Electric Beat Crew

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The Electric Beat Crew was a German hip-hop duo that consisted of Olaf Kretschmann (born November 27, 1969 ) alias Master K. and Marco Birkner (born August 28, 1969) alias MAC . They released the first and only English-language hip-hop record in the GDR .

Career

Kretschmann has been interested in hip-hop since he saw the film Wild Style on " Westfernsehen " in 1983 . At the age of 16 he was already producing his first mixes on tapes and experimenting with English-language rape . The first joint pieces were produced with a two-track tape recorder from Kretschmann's parents and a keyboard that Birkner's grandfather had ordered semi-legally in West Berlin.

After the radio presenter Lutz Schramm had played some pieces by Kretschmann in his program Vibrations on the radio station DT64 , the project became known to a larger audience. At the end of 1987, Kretschmann founded the Electric Beat Crew together with Marco Birkner in Schulzendorf , Brandenburg . Kretschmann was responsible for the raps and Birkner played the keyboard.

In the spring of 1988, the band's first “public” performance took place in a small private club on East Berlin's Französische Strasse in front of just 13 listeners, although the GDR had not yet had the required license to play.

During an appearance on the East German youth television program Klik in the late autumn of 1988, the texts still had to be translated into German in order for permission to appear. After the gig, the Amiga record label asked for four tracks to be released. However, the entire music production should not incur any costs. Kretschmann and Birkner therefore produced the pieces on their own at home, rapping in the closet instead of in a recording studio.

At the beginning of 1989 Amiga released the EP Electric Beat Crew , which was only pressed in 10,000 copies and sold out very quickly. The publication broke a taboo in the GDR as the first East German hip-hop record . The piece Here we come contained on the EP developed into one of the disco hits of 1989. The piece was particularly popular with East German DJs because the "record entertainers", as DJs were called in the GDR , due to the so-called 60/40 -Rule of the AWA were obliged to play at least 60% music from the GDR or the other Comecon states. Here we come was essentially based on samples from Newcleus ' Jam On It and Kid Frost's Terminator as well as raps that Kretschmann borrowed from Grandmaster Flash's hit The Message .

After appearances on television programs such as Elf 99 , Formula One and the ZDF hit parade , Amiga also released the debut album The Electric Beat Crew with twelve pieces of music in 1990 .

At the end of 1990, the duo had their last public appearance as an Electric Beat Crew and then retired into private life.

In 1996 the album was reissued as a CD. On the compilation (b) eastside , published in 1998, a new piece by the group appeared with Fear (Time Of Darkness) . The following year the Electric Beat Crew released another new track, It's Time, unofficially as a free download.

The 2006 documentary Here we come by director Nico Raschick about breakdancing in the GDR took up the title of the most famous piece by the Electric Beat Crew. In addition, with Son of Beat Street (Live) a piece of the band was also used for the soundtrack of the film.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Very young pioneers: Hip-Hop in the GDR . tagesspiegel.de; Retrieved May 7, 2011
  2. ↑ Electric Beat Crew in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  3. ↑ herewecome.de - Official website of the film; Retrieved May 9, 2011