Berghain Nights: A Journey through Techno and Berlin Club Culture

Fascinated by Berlin nightclub Berghain's strange techno and stranger goings-on, Liam Cagney journeys through techno's history, from Detroit to Tokyo, and explores Berlin club culture in all its color and intensity. Berghain Nights is the result. From kinky parties in the labyrinthine KitKat Club to the smoky gloom of Tresor's repurposed bank vault, to the psychedelic lab of Cocktail d'Amore, Berghain Nights not only captures the excitement of Berlin club culture but also asks how techno in a queer club context can help people strip away their inherited hang-ups to find a truer self. Berghain Nights is about spiritual frenzy and soulful music, countercultural urgency, and capitalistic cash-ins. It's a story of the most notorious club in the world and of a scene that, enthralling thousands every weekend, feeds billions annually into Berlin's economy. In the midst of it all is the story of a person who, having gone through life feeling like an alien, finds himself in the most alien place imaginable and feels at home there. 'Cagney doesn't just write from the middle of the dance floor. He's there in the queue, in the club toilets, and in dark corners. Zooming between histories of techno, Berlin clubs, and his childhood in rural Donegal, this no-holds-barred exploration of dance-floor life describes a site of transformation and repair.' Emma Warren, author of Dance Your Way Home: A Journey Through the Dancefloor

About the Author :
Liam Cagney is a novelist and musicologist who lives in Berlin. His writing has been described by the Irish Times as 'stunningly strange and powerful'.

Review :
Berghain Nights is a love letter to the city that never sleeps . . . a trip in every sense . . . Berghain Nights reminds us that in times of ugly hegemony, beautiful subcultures thrive in the shadows. It’s a fascinating descent into psychic and physical underworld, and Liam Cagney is a worthy Virgil. This is a visionary book. Cagney speaks to scene titans such as Luke Slater, Eris Drew and Function and creates a compelling narrative, with music at its very core. The accompanying playlists on streaming platforms are essential. Fascinated by Berghain’s strange techno and stranger goings-on, Cagney explores Berlin club culture in all its colour and intensity. A story of the most notorious club in the world that feeds millions into Berlin’s economy, and feeling at home in the most alien of environments. The Berlin nightclub Berghain occupies an almost mythical space in club culture. But it is real, still going and the subject of a creative exploration by Liam Cagney. A punishingly evocative odyssey of personal, political and aesthetic transformation through techno - this book made me ache all over for Berlin. Liam Cagney doesn’t just write from the middle of the dance floor. He’s there in the queue, in the club toilets and in dark corners. Zooming between histories of techno, Berlin clubs and his childhood in rural Donegal, this no-holds-barred exploration of dance-floor life describes a site of transformation and repair. Liam Cagney's Berghain Nights is far beyond a hedonism manual or coolhunter's itinerary. In fact, it's a deeply felt protest in favour of the utopian impulses endangered by overexposure. His sense of club culture as a precious ecosystem as worthy of preservation as his beloved Grünewald and Donegal bogland, whose surreal, meditative elsewheres he spreads open, until they open across the floors of some of Berlin's most radical and radicalising venues. Cagney is a self-effacing, gentle, and meditative narrator, as comfortably uncomfortable in Kilclooney as he is surrounded by ketamine. He reminds us that club culture belongs to those nowhere people from black and white towns who just want to feel vivid for a moment. His precise, cerebral, and visceral language builds via a scrupulous but never studied attentiveness to a kind of prose Ganzfeld effect. Cagney is all about sensation, not sensationalism. As such, his sentences catch the ecstatic, teeming nothingness on the far side of the self and the far side of the DJ booth. Bracing, transporting, and phenomenally well-sourced, this combination of memoir, music journalism, and social history is a future classic of urban pastoral. Let Liam Cagney take you on an intense and revelatory journey from Donegal to Berghain. It's a trip that takes in the history of techno, the thrill of nightlife and the freedom of the self. Candid and captivating, Berghain Nights is a deeply exciting book which made me think in new ways about clubbing as an experience. An immersive, fascinating whirl through a famous club, but also culture, psychogeography and the things that bind us together. Utterly gripping, often moving and a nostalgic re:up for anyone who has given up on clubbing or music. An engrossing, revealing journey through Berlin and techno history