Tobias Rapp - Lost And Sound [Innervisions]

--> Recommended by your friends at Tenampa: an essential book in the Innervisions catalog. Language: English.

Why do thousands of club tourists land at Berlin Schönefeld airport every weekend? Why have clubs like Berghain become world legends? Why have some of the most well-known techno producers and DJs, such as Richie Hawtin and DJ Hell, relocated their labels to this city? These are the kinds of questions explored in "Lost and Sound" by Tobias Rapp, a German music journalist who has been living, working, and partying in Berlin since the early nineties. He has spoken to DJs, clubbers, label heads, hostel managers, and urban planners; he has observed and listened carefully; and most importantly of all, he has been part of the dance floor himself. Every day of the week, from Wednesday night (at Watergate) to Wednesday night (back at Watergate).

"Lost and Sound" is not one of those books that try to understand techno from a desk-bound position. Rapp gets up close to recount intimate moments in front of the DJ booth and at the bar, and then jumps to historical tangents and theoretical reflections. Detailed research is interspersed with first-person accounts. An excellent portrait of Ricardo Villalobos, the biggest star of Berlin's minimal techno and after-party scene, sits alongside a precise sociological description of the queue for Berghain. Through this interplay of music, architecture, infrastructure, and drug-induced explorations of personal limits, Rapp is able to capture what makes Berlin such a unique place for electronic music and how this music is experienced.

Upon its publication in Germany in February 2009, "Lost and Sound" caused an impact not seen for a long time in a book about popular music. This was undoubtedly due in part to the term coined for its subtitle: the 'Easyjet set' is a new group of music fans who, thanks to the deregulation of the European air market, now consider the airplane a taxi service for parties, effectively turning Barcelona, London, and Paris into suburbs of Berlin.