Anyone who goes out in Berlin knows Boris Dolinski. Having grown up in Berlin-Neukölln in the 1960s and 1970s, the DJ, who goes by the simple alias Boris, has been shaping the city’s club culture for over three decades. He acquired the necessary skills not only in the German capital, but also in a New York that was still affordable and had one of the most legendary club cultures to offer: for three years, almost every weekend, Boris listened to Larry Levan at the Paradise Garage, who scaled new plateaus of hedonism with his sets.
Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Dolinski returned to Berlin, where he used the impressive collection of house and disco records he had amassed in the USA to try his hand at DJing. He started out in various bars in Schöneberg, and after passing the test, he moved on to the SO36 club in Kreuzberg. In 1980s New York, Dolinski experienced first hand how club music became a genre in its own right and how chart hits gradually disappeared from dance floors – at least from the ones he visited. He also played a major role in promoting this development in Berlin, not only as a DJ but also through his work for Mark Ernestus’ record store Hard Wax.
In the same breath with Berghain
By contrast, Dolinski is unfamiliar with the club culture emerging in post-socialist Berlin in the 1990s. That is until Ostgut is launched in 1998. In the predecessor to Berghain, he plays at the gay party Snax for the first time, which still exists today. He later regularly plays at the Panorama Bar, which opened in 2001, a floor that sees itself as a counterpoint to the hard techno that dominated at the time.
And today? Boris is definitely one of those stage names that are mentioned in the same breath as Berghain, which opened in 2004; he grew up with the club and is synonymous with it. The 62-year-old has long since stopped playing his music only in Berlin, but regularly takes it out into the world on international tours and residencies. On 22 August 2024, he came a little closer, to the HHV Store in Berlin-Friedrichshain, where he played a two-hour DJ set for us.
