In this essay at The Yale Review, Aria Aber reflects on “the loss of a party era” and what she took away from the underground rave and club scene in Germany: the type of knowledge you can only learn from the shared physical experience of being in a crowd, of dancing all night long to techno. “At its best, the rave tells us something about subversion, subculture—the subaltern, even,” she writes. Aber describes a movement of unity, transformation, and resistance, and meditates beautifully on how it might translate to the real world.
The sound reminded me of the mathematical precision and sweep of Rachmaninoff, and the pulsing drumbeat of the Attan, the tribal dance I saw performed at Afghan weddings. The sonic landscape alchemized an aesthetic absence—empty factories, ruined cities, tonal desolation—into a futuristic vision: recycled machines, new ideas, utopian planets. Did the sound enact the strangeness of exile?
More picks on techno
Jeff Mills Loves to Forget
“How techno’s most vaunted architect is still building sonic futures.”
In Kosovo, Techno Is a Symbol of Resilience
“Long a sacred space for catharsis and healing, the smoke-filled dance floors of Pristina have become the backdrop to a changing country.”
Notes From the Underground
“Inside the world of underground warehouse raves, forest parties, and Freetekno.”
