House in Germany and France: closing times and kick drums

For four years Lena Vogt and I have been arguing about what separates German and French house. She thinks it is a question of engineering, and I think it is a question of when the clubs close. Here is the argument as I would put it, with her replies included at her request.

The kick drum

Start in Germany. Tobias Wendt comes from a Cologne tradition where taking something out of a track counts as an achievement. In Berlin in the early nineties you have Basic Channel, making records from dub techno so deep in the mix that you are not sure you are hearing them, and a good part of this catalogue descends from that. Anselm Reuter's bass goes through a tape delay until it stops behaving like a bass.

Now France. Rex Club, in the basement of a cinema, held what is often described as the first acid house party in the country in 1988, with Laurent Garnier playing. By the middle of the nineties St Germain is putting jazz on top, and then come the filter records. A French house record of that time takes a piece of old disco, closes the filter so it sounds as if it is in the next room, then opens it. Sacha Vidal has built a career on that move.

Lena's reply is that this is a romantic account. A filter sweep is engineering too. A resonant low-pass on a disco sample is a specific technical decision, and its popularity had something to do with what samplers of that period could do cheaply.

The clock

This is my main argument. Look at when the clubs close.

In Berlin, a party at Sisyphos runs for as long as it runs, and Kater can go on for days. If you know you have until Tuesday, you do not need to say anything important at midnight. You can set up a kick drum and a pad and see what happens to them over four hours. Patience in German house owes something to the licensing conditions.

In France, Rex shuts at seven. Le Sucre runs from eleven to five. The Cabaret Aléatoire in Marseille runs from half past eleven to half past five. You have six hours in a good case, with the last and first Métro on either side of it, so the French record arrives with its chords in the first minute.

Lena disagrees. The three-hour minimum at The Long Count has worked in every French room the label has tried, and she has the settlement sheets. She also points out that Robert Johnson and Gewölbe are German clubs with ordinary closing times, and that most German clubs outside a small part of Berlin do not run until Tuesday.

The audience

In a German club, people tend to face the DJ, or more exactly the sound. They will listen to Frieda Lux for seven hours with close attention, and sometimes clap at the end.

In France people face each other. They came with friends, they are talking, and when a record is good they shout at it. Les Quais made a record with a saxophone that has no words, and 400 people sang it at I.Boat. Lena would add that Ilse Morgen's crowd at seven in the morning in Offenbach does much the same, and she is right.

All of us are working from what came out of Chicago and New Jersey, from Larry Heard and Kerri Chandler. British buyers took those records in sufficient quantities to make pressing them worthwhile.

The state

In France a club can carry official recognition. Le Sucre has a Club Culture label from the Ministry of Culture, and the Cabaret Aléatoire has been a SMAC since 2014. I do not claim this makes the music better, but it gives a French club a clearer footing when it applies for support. Lena's answer is that Germany has funding too, with more forms.

What this means on the label

In practice, not very much. Margaux Delorme's vocal version of "Köpenicker Dub" works better than either of us expected, and Frieda took "La Corniche" and turned it into a record about waiting for a tram. If I play Lena a new track and hide the name, she gets the country right about three times in four by her count. I get it right about two times in three by mine. We both listen for the reverb.