One night in early December, the main floor of Berghain bubbled with the lucid chords of 130 BPM house. The set wasn't just peculiar because of its relatively mild intensity—the DJ programmed simultaneously in Panorama Bar was spinning peak-time acid techno—but because it was Marcel Dettmann behind the controls, a founding resident who has become synonymous with the club's once-archetypal monochromatic sound. He was playing live for the first time in the space (and the second time in his life), delivering muscular loops attenuated by the joyous elan of classic Chicago or Detroit dance floor melodies. Over the course of an hour, some moments felt nostalgic for earlier days of the legendary Berlin club, but Dettmann almost always settled back into groovy synth hooks punctuated by the compressed and rolling thud of an 808. At one point, I felt certain that the jacking percussion line would erupt into a volley of cowbells and full-fledged daybreak disco.

The next morning in his Kreuzberg studio, Dettmann reflected contentedly on his second venture into live performance. "I was relaxed and at the same time so energetically charged," he said, perched on a swivel chair at his spartan office desk. "Berghain is my home base, my kind of big studio; I feel every corner in the club. This one hour was really special and intense." Dettmann, who is now in his mid-40s, radiates a cheerfulness that might come across as surprising if you only know his severe Übermensch looks and close association with a certain unforgiving musical style—an image that feels somewhat new to the last few years (and even a departure from the self-seriousness of an interview he gave in 2013). He speaks fondly and frequently of his wife and children, calling himself a "family man" who only attends to music after he's walked his children, ages six and 11, to school. He lovingly pointed to the room's front door, which is plastered with a chaotic patchwork of multicoloured tape and a yellow note that reads "schdudio" (a phonetic spelling of "studio") in a ragged scrawl. "This is all from my kids,'" he laughed. "They love stickers."

In many respects, gone are the days when the DJ and producer would fervently exchange afterparty diatribes on grayscale techno. In the last ten years, he has been relegated to the old guard, and his priorities have shifted to accommodate an active touring schedule with the delights and demands of a home life. It's largely for this reason he stopped releasing his own music, save for a 2017 collaborative ambient work, Rauch, made with Sa Pa, Simon Hoffmann and Felix K. "I haven't been thinking about music the whole time," he told me. "I think about having time to spend with my kids to go play, go skateboarding, whatever, and then touring on the weekends. That's been my life." During the nadir of the pandemic, though, Dettmann—like many artists—found the unexpected opportunity to return to a neglected craft. With a newly liberated headspace unencumbered by travel and day-to-day logistics, he developed a resurgent interest in coming to the studio daily and working on the hundreds of sketches that would germinate into most recent LP, Fear Of Programming, as well as a live set.

The decade that has elapsed since his last full-length, Dettmann II on Ostgut Ton, have seen the artist blossom into a jubilant new facet of his sound. While his output has long tiptoed the knife edge of toughness and lightness, Fear of Programming's soft touches are a world away from the savage economy of songs like "Throb" or "Ductil" on his last solo release (which Will Lynch once described as "hard, austere and often a bit sinister"). Compared to the incapacitating gut punch of "Deuce," a landmark closing anthem at the time it came out in 2009, the pieces on his new collection are like amiable nudges—enough to jostle you onto the dance floor without knocking you out. Dettmann avers that this transformation wasn't intentional but intuitive, emanating forth from time spent maturing as a person and a producer, and perhaps softened by the deep satisfactions of domesticity. "I try to be as diverse as I can in my range," he said. "But I'm not thinking too much about what I want to do [musically]. I'm just going with what's happening in my body, outside, in my life."

A child of the GDR, Dettmann was raised on a diet of grungy East Berlin raves and industrial music, building an appetite for the gravelly scuzz of EBM while absorbing the classic house and techno that was just starting to be shepherded into Europe. This unique marriage of influences defined his early tastes, and his interest in collecting records prompted a move from the suburban enclave of Fürstenwalde to burgeoning post-war Berlin. He started a job at legendary record store Hard Wax, where he worked alongside T++ (Torsten Pröfrock), DJ Pete (Substance), Shed and Cassy. DJing parties outside the city with colleagues like Norman Nodge and Marcel Fengler, Dettmann got his first big break in 1999, when Berghain predecessor Ostgut opened its doors and invited him to begin a residency. His signature mix of dubby rhythmic frameworks with industrial's mechanic din became his calling card. Ostgut also eventually became one of the Berlin nightlife scene's fixed reference points as the capital's role as a musical exporter took hold.

By the late 2000s, Berghain would come to represent testosterone-fueled, black-clad uniformity, taut grooves and noisy single note hooks for which Dettmann was a ready frontman. He didn't release music until the age of 29, when he put out a two-track EP on Ostgut Ton (Quicksand / Getaway) that defined the label's restrained but tough sensibility. His following records—with fellow resident Ben Klock, and then solo—bore the same hallmarks: murky bass lines, spatial synth stabs and unbroken four-four kick lines punctuated by hats or claps designed to reverberate across Berghain's cavernous main floor. Lacking the context of the city's nightlife during this time, it's easy to see how these releases could fly under the radars of some uninitiated listeners, yet hearing them today evokes the same sense of edgy sophistication I felt when they first came out. Tracks like "Drawing," a three-note loop full of dense and dirty weight, conjure portraits of Berlin's topography at the turn of the millennium: steely, stark and unbearably cool.

Dettmann achieved this stripped-down style by using very little gear. "Back in the day, I didn't use synthesisers," he told me. "I mainly worked with drums and added effects to them. I put a delay on top, made a loop, put some sounds in reverse." He then sent one bus—multiple kick channels processed through the same chain of effects—to a handful of other buses to get what called a "crazy noisy sound." Shuffling percussive exercises like "Irritant," from his first album, are good examples of this technique in practice, offering hypnotic dynamics that oscillate between its lodestones, a minor chord and shape-shifting kicks and toms.

Fear Of Programming, by contrast, is clean and clear. Dettmann largely worked with a TR-808 and 909 for drums, which he supplemented with basslines from the SH-101 and the TB-303. Beginning with a recording of noise, he would then try to find "the right-sounding melody" before deciding if he would continue working with the sketch. "It's a very classic way of making techno," he said. "I'm really referencing my influences. Back in the day, people had a drum machine and synthesiser and maybe a pedal. That's it, they make a track. So I didn't use too many options." The result is a collection of songs that are brighter and more immediate than his previous work; they are not the end product of time spent endlessly re-routing or modulating singular elements, but off-the-cuff impressions. "x12," a bouncy house loop with few melodies, illustrates this method well, along with the following "(Batteries Not Included)," where an unchanging arpeggio elongates over a series of open hi-hats and the occasional syncopated clap.

For his live set, Dettmann used an Ableton Push and a six-channel Pioneer mixer to add filtering, delay and echo to clips triggered on stage. Sometimes he played a sequence with a piece of gear "to add texture," but his performance primarily followed the form and grammar of a DJ. He is coyly self-aware of his predilection for DJing—he said multiple times in our conversation that he's "very limited in his range as a producer" despite having written a wealth of songs over the years, and hundreds in the span of the pandemic alone (including a remix for The Matrix Resurrections). And his studio is a testament to his abiding obsession. It's filled from wall to wall with thousands of records, and otherwise almost barren save for two vintage synths—a Waldorf Blofeld and an SH-101—on a shin-height bookshelf by the door, and a DJ mixer beside the monitors on his desk.

As the seasons change in underground dance music, many of the stringent sub-categories of techno that Dettmann helped establish are slowly losing favour. Berghain's in-house label Ostgut Ton has closed its doors (hence Fear Of Programming's release on the all-purpose Dekmantel label), as has its in-house booking agency. Many artists are playing faster and harder on festival stages around the world, eschewing the steady austerity of early Dettmann for more maximalist fare. His latest full-length is anodyne, in some ways, next to the speed mongering of Gen Z techno-pop (or even the machismo of early Ostgut Ton). But it's a playful reminder of the greater arc a career can take—one that isn't defined by adherence to a label or a sound, but to versatility and metamorphosing, if unanticipated, growth.

Ryan Elliott, who contributed hammy vocals to the song "Water," wrote over email that he thinks it's Dettmann's best production yet. "It's a natural progression of him as an artist and person," he said. "I also think he's becoming more comfortable with showing the world the other sides of his artistry and influences and personality." The sentiment was echoed by Dekmantel, whose founder, Casper Tielrooij, relayed to me that the album is far from a gimmick or turn towards the mainstream. "It's warmer than his previous work," he wrote. "It's his most personal album to date."

Now having experienced a score of professional achievements, personal changes and creative turns, Dettmann sees the bigger picture at a time when others can't see the forest for the trees. "There are a lot of trends right now that aren't my cup of tea, but I've seen so many things come and go," he told me, almost Zen-like, when I asked where he fits in the current musical landscape. "It's like this with music, it's like this with fashion, it's like this with everything."

Dettmann still has a busy touring schedule; he and Klock have prevailed as Berghain's most enduring and best-known residents. He maintains his imprint, Bad Manners, for which he primarily acts as A&R, and occasionally curates nights that satisfy his taste for industrial, EBM and electro. He also says he's open to playing live again, though he doesn't see it becoming his primary performance medium. "Maybe with some lights or other stuff," he said, laughing. Mostly, he's interested in continuing to explore electronic music's most fundamental genres with an open door to the future. At the end of the day, it's the movement's roots, its sound and its pioneers, that built and sustain him. He told me he wakes up everyday thinking about the music he loves. "I like to come to the studio and just consider what I want to listen to again and again, or how I can change it," he said. "I'm here," he gestured to his seat. "What do I do now?"