20 Years of Bootshaus, Cologne’s unmatched dance music superclub

lrich ‘Ulee’ Rauschenberger has stories. His most recent is painful. A prolapsed disc, six days in hospital, nerve damage to one leg. So when DJ Mag finds him in June he’s spent most of this year away from one of Cologne’s most famous electronic music venues. That’s a difficult position when you’re one of the key figures behind it. Alongside Sascha Weber, Rauschenberger has been instrumental in transforming a former docklands edifice on the banks of the Rhine into a landmark for big-room dance styles. Founded in 2004, Bootshaus has become a juggernaut of EDM, hardstyle, dubstep, and techno, emerging in tandem with dance music’s most high-value-production era. Today the multi-room industrial address comes with L’Acoustics, SEEBURG and Funktion-One rigs, spinning ceiling turbines, flamethrowers, CO2 cannons and much more.

“It was actually three venues. One was called the Warehouse, and it was an authentic techno club, which was, in a way, crap, because of the interior and the tech specs. But a lot of big people played there,” Rauschenberger recalls. “This then changed to Dock 8, which was a bit more high-end for the time. The sound system was better, but it was definitely not cool. Maybe you want to get into a fight and get killed, that was the place to hang out. When it changed to Bootshaus it had to do almost a 180-degree switch from what it was.

“It took a little time to get an identity, and in the beginning it wasn’t there,” says Rauschenberger, explaining how it took a while for the team to slim down, become “tighter” and find the right direction. The first party to reflect a new focus on tunes was Loonyland, from which he and Weber began to build a reputation. “I was part of the team then and I’m still here because of a decision to take the musical route. The only party that reflected this [at first] was Loonyland, and from that the owner decided to do many nights based on music.”