It’s the early 1990s, and Anja Schneider, a young German fan of techno music, is seeking out the legendary Tresor nightclub while visiting Berlin. Her life in a small town near Cologne regularly involves attending electronic music parties, however her appetite to explore techno further, partly motivates her journey to Germany’s capital. Schneider duly heads for the Tresor club once she is in Berlin, entering what she believes is the venue, and heading upstairs. There she joins a bustling dancefloor, and hears house, electronica, and hip hop, but not the hard techno beat that she is expecting and desiring. After three to four hours, Schneider suspects accordingly that this venue isn’t the legendary Tresor club about which she has heard so much. When she then politely asks someone else in the club whether she has the right location, he responds that she doesn’t, and taking her by the hand, leads her down a small staircase. Arriving in Tresor’s dark, underground headquarters, Schneider here finds the heart of the Berlin techno sound, which will soon inspire her to not only move here, but also to eventually produce tracks of her own, such as "Belize".

It’s 1994, and Takaaki Itoh, a young Japanese dj with a passion for various forms of electronic music, is beginning to organise his own techno parties in and around the city of Morioka, in northern Japan. Like many people in Japan in the early 1990s, Itoh’s interest in techno has been influenced by artists from the United States and Europe, who tour the country and increasingly release their records there. The growing popularity of techno in Japan is apt, given that so much of the music is made with, and inspired by, devices housing Japanese electronics, in particular those manufactured by the Roland corporation. In the coming years, Itoh’s engagements with techno will expand beyond honouring this music through the parties he organises, to producing his own, soon to be iconic tracks, such as "Needle".

It’s 1992, and Rolf Ellmar and Markus Löffel have been producing tracks together for about a year in Frankfurt, Germany. The pair work under the artist title, Jam & Spoon, which combines the adapted name that each member has taken on for the collaboration, those names being Jam El Mar and Mark Spoon respectively. Both artists are established in the electronic music industry, El Mar having been part of the formative trance act, Dance 2 Trance, and Spoon being an established dj. Given their reputations, they receive an offer to remix the track, “The Age of Love”, that is already somewhat known in the European club circuit. This track, released two years prior by a project also called The Age of Love, reaches far greater levels of popularity however, after being reinterpreted by Jam & Spoon over two days of production, before influencing trance and other electronic music producers for decades to come.

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It’s February 1989, a few months before the Berlin wall falls. Matthias Roeingh, a dj otherwise known as Dr Motte, is standing on the street outside a Berlin nightclub at three in the morning. He, his girlfriend, and a friend, are discussing how underground parties in England are regularly being stopped by the police there, who in doing so also remove the sound system. Motte and his associates are amused that the response to this from English partygoers is often to dance outside in the streets, with ghetto blasters producing the soundtrack. So enthused is Motte by this story, that he raises the possibility of holding a street party in Berlin, in an explosion of colour and sound that might animate the city. As Motte and others develop this idea into a reality in the coming weeks and months, the event becomes known as the Love Parade. By 1992, he and Sven Röhrig, otherwise known as 3 Phase, have produced the track that will serve as the party's unofficial anthem, "Der Klang der Familie".

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