1300 Meters Above the Dancefloor

Someone decided it would be a good idea to put WhoMadeWho and The Teenagers inside a Bavarian mountain hut at 1,300 meters altitude, and honestly, fair enough. The venue was Drehmöser 9 near Garmisch-Partenkirchen—the kind of place you’d normally associate with schnapps and accordion music—repurposed for one night as an improbable outpost of European electro.

WhoMadeWho, the Danish trio, had spent years threading krautrock grooves through disco architecture, and their records rewarded the kind of focused listening you can actually do when you’re snowed in somewhere. The Teenagers, the French synthpop duo, were built for exactly this kind of boutique absurdity—cheap and catchy and slightly smug in a way that worked better live than on the page. Getting either of them up a mountain to play for 250 people felt like a premise from a late-night conversation that somehow survived to production.

There’s something to be said for the small, weird show in the wrong location. The altitude helps.