Martini Bros: How Dance Music Helped Re-Unify Germany

"When the wall came down you could go anywhere. It also changed because Berlin doubled in size overnight. Everybody started squatting houses because there were loads of opportunities to do it and that's where a complete new scene emerged, on the East German side."

While cynics often deride dance music's life changing potential, its role in helping East and West Germany merge, unite and prosper is unquestioned by most of Berlin's electronic music scene. DJ Cle, from electro/ disco duo Martini Bros (originally from West Berlin), is one of many who helped tear down the wall in 1989, who went on to embrace the fledging acid house style techno scene that rapidly developed.

"The first clubs playing dance music were illegal venues on the Eastern side so people in the West needed to go there to hear that music," he told Skrufff's Jonty Adderley this week.

"Then people became friends from both sides of the Wall; I think dance music helped more than anything else, certainly for our generation. For the first two years nobody in the Government knew what to do because there were no formal legal structures."

Politics aside, DJ Cle and his production partner Mike Vamp are just about to release their electro/ minimal house based debut album Play on Poker Fat Recordings after 4 years of building up a highly impressive catalogue of singles. As long term peers of Berlin' current uber spinner DJ Hell, the pair are fast rising stars of the no wave/ electro scene, touring heavily since September with live dates planned in Australia for the holidays.

"I DJed in Sydney, Perth and Melbourne last year and I'm really looking forward to returning," he added. "I really enjoyed it there."


Skrufff (Jonty Adderley): Are you DJing again or performing this time around-

Martini Bros: "This year we're doing a Martini Bros live show. Both of us play all the instruments, so we both play guitars, keyboards and sequencers and we both sing so there's a lot of action on stage. We try to remix the original tracks from the album and making them more rocking. My partner Mike was also born on stage, he's a natural entertainer. We've also been on tour since August so to avoid getting bored ourselves we've started to improvise more and more."

Skrufff: Where are you playing in Sydney-

Martini Bros: "At a party called the Mad Racket, I think it's in an open air bowling area. They have an old club house from the 60s, the throw parties once a month for about 600 people, usually an older crowd who are very much into electronic music. I played there last year and it was amazing."

Skrufff: How do people in Germany generally perceive Australia-

Martini Bros: "People in Germany don't know much about the place, we do get all the TV series like Neighbours and that kind of thing. We know Kylie Minogue and that's about it. I was quite surprised when I got there last year about how well informed the Australians are about European dance music. I was going to record stores and they had all the latest stuff from France and Germany, from very small labels, like the secret stuff. They had it all. I almost felt ashamed because I had no idea what was going on there."

Skrufff: Do people in Germany think of Australia as being like America or England-

Martini Bros: "I expected it to be like a good mixture of England and America. It's so big with so few people living there that I expected it to be relaxed, whereas I visualised the people as having a sense of humour like the British. I met some Australians here in Berlin before and they all seemed to be very open minded but I had no real idea about the country."

Skrufff: Have you amended your travel plans since the Bali bombings-

Martini Bros: "(Sighing) I don't know, we didn't get offers to visit those places, though we were offered a gig in Colombia which I didn't want to do at the moment. I think you should be careful, we wouldn't play in places like Pakistan right now either, also because heavy part Tags

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