Set of the Day

Podcast Platform & Label

Seven interesting techno and house documentaries

The archive of the World Wide Web is packed with video documentaries that tell enlightening stories about the German house and techno scene. We have collected five interesting records for you in this feature. With it: Personal moments, world hits that are played for the first time, drug use, liberal sex, safe spaces and artist biographies.

20 Years Of Compact – The Pop Documentary

Everyone has ever come across the Cologne Empire Compact. It all began with the record store Delirium, founded in 1993 by Wolfgang Voigt, Jürgen Paape, Reinhard Voigt and Michael Mayer. In order to offer a platform to other labels and artists, a distribution was added in 1998. In this course Kompakt was launched. In the years that followed, the institution shaped the “Sound of Cologne”, grew to become an internationally recognized label, and still stands for a forward-looking philosophy.

At the moment Kompakt is not only a record shop, label, distributor and organizer, but also an artist agency. The own label was supplemented by numerous sub-labels such as Kompakt Extra, K2 and KX. With a global distribution structure of digital and physical publications Kompakt takes over the distribution of labels like Dial, Ellum, Magazine, Mule, Ostgut Ton, Systematic, Just This and Aeon.

In 2013, Kompakt celebrated its 20th anniversary. For this event, historical video and photo material was collected. The about 30-minute documentary shows above all the history of origin and the impressive career of the label, as well as images of the celebrations in the anniversary year. Due to the rather sporadic use of eyewitness comments, the recordings speak for themselves.