M_Dokumente: Mania D., Malaria!, Matador

Written by Beate Bartel, Gudrun Gut and Bettina Koster

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Post War post punk Berlin is the stuff of legend, and sometimes the legend itself can almost exclude the true story. The catalytic band that combined New York No Wave with a Berlin sensibility were Mania D, formed by Beate Bartel, Gudrun Gut and Bettina Koster, and this book tells their own story and of the next two iconic underground bands that they became – Malaria and Matador that rewrote the rule book.

The book is stuffed full of great photos and compiled of band interviews from the members, and artwork and images of the women defining their own stylistic cool, giving the female perspective of the West Berlin music and art scene from the late 1970s onwards. All three women were key players not just in the gender frontline where they broke down the Berlin Wall of stuffy old attitudes but in the broken city’s new music and were the driving force in the idiosyncratic post punk and proto goth that appeared next.

The three bands that each delivered a brilliant electronic post punk minimalism were formed by Bartel, Köster and Gut and played concerts, released records and toured around the world in different formations from 1979 onwards, inspiring fellow female and male travellers and breaking down the boring old codes of male rock. This oral history documents their adventures and game changing presence in German and English by with Beate Bartel, Gudrun Gut and Bettina Köster delivering the oral history of the band and the city itself as well as contributions by Nick Cave, Diedrich Diederichsen, Christine Hahn, Peter Bömmels, Mark Reeder, Scumeck Sabottka, and Annett Scheffel the book is a great snapshot of another time that remains as inspirational now as it was back then.