Date:
Friday, September 19, 2025
Time: 7 p.m.
Location:
DOCK 11, Saal 4
@dock_digital_berlin
Kastanienallee 79
10435 Berlin
Free admission, no registration required
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tapetopia record release of Neuntage Alt (tt 020) and L'Ambassadeur des Ombres (tt 022).
Neuntage Alt and L'Ambassadeur des Ombres were part of the East Berlin subculture of the 1980s. Neither band was banned, but they were ultimately unwanted offspring of a system that mistrusted darker tones as a critique of the prescribed cheerfulness. Their cassettes "Waif" and "Star Of Evil" circulated at the time in very small editions of approximately 10 copies and remained unreleased for 35 years.
Program
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DJs Alexander Pehlemann and Philipp Strobel present the sound of GDR counterculture.
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Alexander Pehlemann and Juliane Liebert will read their texts for the two record releases.
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Following this, a short panel discussion on the tapetopia series will feature Henryk Gericke, René Glofke (Neuntage Alt/L'Ambassadeur...), and Joggy Müller (L'Ambassadeur des Ombres). Moderation by Kirsten Seeligmüller.
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Screening of five videos by director Abel Lindner featuring five songs from the newly released albums.
To mark the current releases, we present five music videos by director Abel Lindner – each for one of the newly released tracks. The films were created in close collaboration with dancers from the DOCK 11 and tapetopia ensembles. They focus on expressive dance performances that lend the songs an intense visual dimension. The videos build a bridge from the previously unreleased GDR underground tapes to the present: The combination of historical audio material with contemporary dance creates a fascinating interplay between past and present – raw, poetic, and highly topical.
Supported by: DOCK 11 / DOCKdigital
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Alexander Pehlemann
Author, editor, and DJ (Verbrecher Verlag, Zonic, and others) focusing on subculture in the GDR and Eastern Europe in the 1980s.
Juliane Liebig
Author (Suhrkamp) and journalist (Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit, Spiegel, and others)
René Glofke
Musician. Active in the 1980s in East Berlin bands such as Mahlsdorfer Wohnstuben Orchester, Neuntage Alt, Fellini Prostitutes, and L’Ambassadeur des Ombres.
Jörg “Joggy” Müller
Active in the 1980s in East Berlin bands such as Koma Kino, Mahlsdorfer Wohnstuben Orchester, Die Vision, and L’Ambassadeur des Ombres.
Henryk Gericke
Author, editor, DJ (Verbrecher Verlag, tapetopia, among others).
Active in the East Berlin punk band The Leistungsleichen in the early 1980s.
Philipp Strobel
Editor, DJ (recording + playback).
Abel Lindner
Director. Abel Lindner took the release of Neuntage Alt and L'Ambassadeur des Ombres on tapetopia/a+w as an opportunity to create videos of five of the bands' tracks. Premiere.
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MORE:
The underground tape scene of the 1980s functioned similarly, yet fundamentally differently, in the two sound systems of East and West Germany. In both West and East Germany, production was largely non-commercial, for a circle of like-minded people, some deliberately ignoring the market, others with no idea of the market. In terms of ideas, there were certainly bridges between the sound worlds, but the production-technical conditions derived from the separate ideological circuits of two global isms.
For the scene in the East, in addition to the question of the idea itself, there was always the problem of its technical transfer. On the one hand, the technical prerequisites for producing a song existed only to a limited extent, and on the other, it was simply impossible to copy tapes in relevant quantities. Tape decks from the West seemed like bronze in the Stone Age and were highly sought after. Cassette recorders made in East Germany, such as Stern, Sonett, Minett, Anett, Babett, or the tape deck from the state-owned manufacturer RFT, were exorbitantly expensive and, due to a fickle economy, rarely available. GDR tape recorders were rightly considered extremely maintenance-intensive; repairs took an unpredictable four to eight weeks, and the feeling of success was often lacking. GDR production did not produce tapes that were affordable and suitable for duplication. The ORWO cassettes from the VEB Filmfabrik Wolfen were cheap only in terms of their quality, and also prone to tape jams. Compared to the monthly income of, say, an apprentice, around 250 East German marks, the 20 marks per cassette weren't exactly tempting to buy. To further illustrate the disparity: the monthly rent for a one-room apartment in an old building cost around 25 marks. Therefore, used Amiga tapes of irrelevant stars were preferred, thus subjecting them to a tape wash. Names like Les Humphries Singers or Mireille Mathieu could sometimes be found as palimpsests among those of GDR underground bands.
Unless one had "Western currency" and maintained private trade routes into the western sectors of Berlin or Germany to smuggle equipment and tapes across the inner-German city or state border, the possibilities for tape production proved extremely limited. Quite apart from the fact that releases of any kind without state approval and bypassing the ideological exploitation chain were, if not illegal, then at least illicit, smuggling in large quantities and beyond certain currency limits was sometimes punished as "currency offenses" and prosecuted with interest by the Criminal Investigation Department and the State Security Service.
But circulation-friendly conditions didn't seem necessary either, because in the GDR, one only heard of distribution structures or independent record stores from a different, more German world. A little more than 200 Moonshiner tapes were produced across the GDR between 1984 and 1989. Even if the scale of production cannot be compared to that in West Germany, several tapes circulated, mostly in small editions of 20 to 50 copies, that achieved legendary status. Examples include the so-called "Rotmaul" cassette by the freakwave band Ornament & Verbrechen or "AIDS delikat" by the noise combo Klick + Aus.
tapetopia releases cassette editions from the GDR underground of the 1980s, specifically from the Mauerstadt scene in East Berlin, using the original layout and tracklists. More than three decades after their initial "release," these tapes have yet to be heard on vinyl or CD, but they were clearly part of the canon of GDR subculture. Contrary to the small editions at the time, many of the bands were considered cult in countercultural circles, but highly suspect in informed circles.