Like it's 1999

A quarter of a century ago, on a scorching hot Wednesday, Markus „Fels“ Fesl and I walked into our weekly dance improv session with Chilly Gonzales and Raz Ohara at Maria am Ostbahnhof. We were celebrating the release party for our first record as „No Underground“: Free Transform. Now, a quarter of a century later, the album originally released on Arne Gesemann's Noisolution is finally available again on all digital platforms.

On the roof of the former post office administration building, a four-story structure converted into a club, the neon sign „Pop“ glowed. On the first floor, the "Flittchen-Bar," associated with the legendary Lassie Singers, took place every Wednesday. Downstairs, on a worn-out sofa at the edge of the dance floor, the four of us played as Nightline City Cruisers (NCC), named by Raz after the German train's night service. Until dawn, we improvised eight-hour jam sessions for a pulsating hall of dance enthusiasts. Initially, we received 200, later 400 Marks for the band, a hundred each.

One joint followed another as Raz crooned to the dancing crowd with his Prince-esque vocals, and Gonzales (then still under the name „Wulf“) seemed to play for his life on the Fatar keyboard with a Classic Keys expander (Rhodes, Hammond, Clavinet) – shaking out one funky groove after another with a flick of his wrist. A disciple of P-Funk and Paul McCartney, Fels grooved on the bass with a grim expression. I laid down Seventies beats, adjusted the mix (mostly always louder), and occasionally screamed vocals pitched down with a VT-1 into the microphone. The energy in the room was electric. The cannabinoid-laden euphoria drove us to musical peaks every Wednesday for a year. As if there were no tomorrow.

Free Transform is an eclectic mix of jazzy groove tracks as they played in living room bars back then, simple pop songs with Sixties quotes, and rudimentary hip-hop – a hybrid of my nightly stoned compositions, pieces by Fels, guest appearances by Chilly Gonzales and Sebastian Schoenian, as well as recordings by the philosopher band „Wohnung“ consisting of Sandra Klein (keys), Reimund Spitzer (guitar), Töns Wiethüchter (drums), Fels, and myself – one of the seminal groups of the Berlin living room scene.

The living room party scene, with its illegal parties in private apartments, was celebrated in the press as a small-scale and cozy-friendly alternative to the techno mainstream. However, it was more the musically untamed bastard of techno, born from the same anarchic spirit that shaped the Berlin underground and the Maria Sessions. It was a joyful counter-proposal to the disillusionment of Generation X in late capitalism, which found its expression in West German discourse pop and the apocalyptic pop exegesis of the then-current Spex magazine in Cologne. It was the time when Berlin, thanks to countless vacant properties, low rents, and largely absent authorities, became a vibrant cultural metropolis. While in distant West Germany the underground was declared the fig leaf of the mainstream, the city, unconcerned by such gestures of distinction, bubbled with untamed creativity.

And we were right in the middle of it. The single „City Boy,“ a recording by the band Wohnung, was on heavy rotation on Fritz and Radio Eins. We played live in the newly opened Berlin MTV studio, while our trash video featuring Ecstasy chocolate, a Gonzales cameo, and police intervention was immediately pulled by MTV headquarters in London. With Fels on guitar and bass and me on mic, PC, and CD turntables, No Underground finally went on an improv tour across Germany, first with Gonzales on keys – ironically playing to completely empty venues – and later with Johannes „Jojo“ Büld on Moog Prodigy, Rhodes, Hammond, and electronics. At our peak, we played an endless house-infused dance set at Chemnitz's Atomino for a thousand dancing and euphorically screaming people, surrounded by hooked fans who then followed us to the 5-star hotel where Jan Kummer from Atomino had rented us two suites.

The live recordings made during the tour formed the basis for an album that I still consider one of the best I've been involved with. A groovy mix of dance, electronica, pop, and hip-hop, strong in lyrics and music, full of depth, desire, and darkness, despair, and spirituality, crowned by the bizarrely suicidal music video for „Donna“ by Oliver Päßler, which we filmed illegally in the cemetery on Prenzlauer Allee with Lia Baron as the lead actress. Only 20 years later did the video for „Truck Drivin‘ Devil“ follow, a melancholic, dreamy love song for eternity – and the only German-language track by No Underground. This album is now also available again on all digital portals under the title Golden Child.

It was a wild, productive time – and the big breakthrough was within reach.