Dave Tinning pays a visit to Kastanienallee’s Melting Point records…

When Melting Point opened on Mitte’s Neue Schönhauser Straße in 1994, it was the only store—of any type, really—in an area which is now jam-packed with designer boutiques and chain stores. By 2005, the store was feeling the squeeze of increasing rents and decided to move to the (then) more affordable Kastanienallee.

The new location had, and still has, its advantages, such as providing a healthy passing trade and a wide pavement perfect for hanging out on—an important consideration for the store’s owner mitch (small ‘m’ requested), a tall, quietly spoken man whose intense passion for music is rivalled only by his zeal for Barcelona and Freiburg football clubs.

Over its sixteen-year history, Melting Point has built up a reputation for selling quality electronic music. Starting life as a house music hub, the shop quickly expanded to incorporate second-hand disco, boogie and funk, and subsequently became a legendary store among Berlin’s vinyl-digging cognoscenti.

mitch arrived in Berlin in 1992, drawn by the explosion of electronic dance music and club culture in the capital. He and two friends conceived the store as an extension of their love for clubbing and DJing, aiming simultaneously to fill the gap for quality house music in a town obsessed with the tauter sound of techno. The store quickly grew popular with those DJs wanting to push the slower, funkier sounds at trailblazing Berlin clubs like Planet E-Werk, WMF and Tresor.

House music remains Melting Point’s main focus, with a room dedicated to European labels like Philpot, Running Back and Rush Hour, as well as imprints like Underground Quality from the New York, and UK’s Rekkids. Techno isn’t completely absent though; a small section caters for the deeper, Detroit-influenced sounds of labels such as Delsin and Dial.