‘No established disco would have played this music’: 30 years of legendary Berlin club Tresor

A new compilation surveys the enduring influence of a German landmark that fuelled a techno revolution from a damp, fungi-riddled bank vault on the old East side

For electronic music fans, Berlin's Tresor has long been considered the Valhalla of Germany's illustrious club circuit. In March 1991, months after the official dismantling of the Berlin Wall, Tresor, the city's first techno club, opened near Potsdamer Platz. In short order, the club's vanguard of DJs, eccentrics, punks, goths and artists birthed a new subculture of Teutonic dance music that united the youth movements of east and west on the dancefloor.

To commemorate the club's 30th anniversary, Tresor Records is releasing Tresor 30, a 12-record box set of classic and new techno artists from its in-house label. It runs the gamut from early Detroit techno (Underground Resistance's 1991 sci-fi epic The Final Frontier; Jeff Mills' Late Night) to ambient techno (the savant-like Function) and third generation, post-techno musicians (Afrodeutsche, Sophia Saze, Grand River), demonstrating Tresor's trademark, big tent approach to electronic dance music.