Friday, May 9, 2008

Tresor!


Received a request for the Tresor Vol. 1 comp which I unfortunately could not locate. But I did find a couple of the first Tresor releases, which are just so good I have to post them!

A bit about Tresor:
Tresor (German for safe or vault) is an underground techno nightclub and record label - one of the most influential clubs for techno music in the 1990s. The club was founded in March 1991 in the vaults of the former old Wertheim department store in Mitte, the central part of the former East Berlin, next to the famous Potsdamer Platz, however the history of the club goes back to 1988 when the electronic music label Interfisch opened the UFO Club in Berlin. UFO was the original centre of Berlin house and techno, but due to financial problems that club closed in 1990.

After UFO closed, Interfisch's head, Dimitri Hegemann and some investors in the club found the new space in East Berlin. This was advantageous timing, as it was only a few months before Germany unified. The vaults under the Wertheim department store proved to be the perfect location for a club, and Tresor quickly became the place to be in Berlin. Tresor continued to be a popular club to this day, having expanded and reconstructed continuously several times to include an outdoor garden area, and a second "Globus" floor. The concept for the Tresor floor in the basement was specifically hard techno, industrial and acid music while Globus was featuring mainly more mellow house sound. The recordlabel Tresor Records was founded soon after the club first opened, in October 1991. Featured artists on the label include Jeff Mills, Juan Atkins, Robert Hood, Joey Beltram, Pacou, Cristian Vogel and many others.

In 2004 the documentary "Tresor Berlin: The Vault & the Electronic Frontier" was released. Directed by Mike Andrawis, it features interviews with Hegemann, Carola Stoiber, and DJs & artists associated with the club & label. [1] The film covers the period from Hegemann's involvement with the Fishladen and UFO clubs in Berlin-Kreuzberg to the final months prior to Tresor's closure.

Tresor closed on the 16th April 2005, after several years prolonged short-term rent. The city sold the land to an investor group to build offices on the Leipziger Straße location. It was open for each night of April 2005, with the final event starting the Saturday night with queues stretching all the way down the road, and still going Monday morning.

Tresor reopened on 24th May 2007 in a renovated power plant on Köpenickerstrasse in Mitte.


The following are the first releases off the Tresor label, 001 and 002 respectively.



X-101 - X-101
Tresor 001
Released - 1991
Style - Techno

Tracklist:
A1 Sonic Destroyer (5:00)
A2 Rave New World (5:29)
A3 The Final Hour (4:15)
B1 G-force (4:12)
B2 Whatever Happen To Peace (5:30)
B3 Mindpower (5:43)

This is great techno. 1991 style. Very minimal and soulful, but not the standard 'soul' more like machine soul. Tons of bleeps and shuffly 808s + synth stabs for days. Awesome stuff!

First Tresor release. "Whatever Happened to Peace" is a dark, sophisticated, and suprisingly simple classic. Note that this was re-released by Mute as "Sonic Destroyer" but with this EP's tracklist.

download
info




Blake Baxter - Dream Sequence
Tresor 002
Released - 1991
Style - Techno

A1 Ghost
A2 The Warning
B1 One Mo Time (Mix 1)
B2 Laser 101
B3 Ex-
B4 Dark Basse

This is more acid-heavy than the X-101 release. Equally good. Early rave-style techno. Definitely something to grab!

download
info


Enjoy!

6 comments:

AMP said...

Oooo nice ones! fanks!

Anonymous said...

Actually, the first three Tresor showcases were published in NovaMute. They are:

http://www.discogs.com/release/27134
(I think there's another version of this one)
http://www.discogs.com/release/48297

http://www.discogs.com/release/25240
(later Tresor 97)

Of course, Tresor also published other early comps. like 'Techno Soul' or 'Sirius Is A Friend'.

If you're still interested, I think I have them somewhere and I can post them.

J Thyme...kind said...

Do you have the track "Space" by Underground Resistance?

Anonymous said...

Hi,

nice blog.

For Tresor releases take a look at this great blog:

http://djrogeranselmo.blogspot.com/search?q=tresor

Anonymous said...

Funny!
I've got this 12 incher from 1991, called "X-101": it was released by UR.
Two tracks are missing here, from the same 12": "Frequency response test" and "RIAA curve test", two simple hi-frequency and low frequency tests on sounds.
The funny thing of this 12" is that on the "G-Force" side the runout groove is backwarded, so you have to put your cartridge at the end of the record to listen to the track.
On the "Sonic Destroyer" side the runout groove is missing between this and the "test" tracks (you have to manually point your cartridge at beginning of each track).

>FrankDee<

Anonymous said...

Hey, there - I have those first Tresor comps. The first one, indeed, has a different cover (the one shown on Discogs must be a reissue, because I bought it probably in about 1994). Interested? I for sure have I and II.