A crowd watches the Berlin-based D.J. collective perform at the pyramids of Giza earlier this year.

Notes from Underground

Keinemusik’s catchy brand of house music has attracted everyone from bankers to groupies. But is the German D.J. trio anything more than a status symbol?

By Elena Clavarino

Last month, on a Saturday at midnight, a crowd of twentysomethings gathered at the Knockdown Center, in Queens. They wore bandannas and boxy, oversize sunglasses as they waited for Adam Port, a member of the Berlin-based electronic trio Keinemusik, to take the stage. But when the D.J. stepped behind the decks and started to play, something unusual happened: instead of dancing, the crowd pushed and shoved their way toward the D.J. booth, as if the musician in front of them were not a dorky-looking German but rather a Beatle in 1964.

Or a member of the Grateful Dead, as one New York–based editor says. “Going to their gigs, all you see is a sea of people taking videos.... People will literally kill each other for the best visual. It’s like groupies for the Deadheads.”