Let's go to the rendezvous: The Hacker in Fridas Pier, Stuttgart, 10.17.2026

The Hacker @ Fridas Pier, 17.10.26
Foto: Gustavo Gomez.

Some nights begin long before the music does. This one had been taking shape for months, in conversations, in anticipation, in the thought of finally hearing The Hacker together. And just when I had resigned myself to attending alone, my partner told me he would come. In spite of the heavy weight of his commitments, he had made room for this: a night we had imagined and would now get to inhabit. Before a single beat had sounded, something had already fallen into place—what is ‘magic’ if not this? Being moved by that something in the music, the arts, the crea(c)tivities...

Getting to Fridas Pier proved surprisingly difficult due the closing of a bridge over the Neckar river and the heavy rain. By the time we finally arrived at long last, craving to be present had acquired the restless urgency of almost missing something precious. We caught the last stretch of the preceding DJ’s set (Sibel and Raphael Dincsoy), enough to begin dancing, to let the journey loosen its grip on our bodies.

Then, almost before we realised it, Michel Amato was there. The Hacker (Our top DJ set 2025). The atmosphere at the ship was electrifying. We were dancing at once, for there is not much more one can do when finding oneself in front of such a seminal pioneer of the electroclash and EBM.

Whatever words we might have found for the occasion would have had to wait. There was something exhilarating about that proximity: hearing the music with its maker just in front of us, watching the distance between a familiar recording and a living moment collapse.

For two hours I danced beside the person who had first introduced me to The Hacker. A detail that ran through my whole body. Music someone you love—your beloved one—has brought into your life carries a particular intimacy that frankly is equivalent to a trip on ecstasy.

And then came the opening notes of 1982.

We looked at each other. Recognition took only an instant; the pleasure of it seemed to open out endlessly. Our bodies were swept up like delicate feathers caught in a current. I had waited months to be there, and now I could scarcely hold on to a single moment before the next one moved through me, like a track after another in a high energy mix.

Perhaps that is part of the ache of a unique night like this. Even at its most intense, one knows they cannot keep it. One can only dance deeper into it, give it the full weight of their body, mind, heart, and soul, and trust that something will remain.

Raising a glass to all the moments when the music shall be carrying us again.

Words: Maria Nefeli Giannia / @catsoup__