Hansa Studios — Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Berlin

Hansa Studios at Köthener Straße 38 in Berlin — already legendary as the site of Bowie's Berlin trilogy and Iggy Pop's Lust for Life — was also where Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds recorded some of their most significant early work. Cave had settled in West Berlin in the early 1980s after the Birthday Party relocated there from London, drawn by the city's cheap rents, creative freedom, and the particular energy of a walled city existing in defiance of history. The Bad Seeds' Berlin recordings — made in Hansa's cavernous Meistersaal — have a room sound and a weight that reflects the building's strange grandeur.

From the Firstborn Is Dead (1985) and Kicking Against the Pricks (1986) were among the albums with Berlin connections, recorded as Cave assembled the Bad Seeds from the ruins of the Birthday Party and various other collaborators. Mick Harvey's arrangements gave the band's sound a structure that allowed Cave's increasingly literary songs room to breathe. The Meistersaal at Hansa — a former Nazi-era ballroom that Bowie had used because it felt 'like playing in the Gefängnis [prison]' — gave recordings a natural reverb and atmosphere.

Hansa Studios still operates as a recording facility. The Meistersaal has been restored and is available for sessions and events. It is located near Potsdamer Platz, which was the no-man's-land between East and West Berlin during the Wall years — the studio's windows looked directly onto the death strip, a fact that haunted all the recordings made there.