Many of techno culture's most prominent and legendary international and national DJ's contributed their thoughts on the impact and influence Tresor Club has had on the global electronic music movement. We have preserved these souvenirs of the Leipziger Strasse Tresor Club as a Total Recall of this Tresor monument.

Everything began in March 1991: a new club „Tresor“ opened in the basement vault-rooms of the Wertheim department store located in the „Mitte“ section of Berlin, next to the famous Potsdamer Platz.

Tresor came at the right time, in the right place and with the correct music. As Berlin’s first techno club, it corresponded to the public’s search for innovative music and newly found freedom in a post-Wall Berlin.

Lasting notoriety wasn’t in everyone’s mind during the beginning and sometimes the factors were unfavourably mixed. Besides an entirely new music style being represented, the club’s rough, apocalyptic atmosphere ruled above all: condensation dripped down the raw concrete walls of the old vault rooms; rusty steel bars separated visitors from the bar; several hundred forced-opened safe-deposit boxes lined the walls that spoke of wealth long forgotten; strobe lights and fast, hard beats dominated the dance floor. Only here could electronic music correspond with such architecture – the senses were left equally numbed and brutalised. Tresor’s extreme but pioneering example trail-blazed Berlin’s entire club culture.
 

Christian Vogel @ Tresor  

Tresor’s history actually goes back to 1988 when the Interfisch label team opened the „UFO“ club. Even today „UFO“ is considered the birthplace of the Berlin house and techno movement. Following its closing, Interfisch label head Dimitri Hegemann and partners unearthed a new location in the eastern half of the city on Leipziger Strasse. It was custom-made for the new underground scene. These subterranean steel vaults of the former Wertheim store (once Europe’s largest department store during the 20’s) were redesigned into a club that quickly became the „hippest“ place in town. From day one it was clear that only first-rate talent played and performed. Party people from all over came to the club in droves to see Berlin turntable legends Tanith, Jonzon, Rok, Paul van Dyk, Kid Paul and Dr. Motte.

Tresor Club immediately became an ideal forum for the international electronic dance music scene, meeting and celebrating together while mutually inspiring all sides involved. The club created a world-wide name for itself within the first year. The Detroit techno scene brought forth some of the most beautifully minimalist yet roughest music to date: spearheaded by „Underground Resistance“ (Jeff Mills, Mike Banks, Robert Hood), other forefathers such as Juan Atkins and Blake Baxter regularly appeared in Tresor to perform. Forging such strong bonds with these prominent artists in the techno scene brought the „club label“ idea back, and Tresor Records was born. As a sub-label of Interfisch Records, Tresor Records kicked off in September 1991, releasing Underground Resistance’s „Sonic Destroyer“ as the first part of their „X-project“ album trilogy („X-101, X-102, X-103“) – all instant classics in the genre.

Along with techno’s rapid rise in popularity, the club has also expanded over the years. The Globus club area on the upper floor of the Tresor building initially began as a long bar with a transistor radio sound system, and has continually gone through renovation and enlargement. In contrast to the foggy basement below Globus, where it’s strictly about techno and strobes, Globus’ first residents Minsky, Clé and Terrible groomed the groove: acid jazz was the code word and artists like the James Taylor Quartet, Ronni Jordan and Gilles Peterson played under one roof with the best of the techno world.

Just as rapidly as the beats came, so the new styles and tastes of the club community developed: when acid jazz went back into the bars, house and breakbeats held their own in Globus, and the new and modern variations of the Tresor party concept continue through the present day.

Simultaneous with the club’s interior developments, ambitions took to the exterior: the 1993 opening of the Tuna Bar and outdoor „chill-out“ area (Tuna Garden: the club’s „backyard“) which became a main after-hours spot; and 1995’s debut of the „Aurora“ cocktail lounge which occasionally doubled as an art gallery for young Berlin artists, initially under the direction of Danielle de Piccioto.

Ever since the beginning Tresor earned respect from all corners of the world, functioning doubly as safe-house for the preservation of techno. In spite of changing trends and the media’s fixation on closing the club, Tresor remains loyal to Underground Techno: a Berlin magazine once called the club a „monument in stubbornness“. Although the music itself isn’t re-invented each week, in Tresor the techno universe became further refined and provided a space like no other for the most interesting DJ’s and live acts from Europe, the Americas and Japan.

In the early weeks of 2005, shortly before Tresor Club's 14th birthday, the news hit hard: Tresor Club was finally being pushed out from its little corner of Potsdamer Platz and the land would be used to build a high-rise insurance company building. In February it was announced that the last party in Tresor Club on the Leipziger Strasse would be on Saturday April 16, 2005.

The entire Tresor crew flexed their muscles and a closing program was quickly put together: Tresor Leaving Home. Between 01 – 16 April, 2005 Tresor held a club party every night, DJ’s and clubbers from all over the world came to say goodbye during two weeks that became known as The Final Cut: It’s Not Over. Among the prominent national and international guest artists that played:

Abe Duque, Alan Oldham, Alexander Kowalski, Angel Molina, Ben Sims, Blake Baxter, Chris Liebing, Dave Tarrida, Der Dritte Raum, DJ Hell, DJ Julien & Gonzague, DJ Rush, DJ Shufflemaster, DJ Tanith, Dr. Motte, Gary Martin aka Teknotika, Good Groove, Jason Leach, Joey Beltram, John Acquaviva, Jonzon, Josh Wink, Justin Berkovi live, Kelli Hand, Marusha, Mike Grant, Monika Kruse, Namito, O/V/R feat. James Ruskin & Regis, Oscar Mulero, Paul Kalkbrenner live, Paul van Dyk, Ricardo Villalobos, Richie Hawtin, Savvas Ysatis live, Scan 7 live, Steve Bicknell, Terry Donovan, The Advent live and of course the entire Tresor resident DJ team. No festival, rave, parade or party will ever match such a historic line-up of international talent, paying homage to the techno mouse that roared.

Starting on April 20th, 2005 Tresor Club’s Bonito House and Tresor Headquarters parties found themselves in exile at Club Maria am Ufer in Berlin every Wednesday night until August 2006. The spacious, cool club was home for Bonito/Headquarters and special Tresor parties during the search for a new Tresor Club location. Thereafter Tresor held exile parties in several Berlin locations, including Club SO36, until it was announced in March 2007 – our 16th anniversary – that Tresor Club would move into its new home on the Köpenickerstrasse - in the heart of Berlin - in May 2007.

One thing is sure: the Tresor concept and the memory of Leipziger Strasse 126a remains all that it is: a monolithic electronic rock in the turf and a magic place where the most intense experiences in techno and club culture will continue to ring forever through the asphalt and buildings of Potsdamer Platz.

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