We've been involved in nightlife and DJing for so long and we were fed up with some of the conventional events taking place at the time in Berlin, so it came naturally for us to start our own thing at some point. We felt the urge to create a more intimate setting for our friends, and this kept growing organically, without a certain aim to go beyond the city we lived in.

We don’t think that anyone in the scene could predict the severity of how much the pandemic would disrupt it and put many people’s existence on the line. So it may seem financially risky to initiate such an effort, but our wish to subsequently add more layers to the Herrensauna experience was always our goal.
Creating a music label that defines and also pushes the boundaries of what we sonically represent manifested very early on. In fact, we already had released three 10-inch dub cuts around 2016, which were limited to fifty pressings that were only sold to our guests at the events. It quite fit the DIY ethos that we still to this day pursue.

The fact is that Berlin has offered the spaces and freedom for the scene to flourish while in so many cities, politicians and the police were giving promoters and clubs a much harder time. The chaotic times of reunification during the early ‘90s gave people the autonomy to establish a club landscape that is now inseparable from the city. Nowadays though, we can’t help but be rightfully worried about its extinction driven by greed and control forced onto us by our own government.

Many of us consider raves as tools to express [ourselves] freely. It’s where we find solidarity and acceptance, and while one can’t expect that from any rave out there, we want to work on making this a standard as far as we are involved, at least.

For us, that’s a lifestyle we never questioned. The rave is only one of the many ways to express an alternative way to live. The inspiring thing about Berlin is that it’s a place where counterculture is still practised. Being queer is a performative act that often involves appropriating the symbols and styles of the heteronormative to decontextualise them and ridicule them. The name Herrensauna was always a tongue-in-cheek reference for us that was never meant to be taken too seriously.

Electronic music has always evolved and restructured itself, so it is evident that such an impactful event would have profound consequences which we currently still can’t precisely predict. We obviously would wish to go back to how we first got into this music and environment, but so far, our optimism has constantly been curbed.

We wanted to initiate the label with a compilation series with artists who had performed for us already and eventually grew close to us. Hector has been one of our residents since the early days, so he obviously had to be on the first one. Similar to Sugar, who started his Fast Forward events in Denmark around the same time as us and quickly turned out to be a great producer who is now on the forefront of the new school trance infused techno craze. We also wanted to showcase special artist collaborations that blew us away with their rare live performances, such as Peder Mannefelt & Pär Grindvik as Aasthma, and Solid Blake & Ctrls as Historical Repeater.

What has always been important for us is to relate to the people we work with on more than just a business level, and it’s that work ethic we would like to continue throughout the development of the label. In this sense, you could say we are maintaining the level of intimacy you experience at the events as far as it comes to sound.

We’ve always challenged mainstream perceptions of the fields we operate in, which lead to the development of a sound that words are not necessarily the best media to describe. You can see the EP as the prologue of our acoustic encyclopedia.

Summing up our present position after five years of existence, we can only hope to continue doing what we do best and aim to provide an interdisciplinary platform for artists to ignite new dialogues, connect, practice and philosophy of club culture, electronic music and fine arts.

Even before the pandemic, our focus shifted towards showcasing in countries and scenes outside of the usual party circuit to support their local queer scenes. The hospitality and appreciation we received have been quite overwhelming, and to see that we were able to create such free and loving atmospheres, which we are not even used to in the West, humbled us a lot.