenicker Straße): The holy grail of squats. Did you live in that surreal tower filled with anarchist murals and stray cats? The endless assemblies, the bathrooms that were an art installation in themselves, the WGs where the rent was to collaborate on the barricade.

Brunnenstraße 183: Before they turned it into what it is today, it was a hotbed of punks, hackers, and drunken poets. Do you remember the Küfa (Kitchens for all) where you could eat lentils for 50 pfennigs?

Eimer on Rosenthalerstr. 68, where post-punk bands,

recent noise projects, experimental electronics, and international bands

came onto the stage time and again, almost without a break,

1mark beer, and chocolate joints slid through the audience at will.

Marschstrasse: One of the most hardcore squats of the 90s. Apartments

with holes in the walls, heating made from cans, and jam

sessions that ended with the neighbors (if there were any

non-squatters) calling the police.

Wrangelstrasse: Kreuzberg's Wild Kilometer

That street was the Wild West of Berlin nightlife. Bars that are now legendary:

Café CK (or Zum bösen Wolf): Where the Punks and the Teds (yes, those guys with curlers and 50s jackets) coexisted... until someone pulled out a knife. Südblock: Before it was hipster, it was a dive for home-grown techno and underground queer parties.

Trinkteufel: The bar for professional night owls. Remember that bartender who served Afrikola with vodka in a glass jar?

And of course… cukcuksei. The old cukcuksei on Wrangelstr. That psychedelic bar where the decor was what we'd found on the street yesterday. The DJ played Krautrock mixed with jazz or ethnic music at 8 AM. When the rent increase couldn't be paid due to gentrification, there wasn't a price increase, just free parties until stocks ran out.

Conversations ranged from "Who's got good chocolate" to Fassbinder films. You always felt at home. 

Concerts 1991–92: When Noise Was Religion

That's when Berlin smelled of post-Wall cultural gunpowder.

Einstürzende Neubauten in some wasteland with instruments made from scrap metal.

Die Haut or Malaria! in venues that didn't appear on maps.

Experimental one-night projects: like a guy shouting Dadaist poems over a loop of broken magnetic tape.

Activism and creativity: Frauen-Power had a deserved place. Pioneers like Gudrun Gut, Beate Bartel, and later Christina Kubisch, Andrea Neumann, and Annette Krebs flooded the city's underground and renewing atmosphere with creativity and inspiration.

Sound of the era:

Out-of-tune guitars, GDR synthesizers, drums stolen from a school.

Feedback was language, noise was a message.

Berlin post-punk didn't sound like British post-punk: it was dirtier, colder, more Berlin.

The Aesthetics of Chaos (or Why We Didn't Have IDs)

Fashion: Leather jackets with Keine Macht für Niemand graffiti, Soviet army boots, Dead Kennedys T-shirts with holes in them.

Transportation: Stolen bicycles (which were stolen from you every week) or ticketless trains.

Food: 3-mark doner, späti pancakes, and beer. Beer always came up...

Wir waren jung und brauchten Drogen... und die Kunst... und die Drogen.

But it wasn't just partying: the endless, heated debates in the squats between artists revolved around Deleuze, Castoriadis, Guy Debord... and of course Nietzsche. 

What Happened to All Those Crazy People?

Some died (RIP).

Others went to Thailand or Mexico (and are still in squats, but with better weather).

A few sold out (they're now conceptual artists with galleries in Neukölln).

And then there are those who are still there, in some forgotten Kiez, saying: Berlin ist tot… but without moving.

The Politbüro gallery-bar on Marschstrasse, Einsteinufer in '92, in the middle of the Gelände squat, with the Wagenburg of the UdK (HdK at that time) as loyal companions and punks stealing beer like urban guerrillas… like a Wim Wenders film with a soundtrack by Einstürzende Neubauten.

The Gallery Bar: Epicenter of Creative Chaos

Strategic location: Ground floor of Gelände Marschstrasse (a formerly gray area of ​​Charlottenburg, now gentrified to the core). Was that the place with the black-painted windows and a chalk sign that read Bar or Kunst or Live Music Today?

Atmosphere: A mix of artist's studio, makeshift bar, and squatter's hangout. The customers? Punks with drooping mohawks, students from UdK (HdK) and TU, and the occasional stray tourist who ended up accidentally paying for rounds.

Menu: Warm beer (because the fridge was a snowy hole in the wall in winter), vodka from a bottle with juice "on the house," and expired pâté sandwiches (but art nourished us).

Why is there always a guy sleeping in the corner?

—That's the performer. Today at 3 AM he's performing his piece The Eternal Sleep of Capitalism.

The most loyal: The Wagenburg at the Eisteinufer,

The UdK (HdK) Parkplatz: Where the Wagenburgers (people who lived in vans and RVs) set up their punk micro-utopia. Were they the same people who recycled beer crates from the supermarket back home? Yeah, those ones.

Barbecues in Charlottenburg: 2 AM, grill made from an old bed and meat of unknown origin, and the punks arriving with 0.5L boxes of Berliner Kindl, passing under the shopping carts like commandos on a mission.

Background music: Someone with a three-string guitar and a Soviet radio that only picked up static. 

Epic Events That Will Never Be Forgotten (By Those Who Don't Remember Them)

The night the bar became a sound installation: when

a Peruvian sound artist connected five Walkmans to broken speakers and

called it Memories of Underdevelopment on Loop.

Locoholics and artists from other squats visited the place: and a jam

session ensued with a saxophone, guitars, drums, and electronics made from an

old radio. The police came… and stayed to drink beer and smoke chocolate.

What Happened to Those Lokos?

The Wagenburgers: Some still live in vans, but now

 park in Portugal.

Others have appeared in films by Andreas Dresen.

The Politbüro gallery-bar: Today it's a new UdK

 building on Einsteinufer. 

WANCARA: "Imaginäre Folklore" and the Reinvention of Tango

Review in Zitty/Tip (1992):

They called them music of the interstices, praising that blend of tango, zamba, and chacarera with a jazzy touch that disoriented Europeans.

Key phrase: "Wancara lies between or alongside all the styles you think you know from South America." As an artistic manifesto: a radical anti-exoticism.

Epic location: They played at the Kunsthaus Tacheles (a sanctuary of squatter art) and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (where they approached high culture, but in a Third World punk version).

Concerts in Bellevue (Flensburger Str.):

The press joked about their battle between Zamba and Jazz Monster. Was it the day the Casio bandoneon defeated a Fender Twin Reverb amplifier?

Passionskirche (Kreuzberg):

“New Argentine music for European ears.” There, they were already seen as ambassadors of a transatlantic avant-garde.

The Context: Berlin as a Sound Laboratory

What was happening? Latin American music was Peruvians with

folklore, Cubans with Caribbean music, the most avant-garde

were Mexicans with high-temperatue classic punk.

We were always inspired by Sun Ra, John Zorn, Frank

Zappa...but as strange as he was Argentine...we was very “hopscotch.”

Allied lineup:

Romy Haag (queer icon) at the UFA-Fabrik, and our abstract tango.

Alexander von Schlippenbach (free jazz legend) playing

nearby… There were secret jam sessions. We spent a day grilling

outdoors in the former DDR and met Charlie Mariano.

We played with him at a couple of festivals. A great guy who loved

avant-garde tango. 

Elegant jazz clubs like Eierschale 1, 2, 3, or Flöz, where blues and rock coexisted with our imaginary folklore. Media smoke and mirrors:

Zitty magazine mentions Hullies playing in Kreuzberg… while we were challenging European jazz with strange instruments and a lot of heart.

Details Only a Veteran Would Notice

Local phone numbers: 7- or 8-digit numbers (it was pre-mobile). The Insel der Jugend in Alt-Treptow (now gentrified) was a hotbed of hippies and punks.

While we were making live soundtracks for a city in ruins.

The "real existing Summer Club": The article complains about the cultural summer void… but Wancara filled that void with South American chaos.

The Legacy (According to the Press of the Time)

We were definitely not world music. They placed us outside of categories, somewhere between jazz and shattered traditional music.

Berlin as an accomplice: The city gave us space to be useful weirdos (Argentines with saxophone, percussion, guitar, and rudimentary electronics = post-Wall art). 

Berlin, 1989–2017: Chronicle of an Underground Ecstasy

Marcelo and the ghosts who still dance in the ruined squats.

The Wall fell like the fuzz of a badly plugged-in guitar, and Berlin became a short circuit of spray paint, sweaty bodies, and amplifiers spewing distortion.

The city was an exquisite corpse: punks in recycled Stasi jackets emerged from the East; hippies with stolen synthesizers from the West. And in the middle, an Argentine trio that was sometimes a quartet sounding like Piazzolla on acid.

The Years of Dust and Glory (1989–1995)

At the Tacheles, squatter artists carved sculptures from debris from the Wall.

The sound: mutant tango, a saxophone imitating sirens, percussion made with whatever the moment required or was at hand. At Köpi, the German punks looked at us curiously: “Argentines? Che Guevara and Maradona.” Tango and folklore could also be a Nietzschean hammer. At cukcuksei, between melted candles and lukewarm beers, zambas with Japanese electronic feedback were a journey you only take once.

“This is imaginäre Folklore,” muttered a drunken critic.

Flyers for the Passionskirche concert were being printed on exhausted photocopiers. The poster read: “Wancara: Experimental Tango, Music Without a Passport.”

The Age of Techno and Ghosts (1996–2005)

Berlin was filled with beats, but we remained on the margins.

The Tresor was a concrete cathedral; but we preferred the

Ausland, where the silence between notes was as thick as fake cigarette smoke.

Charlie Mariano visited us, saw us play at the Haus der Kulturen

der Welt, and said: “Das ist kein Jazz… das ist Geisterbeschwörung”

(It's not jazz… it's ghost-invoking). He was right.

At the Wrangelkiez, bars started charging in euros.

The squats on Brunnenstrasse were being converted into lofts.

“Gentrification,” spat a squatter poet as we drank

the last Pfand on Marschstrasse.

In 2017, during a concert at the Kunsthaus ACUD, a young Argentinian tourist

asked: “What was Berlin like before the

hipsters?” He saw a photo from 1992: at the Tacheles, with the saxophonist

and a bottle of Schultheiss that cost 50 pfennigs.

“This was it,” “A place where art smelled like cold soup, the police were

unintelligible, and no one asked about Wi-Fi.” 

Reductionism as a Political Act and the Shadow of Wandelweiser

Wandelweiser: The Cult of the Whisper (1995–2005)

While we were burning sheet music at the Mehringhof, in a gallery in Mitte, the Ensemble Zwischentöne played a single note for twenty minutes.

Philosophy: Sound exists to reveal silence. And silence, in Berlin, was a luxury more expensive than renting a car in Prenzlauer Berg.

South America meets Husserl: silence was never so sexy.

We all shared the deliberately anti-mainstream premises.

Peter Ablinger and the Noise That Wasn't Noise

With his extraordinary conceptual development and extreme creativity, he recorded the sound of a tree growing and called it music.

The screech of the U8 line at 3 AM was sampled and processed.

Common ground: setting the real world as a score.

Radu Malfatti and the Art of Not Playing

Malfatti (the samurai of the silent trombone) said: Sound is an accident. At NK Projekt, we made Tango Zero: only a relationship of fourths, always two notes, always ad libitum, and various objects all on the floor, a dancer among it all, and a play of accidental sounds that never began or never ended.

Under and Wandelweiser Projects

20-page scores for two notes.

A Casio with glued keys passed through a pair of old pedals.

Result: Berlin needed them both, the fire and the ashes. 

Epilogue (Today)

Everything evolved from the influences of La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Tang Dynasty Chinese music, and Japanese folklore...

Wandelweiser's disciples fill halls in Basel today.

Things are still being burned in Neukölln ateliers . We love Nietzsche as much as the Turin Horse.

Reductionism survived, but music is neither sound nor silence... it's what happens "in between."

Music as a space for active listening

Rejection of virtuosity: They prioritized an austere, almost anti-technical performance, where sound emerged from minimal gestures (a touch of a bow, a breath on a wind instrument).

Silence as structure: Pauses and resonances were as important as the notes, in line with the ideas of John Cage and Morton Feldman.

Repertoire focused on reductionism and Wandelweiser

They performed works by Radu Malfatti, Jürg Frey, and Antoine Beuger.

Non-hierarchical configuration

The ensemble avoided soloists; all members (often between three and eight musicians) had equal roles.

Variable instrumentation: combining traditional acoustic instruments (trombone, cello, clarinet) with everyday objects (glass, paper).

Controlled improvisation

Although they played written works, they incorporated elements of free improvisation, but always within a framework of extreme restraint (no free jazz-style explosions).

Influenced by EAI (Electroacoustic Improvisation) from the Japanese scene, Toshimaru Nakamura, and Taku Sugimoto.

Site-specific contexts

They preferred to play in unconventional spaces (galleries, empty churches, courtyards) where the acoustic environment was part of the work. Unique events at Quiet Cue, which already made history, and O Tannenbaum, REH Raum, Richten25. Contemporary classical and its relationship with conceptual art: performances where the process (how the sound was generated) was more important than the result.

Violinists, cellists, and wind players were anonymous: often orchestral musicians seeking an experimental approach. 

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, they were known for fusing sound art, performance, free improvisation, and experimental electronics in a post-industrial urban context.

Although less documented than other Berlin movements (such as the techno scene or the neoclassical Berliner Schule), their interdisciplinary and anarchic approach made them a key hub for the city's underground avant-garde.

Main Premises

Free improvisation without hierarchies

Musicians, visual artists, and performers collaborated in spontaneous sessions, avoiding predefined structures.

Influences from European free jazz (Peter Brötzmann) and noise music (Merzbow).

DIY electronics and analog noise

Use of homemade modular synthesizers, circuit bending, and distorted field recordings.

Connections with the Berlin post-industrial and noise scenes (for example, projects like Genocide Organ).

Abandoned Spaces and Cultural Autonomy

They performed in empty factories, squats, and self-managed galleries, reflecting the reunified Berlin of the 1990s (like Tacheles).

Connections with activist art and anti-capitalist critique.

Collaboration with visual artists

Performances where sound interacted with video art, installations, and live painting.

Fluxus-inspired gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) events.

Rejection of commercialization 

Limited recordings on cassettes or hand-pressed vinyl, often anonymous.

Deliberately scant documentation (part of the myth). Argentine musicians such as Carlé Costa, Lucio Capece, Ligia Liberatori, and Camina Nebbia continue to enrich the airwaves of the German capital,

transcending all possible borders.

There were no collisions on the scene; they were parallel universes that fell in love and wove together during the lysergic nights of the Klangteppich. 

The magic existed:

## Good Bye Lennin, Wolfgang Becker (2003)

At an underground concert filled with atmosphere, Alex tells his girlfriend: "Right now, we are in the best place in the world." An epic line!

The dream is over:

## Munch, Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken (2023) The unusual connection to the contemporary Berlin scene uniquely explains the decline of the art scene. 

Some links:

Christin Kubisch 

https://christinakubisch.de/

Andrea Neumann

https://andreaneumann.bandcamp.com/album/elletsreuef

Annette Krebs

https://annettekrebs.eu/

Peter Ablinger 

https://ablinger.mur.at/

Radu Malfatti 

https://erstwhilerecords.bandcamp.com/album/--2

Toshimaru Nakamura 

https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/toshimaru-nakamura-discography-list

Taku Sugimoto 

https://takusugimoto.bandcamp.com/

Quiet cue

http://quietcue.blogspot.de/p/linked.html

Jorge Mancini

Jorge Alberto Mancini - YouTube 

Carlé Costa

https://youtube.com/channel/UCnRaumIp5qRdWzmlPOvXj6g/Carl%C3%A9Costa?si=QY1KS66kFxpOPJBb

Lucio Capece 

https://luciocapece.blogspot.com/?m=1

Ligia Liberatori 

https://www.ligialiberatori.net/

Camila Nebbia 

https://www.camilanebbia.com/