Immersion

            Your eyes adjust to the dimly lit cloakroom, and you see the sweat trickling down the concrete walls of your temple. The girl searching your bag winks at you and wishes you, “viel spaß!” It is 6 o’clock on Sunday morning and the club has been open since 11pm on Friday. It won’t close for roughly another 24hours. The smell of stale body odour and cigarettes lets you know of the fun that’s previously been had. But now it’s your turn…  

            You look around this gigantic, poured-concrete palace. Flashes of pink, blue, green (white, red, yellow, lime green, orange, purple, turquoise, magenta, peach…) bounce off the impressive interior to reveal metal railings, chains and staircases. This is it. No gimmicks, no adverts, no photos allowed. It’s about these refined elements - space, colour and sound.  

            Ascending the stairs tension builds with every footstep as the ‘clangs’ of the metal against your feet reverberate through your legs. You vibrate like a plucked string. Climbing the final step you gauge your surroundings. The sounds from the Funktion-One speakers stacked all around the room move you from your core. A few hundred rib cages rattle in unison. It’s impossible to stand still. The powerful beats carefully composed by the DJ in the booth at the other side of the floor make you punch out as if you were in battle with the music. The sound has a presence in this space more physical than your own. It doesn’t matter how much you fight back with your movements; the sounds are launched at you like missiles - and you love every minute of it.  

            Is this Heaven or is this Hell? You can't work it out. The industrial setting, the heat, the volume, the smells, the relentless thump of the kick drum, the hundreds of bodies thrashing through the space as if preparing for war, each one of you a significant part of this beastly, techno furnace. The light panels on the wall behind the DJ flash menacingly together with the music like a pair of eyes blinking at you from the back of a dark cave. The whole space throbs, pressure constantly builds, yet there are no fractures in the power you feel from this moment - it does not stop.

            People come and people go but you are unsure how long you have been there. The progressive layers and repetition in the music, and the colours and rhythms from the lights in the space occupy both body and mind for hours, even days…