Chapter

01

In Residence

Robert Johnson, Offenbach

Celebrating 12 of the world's best dance floors

In 2016, RA's In Residence series is celebrating club culture by throwing a month of parties at 12 of the world's best clubs. Clubs are the beating heart of dance music, and these are the venues that keep their local scenes thriving. Week-in, week-out, they open their doors to play the music we love.

Offenbach's Robert Johnson is our home for May, and we've programmed a special series of back-to-back DJ sets. The 250-capacity club is widely regarded as one of Europe's top spots for house and techno, thanks to a killer soundsystem and excellent booking policy. Robert Johnson opened in 1999, and has been central to the Frankfurt area's respected dance music scene ever since.

As we settle in for a month at each of the clubs we'll be running an accompanying feature that, through a combination of different media, will hopefully provide a lasting document of these iconic spaces.

May 07 RA In Residence, Robert Johnson, Offenbach
feat. The Black Madonna VS Mike Servito

May 14 RA In Residence, Robert Johnson, Offenbach
feat. Ata VS Gerd Janson

May 21 RA In Residence, Robert Johnson, Offenbach
feat. Motor City Drum Ensemble VS Jeremy Underground

May 28 RA In Residence, Robert Johnson, Offenbach
feat. Prosumer VS Lexx

Chapter

02

Key info

Robert Johnson at a glance

01
Address
Nordring 131, 63067 Offenbach Am Main, Germany
02
Club opened
1999
03
Soundsystem
Martin Audio
04
Dance floors
1
05
Capacity
250
06
Resident DJs
Ata, Aziesch, Benedikt Frey, Benjamin Milz, Brontosaurus Junior Club, Cedric Dekowski, Chris Wood, Einzelkind, Felix Reifenberg, Gerd Janson, Lauer, Kilian Paterson, Manuel Schatz, Martyné, Max Best, Max Vaahs, Meat, Oliver Hafenbauer, Orson Wells, Ramone, Roman Flügel, Sebastian Kahrs, TCB, Thilo Dietrich, Thomas Hammann, Vincent Feit

Chapter

03

History

The simple club

At Robert Johnson, simplicity is key. One of house and techno's most important clubs, this 250-capacity venue has largely built a reputation based on its intimacy and its sound. Robert Johnson's powerful Martin Audio system, housed in the club's slick minimalist interior, is widely considered to be one of the best in the world. Opened in 1999, Robert Johnson is central to a respected Frankfurt-area house and techno scene. Tucked away in Offenbach, six km east of Frankfurt's city centre, it's the latest in a long line of hugely influential Frankfurt clubs that includes shuttered venues like Omen and Dorian Gray. Robert Johnson is the last surviving club that connects the Frankfurt area to its rich electronic music heritage of the '90s, during which time the city was one of house and techno's global hotspots.

When Robert Johnson was opened by local DJs Ata and Sebastian Kahrs, Frankfurt house and techno was in the midst of a golden era. Homegrown labels like Playhouse, Force Inc. Music Works and Perlon were exploring an increasingly weird and wonderful realm of dance music, built for DJs and clubbers who liked their music strange. Many of the figures involved in the Frankfurt scene have been associated with Robert Johnson since the beginning. One of them is Roman Flügel, who, at the time, helped run Playhouse with Ata and Heiko MSO. "I remember Ata talking about the new place in the Playhouse office," Flügel says. "There was an opportunity because a professor from a design and art school in Offenbach called him to say there was an empty room in the building Robert Johnson is currently in. Ata had a very clear idea about how the club should look. Back then he even spoke about the idea of not having any branding. He actually wanted to take the liquor out of the original bottles and put them in bottles with no logos."

"I started playing from the first week on," Flügel says. "The biggest problem was getting people out of Frankfurt and over to Offenbach. In the beginning it wasn't that easy to convince people to leave Frankfurt. It had a rough start. It took longer than a year until people realised how interesting the lineups were and how nice the space was."

Several generations of DJs and clubbers have since passed through Robert Johnson's doors, but the sense of close-knit community is still there. Like Flügel, many of the DJs connected to the club from the beginning—Ricardo Villalobos, Zip, Gerd Janson—still play at the club every few months. Just as important, though, is Robert Johnson's commitment to up-and-coming local collectives. Today, many of its key parties are thrown by DJs from the Frankfurt area who've been visiting the club since they were teenagers. They've been entrusted with continuing a proud tradition of Frankfurt dance music, which, for more than a decade, has revolved around a club that opened when they were still in high school.

"As a club you have to promote the local scene, which includes young talent," says Oliver Hafenbauer, Robert Johnson's music director. "It gives them a chance to grow—like a good football club. Frankfurt is a small city but has a lot of good young artists. I can't support all of them, so I've picked a couple of artists, groups and labels to do things here at Robert Johnson. We can help them get more attention by having them play. The rest is up to them."

Three main crews are grouped around a few different parties. There's the collective surrounding events HardWorkSoftDrink, Sensual and Traffic, whose taste in music covers lean house, techno and electro, booking DJs like Onur Özer, Praslea and Francesco Del Garda. Then there's Stay and Back 2 New, house and disco parties that book DJs like Prosumer and Space Dimension Controller. Finally, Presence and Thunder In Paradise focus on leftfield house and techno, with Pearson Sound and Anthony Naples among their recent guests.

The map of all the different crews might sound complicated, but they all have one thing in common: a deep and long-standing connection to Robert Johnson. The club goes hand-in-hand with their identity as artists. During the week, they go there to test out tracks they've made. They play and socialise there on the weekends. And even as their reputation grows outside of Frankfurt, the club remains key. "I've been going there for ten years now," says Max Vaahs, a DJ who's part of the HardWorkSoftDrink collective. "It was my music school, and I met a lot of my current friends there. We would go there almost every Friday. I think I went five or six weekends in a row once."

Orson Wells is the best-known producer in the new crop of residents. He's 24, and has released a string of melodic house singles on labels like Innervisions, 777 Recordings and Live At Robert Johnson, Robert Johnson's in-house label. He, too, benefitted from the club's welcoming policy to new local acts, having first played at the club during a party for Tactile Records, a local vinyl shop. (You can also see parties for Freebase Records, Frankfurt's best-known record store, dotted throughout Robert Johnson's programme.) "The first time I went there as a clubber they didn't let me in," he laughs. "I think the first two or three times, actually. Once I was able to get in, though, I started to go pretty regularly. Robert Johnson has a very relaxed atmosphere and is very simple. There are some dark corners you can stand in where no one will bother you.

"I really respect that the club is always giving new, young people a chance to play," he continues. "There are so many great producers and DJs that you don't hear so much about outside of Frankfurt. For such a small city, there's a huge amount of people that really know their stuff. This means you can get the best music from local DJs."

The trust that Robert Johnson places in newcomers is rare among venues of a similar stature. Most clubs at Robert Johnson's level almost exclusively book big, established names without much consideration given to less experienced DJs and promoters. That Robert Johnson is able to find so much space for local DJs makes it unique. This type of trust is at the core of other areas of the club, too. "We have to play as a team," says Killa Schuetze, a long-time regular who now works on the door. "It's about trust. Everyone plays their part—the bouncers, us girls on the door, the runners, the DJs, the people in the back office. We rely on each other."

The secret to Robert Johnson's success is simple. When great sound and a no-frills interior is matched with smart bookings, the results are bound to be great.

"There's no kind of backstage there, which means everyone is involved," says Oliver Hualde, an Offenbach native who describes Robert Johnson as his "living room." As the agent for the Romanian trio of Rhadoo, Raresh and Petre Inspirescu, he's visited his fair share of clubs. "There's a super nice exchange between artists and the crowd."

Perhaps nothing reflects Robert Johnson's charming simplicity more than the way Schuetze sumarises the signs of a successful night. "A good night is when everyone is dancing," she says. "And when they come out the door and say, 'Goodbye,' they're smiling. That's the sign of a beautiful night."

Chapter

04

Residents

...in pictures

Chapter

05

Character profile

Max Best

Artist liaison

"I've been doing the artist-hosting job for about three years now," says Max Best. "The main thing about hosting at Robert Johnson is to make the artists feel as at home as possible. I usually pick them up at the airport or train station, and then depending on how much time we have, go for coffee, record shopping or something like that. Sometimes the artists just want to go straight to the hotel. Since I've been doing it for a few years already, I know a lot of the DJs so I know what they might want to do once they arrive. But if I'm hosting someone who's new to the club, I pretty quickly get a feeling for how they want to spend their day or evening."

Best is originally from Saarbrücken, a city next to the French border in the south-west of Germany. He moved to Frankfurt in 2012 following an 18-month stint in Berlin. Other than the Robert Johnson posters that used to hang in his bedroom, Best had no connection to Frankfurt before moving there. In a strange twist of fate, he ended up sharing a flat with the designer behind those posters, Michael Satter.

"Most DJs are really calm when they come here," he says. "There haven't been many incidents or problems over the last couple of years. For me, it's more like, 'How drunk did I get with DJ X?' I do have some tricks to get drunk DJs to start playing, though. I might tell them some jokes while slightly pushing them into the booth before they realise where they're going. The funnier part is how to get them out of the DJ booth, but that's a bit more tricky.

"I always want to hear about how other clubs do things. I think it's pretty different at some places: you might get a taxi from the airport, have a meal in your hotel room, then arrive at the club and then someone brings you to the booth. Then you play your set and you're off again. That's not the case at Robert Johnson."

Chapter

06

Soundsystem profile

Martin Audio

"These days I'm already quite satisfied when I put a record on the turntable, fade it in and there's no feedback," laughs Max Vaahs. As a Robert Johnson resident, he's used to good sound. His profile is growing, though, and he's playing outside of Frankfurt increasingly often, wich means he's coming into contact with more and more soundsystems. "Sometimes I compare other soundsystems to Robert Johnson, which I shouldn't do," Vaahs says. "We're really spoilt with that place."

A high-end Martin Audio soundsystem attracts plenty of audio geeks, particularly when it comes to loopy house and techno. Dorian Paic, a regular guest at Robert Johnson and boss of Raum...musik, knows more about this soundsystem than most, and he has a few pointers should you happen to find yourself behind the decks there. "You should watch that it's always around 105-106 dB," he says. "You can easily see it because there's a huge meter in front of you. But when the place is super jam-packed you might need to go a bit higher."

"Some DJs who play there—who are used to playing in a very energetic way—start their sets really energetically," Paic says. "After a while, they find out it's not necessary to bang it out. It really helps to play deeper things—tracks with lots of sub-bass, which you wouldn't notice on some other soundsystems. It takes time to find this out, because you need to play there a few times. For me now, I try to stick to a certain sound in terms of the bass and things, because I know exactly how it will sound there. I think it can be a bit difficult when you're not used to it, though. You have to change the way you build your set compared to other places—it's very intense and powerful."

But some DJs know how to push the Robert Johnson soundsystem to it limits. "I've heard Ricardo Villalobos play much louder than 105 dB when the club was full," says Vaahs. "The sound became a bit distorted, which was quite interesting. It sounded super good, but rough. I stick to 105 dB."

- 6 x WF 3 Mid/Hi Box
- 4 x BLS 218 Subwoofer
- 2 x LE 1200 Wedge, DJ Monitor
- 2 x BLF 12, Delay
- DSP: XTA DP 548
- Crest Pro Series

Chapter

07

Mixes

The sound of Robert Johnson

Max Vaahs and Aziesch pay tribute to the space

This mix is a recording from when I recently played at Robert Johnson before Ricardo Villalobos. I basically searched for records I thought would fit a night with him. I thought I would leave anything too edgy at home as he would already have plenty of this. The Robert Johnson DJ booth is super important as it's as close to the crowd as it can possibly be. You always feel an instant reaction to what you do. Oli [Hafenbauer] does an amazing job with giving young DJs the opportunity to play in such surroundings. I was 20 when I played at Robert Johnson for the first time. There's already been so much said about this club, so I'm not sure what else to say. It's perfect in every way.

I was honoured to be asked to do this mix, even though I'm quite busy with university, regular work and DJing right now. The first day I had some time on my hands I went through my record collection and selected some old and some new tracks and started spinning. The next day I went to my friend Chris Beisswenger, AKA TCB, digitalised everything and bounced the set.

I would like to say that I'm really thankful for being given the opportunity to share my mix with you guys, and for the support I've received from my friends and the Robert Johnson squad throughout the years.

Still haven't got your Robert Johnson fix? You can visit its club profile here, and there's more information on the series via the dedicated In Residence page.