Who Keeps Berlin Nightlife Alive?

GmbH has gathered the city’s best musicians on one compilation of throbbing fashion show music.

If there is a through line in the work of GmbH, the Berlin-based brand helmed by Benjamin Huseby and Serhat Isik, it is community. Since its inception in 2016, the label has had a self-reflexive relationship with the culture of its origin city: producing clothes inspired by the multicultural, hyper-sleek denizens of the German capital as those same folks turn to GmbH to outfit their escapades. The nexus of this exchange is often the dancefloor; indeed, the creative directing–duo are (or at least, were at one time) active participants in Berlin’s famously expansive nightlife scene, meeting many of the creative collaborators who inform their projects at the rave.

GmbH’s latest venture honors this deep, nuanced relationship with music and musical creators. is a sonic journey through the brand’s first seven years. “Seven has an almost magical resonance to it,” explains Huseby. “We wanted to mark how much our music community has influenced us and been important for GmbH.”“All our collections start with music,” he continues. “The music is the beginning of the feeling of the show and how we imagine the models walking. And then, on top of that, we kind of see the clothes that tell that story. It really comes from an emotional place. It’s often about finding that moment where you get goosebumps and tingles in your spine, or you’re moved to tears. I don’t know if everyone feels the same when they come to see our show, but we often really labor literally over the music. We work very closely with everyone we work with on finding the tone and the rhythm of it.”Released via studio LABOUR—the imprint of another Berlin-based duo who have worked with the brand for many years and provided a slew of tracks for the project—the limited edition album is not only an archive of the GmbH story (replete with a timeline of their runway shows printed as liner notes) but a veritable compendium of the crème de la crème of Berlin’s musical scene. In addition to LABOUR, featured artists include the acclaimed future-folk vocalist Lyra Pramuk, world-renowned DJ (and co-founder of techno collective Herrensauna) CEM, and the conceptual artist and electronic musician Fatima Al Qadiri. For fans of Berlin-techno, the anthology holds a lot to love: ripp’s “thuoq thump (Europe Endless Edit)” is a throbbing barn burner tailor-made for Berghain-heads, while Gabber Modus Operandi’s “Awul Awul” feels like having an entire electronic festival poured into your brain.But GmbH’s influences are eclectic, and the myriad inspirations behind their runway shows are represented: DJ and producer Nene H’s “All This For What” is a moody slice of electro offset by electronic wailings, Billy Bultheel’s “YLEM” morphs from an ambient piece into a haunting countertenor aria, Asmara’s “Deviant Eyes” marries traditional Middle Eastern music with dance floor grooves, and MJ Harper and LABOUR’s “ablution” is a frightening synth nightmare with elliptical spoken word.It’s an enrapturing listen that, in addition to a brand history, is something of a personal history for the two creative directors as everyone involved on the project is a personal friend. “At the time we showed our first collection, we were friends with a lot of the artists that are actually on the record right now,” says Isik. “We didn’t even know what kind of musicians they would become or what sort of music they would create. It’s really people that grew alongside us, and we may have shot them for a lookbook or worked on a small project, but never thought about making music together. There was friendship first before there was a collaboration, let’s say.”In the spirit of their collaborative friendship and community-first ethos, SSENSE spoke to four of the artists featured on the album—Lyra Pramuk, Nene H, CEM, and Billy Bultheel—to discuss their work and love of the brand that represents Berlin for the people and by the people.

“I started to become friends with Benjamin and Serhat in 2015 or ’16. We were raving a lot and kind of part of this little circle. Then when they started GmbH, I was part of their first campaign. It was made of friends, and we’ve been really alongside each other on each other’s journeys, and I think we support each other creatively. We share a desire for authenticity and honesty, and deep research and transgression also. “My track on the album came from their film. They initially asked to re-release a track from my first album []. I thought it would be more interesting if I were to rework one of the tracks to create an original piece of music. There’s a humbleness in that film that I find really touching. GmbH has a very considered sense of storytelling, an almost cinematic, editorial sense of storytelling. It’s like creating an equitable view of fashion where many different people can exist with their whole authentic selves as modern human beings. It ends up being very political and about power, but I think it’s also simply about allowing people to exist as they want to.”

“GmbH are part of our beautiful Brown community, and some of the people who are thriving and doing the damn job. Before us, there has been a big lack of the Brown community in both the music and the fashion scene. Now there’s an empowerment happening and we are all part of it. So between our collective experiences, we get each other. They do a lot of commenting on our culture, the messages that they’re trying to put out through their work is literally home for me. I relate with it so much. “I made my track for a GmbH performance. It is a little bit of a question, a “Why are we even bothering?” kind of thing. Because we have to put in ten times as much work as a European person would, because we start on a different set of possibilities and have to prove ourselves on a different level. I still sent them a couple of dance tracks as well, but they picked this one. Politically we are very aligned—they’ve always been very supportive of me, and they’ve always been very helpful. Anytime that I’ve been asking them, they’re there for me. I know there’s support, and I’m also supporting them.”

“I think it all started with getting to know Benjamin and Serhat at our parties. I remember them— or, specifically, Benjamin—as an avid partygoer at that time. We had our moments together on the dance floor getting to know each other throughout the early days of my nightlife genesis. Then I saw them getting together and starting this project, which was very exciting for Berlin in general. At that time, a brand that represented Berlin seemed to be missing, and they really incorporated a lot of those people we were hanging out with. It felt like a beautiful community that was sprawling in music but also in fashion. In the beginning, they used certain workwear aesthetics, and how they reinterpreted that into their collections, I thought was very cool. Now they’ve made their brand into a political statement, it’s very inspiring and very powerful, I think, and very, very daring at the same time. “For the album, I suggested a remix of one of their show pieces, ‘Talisman.’ I love the idea of a talisman as a protective object. When I listened to it, I wanted to put this piece through different states of mind, like mangle it through different feelings, or have this idea that you pull through different realms. With my music, I’m very interested in collaboration and creating together, rather than being so insulated. I think that is where I find myself having a lot in common with GmbH.”

“I met Serhat when I moved to Berlin, very randomly through a common friend or something. I think we were both really at the beginning of our careers. I actually didn’t even know that Serhat was doing GmbH. Apart from our close friendship, we always supported each other’s work and practices. Since I’m doing music and he’s doing fashion, there’s a lot of places where these things can meet.“The track on the album was composed for their runway show YLEM. It features the countertenor Steve Katona, who sang and also walked the show. It’s governed by a driving beat with an aria right in the middle that separates the first part from the second. The lyrics are from a poem by Lucretius’ ‘On the Nature of Things,’ which was the starting point for Benjamin and Serhat’s runway. The purpose of the poem is to free men from a sense of guilt and the fear of death by demonstrating that fear of the intervention of gods in this world and of punishment of the soul after death are groundless.”