ABOUT
Radio Free Berlin School
The music
The Berlin School, in German the Berliner Schule, is a style of electronic music built on the long, slowly changing repetition of the sequencer. It began in the underground of West Berlin at the end of the 1960s with Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Ash Ra Tempel, Agitation Free and Conrad Schnitzler: young musicians from beat groups, blues bands, art school and free jazz who, within a few years, had gone from feedback and noise to long, floating electronic pieces without songs and often without a beat. They had a stage in the Zodiak Free Arts Lab and a record label in Ohr, which sold their music as "Kosmische Musik".
In 1974 the music found its pulse. Tangerine Dream's Phaedra, built on the repeating notes of a Moog sequencer, went into the British charts with almost no airplay. Over the next few years Rubycon, Klaus Schulze's Timewind and Moondawn and Ashra's New Age of Earth defined the sound: pulsing sequences, slowly opening filters and long improvised melodies on top. By the end of the decade the American keyboard press had a name for it, the "Berlin School of Electronic Music".
Since then
The 1980s brought digital instruments, film scores and new audiences, and the original Berlin musicians went their separate ways. But a generation that had grown up on the classic records began making the music itself, on cassettes, through fan clubs and at small festivals, and kept it alive through the 1990s. Today it is made all over the world, by more artists than ever before. Tangerine Dream still tours, and the sound has returned to the screen in Stranger Things and in Hans Zimmer's Dune.
The project
Radio Free Berlin School is being built as an independent project about this music, in three parts:
- An encyclopaedia of the artists, albums, labels, festivals, venues, radio shows and fanzines.
- The story: a guide for new listeners, telling the history from West Berlin to today and pointing to the records to start with.
- DJ sets: long mixes that move freely between the eras, from classic 1970s tracks to new music from today's scene.
The project is on the side of the music. It wants people to listen, which means saying plainly which records are the place to start, and which don't measure up.
Listen now
The DJ sets are on Mixcloud, in three series, each mixed for deep listening, with the full tracklist in the comments of every show:
- Kosmische Dreamscapes: slow, weightless ambient and space music for drifting off into the cosmos.
- Kosmische Nights and Tangerine Dreams: classic Berlin School sequencers, steady and hypnotic.
- Kosmische Klänge: faster sequencers and heavier beats, Berlin School with the throttle open.