We Never Sleep

About

In the shadowy corridors of Berlin's late '80s experimental milieu, We Never Sleep operated as both label and conduit for auditory and visual provocations. From 1987 to 1993, it became a nexus for interdisciplinary projects, threading together the capricious threads of sound and sight. Eternally restless, the label's format distribution was as mutable as its name suggested: ten posters, five cassettes, five magazines, and a singular postcard. This eclecticism was not mere aesthetic choice but a deliberate act of insurgency against homogeneous consumption. "More Altitude Than Attitude: IOS At 14,000 Feet" by Illusion Of Safety, a 1988 tape, stands as a meteorological event in We Never Sleep's topography. It encapsulates the label's ethos of pushing sonic boundaries into rarefied atmospheres, where sound becomes both an exploration and an ascent. Meanwhile, the "Insomnia" series, with its two volumes, offered listeners a fractal experience of compiled chaos, featuring various artists who thrived in the liminal spaces of sound. We Never Sleep's output was a sculptural act, assembling multimedia formats into ephemeral sculptures of culture. The magazines, such as "Dispatch Eleven" and "Dispatch 6," blended literary and auditory narratives, presenting a palimpsest of thought and sound. Through its network of artists like Haters and Maybe Mental, the label fostered collaborative endeavors that were both geographic and conceptual, deeply embedded in the Berlin underground. The label's artistic experimentation was not an isolated phenomenon but a vital part of Berlin’s experimental music scene. Each release was a deliberate probe into the potentialities of media, a rejection of static identity in favor of process-driven evolution. As the posters and tapes now linger as artifacts of an era, they continue to resonate within the labyrinthine corridors of memory and influence.