Station 17

Station 17 originated as a musical collective drawn from residents of a Hamburg welfare facility dedicated to people with mental disabilities. Its significance lies in bridging participants with and without disabilities through music, earning respect both inside the special-needs community and across the underground music scene. Members have collaborated with an array of prominent artists, among them figures from Krautrock outfits such as Can and Neu! as well as electronic producers including Thomas Fehlmann and Pole. Over time the collective’s sound shifted from the abstract experiments of its self-titled 1990 debut through techno and electro phases documented on the 2001 album Hitparade and the 2006 release Mikroprofessor, before arriving at accessible, politically charged indie pop with 2014’s Alles für Alle.

The project began in the late ’80s when social worker Kai Boysen organized spontaneous jam sessions, convinced of music’s therapeutic worth. By 1989 the Phonogram label agreed to fund a recording on the stipulation that all income would return to the Station 17 studio. With only modest assistance from professionals such as Holger Czukay of Can and F.M. Einheit of Einstürzende Neubauten, six center residents captured extended improvised sessions that became the 1990 debut album. Following the 1993 release Genau So, a theater ensemble emerged from the initiative, leading to television appearances, festival performances, and the documentary film Station 17: Der Film.

The 1997 album Scheibe marked a turn toward electronic pop that referenced both the ’70s pioneers Kraftwerk and the contemporaneous wave of listening techno. The theater component persisted, touring a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream throughout Germany. Thomas Fehlmann, long associated with Palais Schaumburg and Sun Electric, produced the group’s fourth album, Bravo, issued in 1999. He also facilitated the recruitment of remixers for the 2001 collection Hitparade, which gathered contributions from Pole, To Rococo Rot, the Modernist, and Steve Bug.

In 2006 Boysen established the 17rec. label, and Station 17 issued Mikroprofessor, its most strictly electronic work to that point. Goldstein Variationen followed in 2008, featuring guests ranging from Michael Rother of Neu! to indie electronic artists Schneider TM and Barbara Morgenstern; a companion remix album appeared in 2011. That same year saw the release of Fieber, which preceded the polished, urgent pop record Alles für Alle in 2014. Both albums foregrounded the collective’s commitment to inclusion and its conviction that every participant, irrespective of disability, possesses full creative legitimacy. Bureau B issued the collaboration-intensive full-length Blick in 2018, enlisting Faust, Andreas Dorau, and Ulrich Schnauss among others.