Why didn't Chris and Dan get into Berghain?
Our two-part season finale
Happy Thursday everyone,
Our season 1 finale is here!
Two Americans embark on a quest: fly across an ocean to try to get into the most exclusive nightclub in the world – Berghain. A German techno palace where the line outside can last 8 hours, and the bouncers are merciless in their judgments. The club does not explain how it makes its decisions about who can enter, but one foolish podcaster will try to explain anyway.
Listen below:
This week in the comments here, if anyone has stories about their relationship to dance music, or, if you walked in with one idea about techno and left with a different one, I’d love to hear about it.
We promised you a techno playlist!
Tracks! Some selected by our editor Sruthi Pinnamaneni and some from Tobias Rapp’s book Lost and Sound.
A note on the episode scoring from the wonderful Armen Bazarian
I asked Armen, who is responsible for the musical sound of Search Engine, to write a little bit about how he thought through his tremendous work on these two episodes. Here’s Armen:
“For this two parter, we wanted to capture the visceral power of techno while making sure to juxtapose it with a more nuanced score mirroring the backdrop from which the genre blossomed: a divided city, its people, and the sweat and tears that went into finding their freedom and sense of belonging.
I drew inspiration from the fact that Berlin is bisected by the river Spree: a living body of water whose shifting banks and currents have witnessed Berlin’s evolution. I wanted the score to mimic these currents; the ones on its surface seamlessly interacting with the ones hidden beneath. Numerous times during the episode, I use different pulses and beats that seem to be incongruous to one another, but like a kind of sonic river, combine to create a collage that’s greater than the sum of its parts.”
Also, a lot of people have asked for a link to Armen’s Search Engine theme. Happy to share that here.
And… here’s the techno remix we used for these episodes!
Further materials from this episode
Der Klang der Familie: Berlin, Techno and the Fall of the Wall - Felix Denk, Sven Von Thülen
Sub Berlin, the Tresor doc, is embedded below.
The end of our first season
Putting together these forty one episodes for you has been such a joyful challenge. When we started working on them about a year and a half ago, frankly the hill felt a little too steep. But here we are!
I’m still weighing this — I might do a post-mortem on this season for our subscriber feed: things we learned, things we were wrong about, etcetera. But also: maybe not? It’s been a lot of words, and this week, I’m going on a hike and reading some books, looking for new questions to ask and ideas to explore. But if that’s something you’d like to hear, let me know.
Thank you so much to everyone who listened. Double thank you to anyone who supported the show with a subscription, told a friend, or took the time to write us a review.
Actually, if, you’ve got a moment, please consider writing a review in Apple Podcasts? Our radar for listener feedback, weirdly, is these Apple reviews, people just leave the nicest stuff.
One last link for you: CLUBSTACK. If you’re in New York, or visiting New York, Sruthi and I have been immensely charmed by this new service where you can call a hotline and a computer operator will tell you where to dance this weekend. A Dance hotline! 332-699-6960. They’re also on Substack.
Alright, that’s it for this season. We’re going to rebroadcast some of our Crypto Island favorites in July, and Season 2 of Search Engine begins in August.
Till then, take care,
PJ
I totally understand the artistic choice of ending in the way you did. But COME ON! I’m going to be wondering forever now. Which I suppose is the point. Either way, I appreciate the club of belonging you’ve created on this corner of the internet
These episodes reminded me of how much I used to love dancing at clubs 25 years ago... now that I'm old and unable to do a lot of the "fitness" things I would like to do (injuries, blah blah), I'm encouraged to try and find some of these parties locally. Hopefully they start at 5pm and I can leave by 10 because I can't stay up all night anymore!!
Thank you!