Berlin’s Dubplates & Mastering cutting house and studio forced to relocate after 26 years

Berlin's cutting house and studio Dubplates & Mastering is looking for a new space after being forced out of its home of 26 years by the new building owner.

Dubplates & Mastering shared on Instagram last week, Thursday, 8th December, that their Kreuzberg building had been sold and "the new owner terminated our lease after October 2023, and we are looking for a new place."

D&M mastering engineer Kassian Troyer told Resident Advisor the "bad news" "didn't happen completely unexpectedly". Troyer said the previous owners of D&M's building, a Danish real estate group, sold the property to a German investment group, which "terminated the leases of all tenants at the first possible instance."

Troyer added, "Gentrification has been quite severe in Berlin for a number of years now and particularly in our part of town, so in a way we were rather lucky that we could stay that long." D&M was founded by Basic Channel's Mark Ernestus and Moritz von Oswald in 1995 and shares the same building as renowned record shop Hard Wax, which has not publicly commented on the future of its location.

"Rebuilding this set-up with all the acoustics and moving all of the equipment etc. will require a lot of work and a lot of money," Troyer said, although the team is taking an optimistic view and "want[s] to use the move as a way to update a few things and to make a fresh start with as little interruption as possible... Hopefully we'll find something perfect soon."