The radical changes in our lives quickly became business as usual. Germany won the 1990 World Cup with a team consisting of East and West German players. I remember how excited I was as a life long German team supporter that my team had finally won the big cup and ran out to celebrate with the rest of the fans, only to get very frightened by the atmosphere on the streets.
It was a bit of a shock as it was rather aggressive and had this angry “We are someone now again” vibe that made me quickly seek a safe place. Shortly after that, the first asylum seeker hostels started to burn and the same people who had fled East Germany before were enraged by refugees arriving from other troubled places around the world. Instead of giving in to disillusionment, I focused on the still breathtaking development in the city, especially regarding the growing techno scene.
The more I explored the music the thirstier I became. Everything was so exciting and promising. New artists and new labels were rising high. As a war child, I loved the peace & love aspect of the scene to bits and I desperately wanted to be part of this worldwide movement but had no resources to buy the necessary equipment to start producing. But there was this one guy called Atasa in the commune who basically ran the commune’s studio.
Atasa happened to like me quite a bit and offered me the chance to start learning the basics of computer-based music. He had an Atari 1040ST with Cubase 2.0 that had 2 MB RAM. I still remember how you had to first install the operating system from the floppy disk and then eject it and load our song. It took me ages to understand the logic behind the program as I had very limited experience with computers. But one thing was sure, I was totally infected.
Atasa supported me in any possible way, he never lost patience with me, even after me asking him the same question several times. It is especially remarkable how selfless he was considering the amount of hardship he had to endure in his life. Instead of becoming bitter as most people do he had turned all negativity into pure life-affirming actions.