HOLDING THE ROOM

When Tham thinks back to 2015, Berlin does not appear to him as mythology. It does not arrive filtered through global headlines or retrospective nostalgia. It comes back as humidity in small rooms, as plywood booths and stacked pallets, as faces he would see again three nights later somewhere else in the city. From inside the booth, the city did not feel like a cultural monument. It felt close enough to touch. The distance between DJ and dancer was minimal, sometimes almost nonexistent, and that proximity shaped his understanding of what techno could be.

Tham entered that environment before his project carried significant weight or expectation. He was playing shorter sets, organising small events, teaching himself how to produce by listening obsessively and experimenting without a defined blueprint. Berlin at that time still felt materially unfinished, with empty buildings, improvised venues, and a sense that culture was being assembled in real time rather than preserved. He even lived for a period in an abandoned hospital, a detail that reads now like an allegory but then felt like continuity with the city’s rawness. Nothing was polished. Everything was in motion.

“When I think back to 2015, Berlin from inside the booth didn’t feel mythic at all, but a burst of creative energy. From the outside it maybe looked exclusive or even rough, but from within it actually felt very open. It felt so easy. You would go out and constantly meet the same people across different clubs. It felt less like attending events and more like being part of a community. Many people around me weren’t only guests, they were DJs, promoters, artists or organisers in some way and everybody supported each other, which created a strong feeling of movement and connection around us.”

The defining feature of that period was not aesthetic but social density. The people filling those rooms were rarely passive spectators; they were DJs, graphic designers, promoters, photographers, organisers of early-morning after-hours, all operating within the same ecosystem. Energy moved horizontally. You could play a set, step down from the booth, and become indistinguishable from the crowd again. Participation was fluid. There was ambition, certainly, but it did not yet feel industrial.

The moment when participation became structured arrived at Griessmuehle. The booth in the main room was low and exposed, offering no theatrical separation from the floor. The crowd was filled with peers, friends, and collaborators whose presence intensified the pressure. Tham remembers feeling a different kind of nervousness, one rooted not in spectacle but in accountability. And then he felt the room react.

When he tightened the tension, bodies held still. When he released it, the movement softened or expanded. The response was immediate and visible, not as applause but as a collective adjustment. In that exchange, DJing shifted from expression to architecture. His decisions no longer existed in isolation; they altered the structural dynamics of the room itself. That awareness did not inflate him. It made the booth heavier.

“The moment it changed for me happened at Griessmuehle. The booth in the big room was basically a construction made from wooden pallets, almost on floor level. I remember being extremely nervous because most people in the room were not strangers but friends and other artists. What stayed with me wasn’t the size of the crowd but the feeling that the room reacted to my decisions in real time. If I raised the tension, they stayed. If I released it, they moved differently. For the first time I understood that DJing wasn’t only participation anymore. My choices could hold a space together, let it fall apart or let it go absolutely feral.”

The weight grew gradually as his profile expanded. What had once been a communal experiment began to professionalise at speed. Visibility became measurable, income became central, and comparison became constant. The same spaces that had felt like laboratories started operating within broader economic frameworks. Tham does not frame this as corruption, but as transformation. The shift from culture to industry changes the emotional temperature of participation.

He identifies the most profound shift not in the sound, but in the intention with which people arrive at a dancefloor. Earlier nights functioned as open systems. You entered without fully knowing what you would encounter, and that uncertainty was part of the attraction. The DJ guided but did not dominate. The room discovered itself in real time.

“When I was going out, I usually didn’t really know what to expect. I would only roughly check the line-up or timetable, so I would give myself the chance to experience something unexpected. It was supposed to feel like an adventure, a little journey without a bigger plan. I remember seeing this gang of sporty dressed people dancing in the front left of the main floor. Instead of looking at me, they formed more of a circle and danced with each other with a big smile. That actually gave me goosebumps seeing people happily raving with each other while I played the soundtrack.”

Today, in many contexts, the dancefloor feels preconfigured. People arrive knowing the timetable, the headline act, and the energy they expect. Attention converges toward the booth, and reaction travels vertically rather than circulating among dancers. Tham remembers playing Tieso’s “Traffic” and watching a group of shaved-head ravers form a circle facing each other instead of the DJ. Their intensity belonged to the circle, not the stage. That memory remains instructive because it represents a dancefloor generating its own electricity.

This distinction shapes how he approaches his sets now. In rooms that feel social, he allows grooves to unfold gradually, trusting the crowd’s patience and curiosity. He stretches transitions, layers textures, and resists the impulse to accelerate prematurely. In more event-oriented contexts, pacing tends to compress almost automatically. The pressure to deliver impact sooner is embedded in the environment.

He resists simplistic labels like underground and commercial. The same venue can feel radically different depending on its curation and audience. RSO during one event may operate as a communal experiment; during another, it can feel like a high-production showcase. Size is not the decisive factor. One of the most underground atmospheres he experienced occurred at Khidi in Tbilisi, beneath a bridge in a cavernous concrete room filled with thousands of dancers during a 12-hour closing set that erased temporal boundaries.

Duration changes behaviour. When time stretches, urgency dissolves. People stop checking their phones and surrender to repetition. When programming tightens and sets shorten, intensity fragments into digestible segments. In that fragmentation, something subtle shifts from immersion toward consumption.

Parallel to these spatial and temporal changes is the transformation of the artist’s role itself. Being Tham in 2026 requires navigating an ecosystem where presence is quantified and personality is packaged. The responsibilities extend far beyond track selection. Filming, editing, speaking to camera, maintaining algorithmic relevance have become integrated into the job description.

“There is a growing tension for me in music between being a DJ and being a content creator. Over the past year, I’ve realised that being an artist now means learning a whole new set of skills. I’ve had to film and edit videos, work on photos and think about how I present myself. Social media keeps getting more important. Okay, you are a good DJ, but now you also need to brand yourself and stay ‘true’ and ‘underground’ at the same time. It’s exhausting.”

Tham speaks about the tension between being a DJ and being a content creator without cynicism but with honesty. Social media operates as one of the primary growth engines in contemporary electronic music. He understands this intellectually. Emotionally, it generates pressure. There are periods when he retreats deliberately into the studio, avoiding posting for days at a time as a way of recalibrating his priorities.

The presence of cameras inside the booth introduces a second audience. There is the room in front of him, reacting in real time, and the imagined viewer who will encounter the set later through a screen. He insists that his track selection remains grounded in the floor’s response, yet bodily awareness inevitably shifts. You stand differently when you know you are being filmed. You become conscious of your posture, your gestures, your visibility.

This awareness intersects with broader aesthetic changes in hard techno. Tracks have become shorter, often structured around pronounced breakdowns and high-impact drops. Tham appreciates a well-executed build-up, the charged silence before sub-bass returns, the way tension can thicken the air. But when every track is engineered as a climax, contrast disappears. Without space between peaks, intensity flattens.

“Techno used to be functional music, built from loops with a minimum of highlights. It was made to last for hours, not to get applause every few minutes. I love a big drop when it’s done well, but if everything is a peak, it becomes numbing. Intensity isn’t about speed or aggression. A room feels intense when people stop thinking about themselves, when time doesn’t matter and the music sucks you in.”

For him, intensity is measured by dissolution rather than volume. He often recalls a closing set by Drumcell and Audio Injection at Berghain at 125 BPM as one of the most intense experiences he has witnessed. The power lay not in aggression but in sustained hypnosis. Intensity emerged because the room stopped performing for itself. Time loosened its grip.

No-photo policies make this difference visible. In rooms where filming is restricted, dancers turn inward, facing each other or the speakers. Movement flows continuously without interruption from glowing screens. The DJ feels embedded rather than observed. In heavily filmed environments, phones rise predictably, and the outside world re-enters the dancefloor through digital mediation.

Tham recognises that some of his most significant bookings are recorded and widely circulated. He prepares accordingly, often bringing new material to those nights. Yet he prefers testing more experimental ideas in smaller spaces where risk feels less exposed. Innovation requires room for failure. Cameras narrow that space.

Risk also defines his relationship to trends. The techno landscape now moves quickly, with micro-aesthetics appearing and fading within months. Tham admits that he briefly adapted his sound in response to rising trends and the visibility they promised. The outcome was paradoxical. Online engagement increased, but internally he felt misaligned.

Short-term adaptation erodes continuity.

“I had a period when I saw other DJs adapting to new trends and it made me insecure. I tried to adapt too, but I only got more disconnected from my artistic self, and it was noticeable to listeners as well. Posts were more viral, but something essential was missing. A label recently told me about my next EP, ‘It is not the most trendy music right now, but it is really good music.’ That meant a lot.”

A recent label described his forthcoming EP as not particularly trendy but undeniably strong, a comment he received as affirmation. Authenticity, in his understanding, does not mean resisting change but deepening alignment. His evolution has unfolded through refinement of texture, harmonic richness and tension-release structures rather than radical reinvention.

Structural questions matter as much as sonic ones. Rising ticket prices in Berlin have altered who can participate regularly in club culture. Students facing high rent and living costs cannot absorb frequent entry fees without consequence. Spontaneity diminishes. Smaller collectives struggle to survive within escalating economic frameworks. Projects like ULTRASOZIAL emerged from conversations about protecting accessibility.

“Imagine being a student paying high rent and grocery costs, and then clubbing stops being a possible escape if you can’t afford 25 or 30 euros just to get in every weekend. I couldn’t have done that in my early twenties. ULTRASOZIAL was created to protect participation. Techno will only stay socially relevant if it stays affordable. Otherwise it becomes entertainment for elites rather than a shared culture.”

Affordability shapes atmosphere. When entry is accessible, the night can unfold without pressure to justify expense. When it is costly, expectation sharpens and consumption logic intensifies. For Tham, techno retains social relevance only if participation remains possible. Otherwise, it risks becoming a curated product for a narrowing demographic.

Looking forward, Tham avoids speaking of arrival. Expansion into new territories and larger rooms is natural and welcomed. Visibility does not inherently contradict integrity. What matters is preservation of foundation. The relationship to the room must remain primary.

He wants to continue playing for those physically present rather than for an algorithmic archive. He wants grooves to breathe when the room allows it, even if that choice is less conducive to viral clips. He wants to take risks that might unfold slowly, trusting that intensity does not require constant spectacle. The objective is not to become a finished brand.

It is to keep holding the room.

“What needs to remain intact is the relationship to the room. I want to play for the people in front of me, not for the camera. Letting a groove breathe when the space allows it, taking risks even if something takes time to work. Visibility can grow, that’s amazing. But the foundation has to stay the same: honesty, risk, accessibility and connection.”

Andreas Thamsen became Tham within Berlin’s basements, but the essential task remains unchanged. To stand behind the booth and shape the architecture of a space through sound, aware of the pressures surrounding it yet grounded in the immediacy of bodies moving together in the dark.