Fifteen years on, the defining Berlin dark-electronic and industrial-techno crossover label of the post-2010 era · close to the Berghain world, and deliberately to one side of it.
Aufnahme + Wiedergabe is the Berlin dark-electronic and industrial-techno label founded in 2011 by Philipp Strobel and Gabriel Brero, with Julia Meusel (joined 2013), Chloé Lula (label manager from 2016) and Alessandra Dalla Palma (booking from 2016) coming in later. It operates from Klara-Franke-Straße 14 on Berlin's Tiergarten / Mitte border. The name comes from German tape-recorder buttons · "Aufnahme" (recording) and "Wiedergabe" (playback) · a nod to the DIY tape lineage the label grew out of. Its first release was a cassette of Brero's La Fête Triste project; vinyl became the focus from around 2013.
The timing of the 2011 launch matters. Berlin's techno world had settled around Berghain (the venue opened April 2004; Ostgut Ton followed c. 2005) and around Tresor (which had moved to the Köpenicker Straße Kraftwerk complex in 2007); at the same time the European dark-electronic and EBM revival was taking hold across the late 2000s and early 2010s. Aufnahme + Wiedergabe landed at the meeting point of the two: tied into the Berlin techno network without being a Berghain affiliate, and ranging across post-punk, dark wave, minimal wave, EBM, industrial and industrial techno rather than settling on one sub-form.
The catalogue entry that matters most for the Bureau's purposes is Phase Fatale's 2015 12-inch Grain ([a+w II], May 2015), one of the earliest A+W releases and the record that established Hayden Payne in Berlin after his move from New York. It came two years before Phase Fatale's Hospital Productions LP Redeemer (2017) and three before his Ostgut Ton LP Reverse Fall (2018), which makes it the key reference point for his pre-Ostgut-Ton Berlin period. The larger point is that Aufnahme + Wiedergabe acted as an incubator for the city's dark-electronic and industrial-techno crossover through the mid-2010s, with several of its artists going on to residencies at Ostgut Ton, Hospital Productions and the rest of the Berghain orbit.
The roster across the catalogue's near-200 releases ranges well beyond any single sub-form. On the cold-wave and dark-wave side: Lebanon Hanover (the Anglo-German duo of William Maybelline and Larissa Iceglass), the Italian project Mushy, Germany's Die Selektion, France's Hante., plus Veil Of Light and Sixth June. On the EBM-revival side: Schwefelgelb, Bloodygrave, Die Lust and Imperial Black Unit. On the industrial-techno and dark-electronic side: Phase Fatale, Codex Empire, the Ancient Methods collaborations, In Death It Ends and The Devil And The Universe. Remix work runs through The Soft Moon (Luis Vasquez) and the cold-wave acts.
Strobel's work outside the label fills in the picture. He co-founded the Berlin club night DEATH # DISCO (with Ian P. Christ) and the night Endorcism, both of which programme much the same artists as the label and the surrounding dark-electronic crowd. His DJ residencies run through ://about blank, Tresor / Globus, Arena Club and Urban Spree rather than the Berghain Klubnacht circuit · a route the Bureau notes as distinct from the Berghain-centred world of Ostgut Ton. The influences he names · the German Galakthorrö label (founded 1993 by Mr. and Mrs. Arafna), Coil, and Rudimentary Peni's Nick Blinko for the visual and literary side · place the label close to the European dark-electronic and industrial tradition.
The Bureau reads Aufnahme + Wiedergabe as the defining Berlin dark-electronic and industrial-techno crossover label of the years since 2010 · set apart from Ostgut Ton (Berghain's house label) and from BITE (Phase Fatale's harder, techno-specific imprint launched in 2018), and bringing the European cold-wave and EBM revival into the orbit of Berlin techno. It is still active in 2026 with a steady release schedule. In 2025 Strobel stepped out as a performing artist for the first time · the Strobel + Friedemann Kootz single The Soul (February 2025) · after fourteen years running the label.