Liam Cagney

Liam Cagney’s writing has been described by the Irish Times as ‘stunningly strange and powerful’. His fiction has been shortlisted for the White Review Short Story Prize, anthologised in The Other Irish Tradition (Dalkey Archive Press) and published in journals like Winter Papers, The Moth and gorse. His essays have been published in TOLKA, gorse, Numéro and PVA and broadcast on Irish national radio. Liam’s criticism regularly appears in places like the Guardian, the Spectator, the TLS, the Telegraph, DJ Mag and Gramophone.

Liam is the recipient of an Arts Council of Ireland Literature Bursary and a City University of London doctoral studentship. As a musicologist, he is the author of two books: the monograph Gérard Grisey and Spectral Music: Composition in the Information Age (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and the edited volume The Oxford Handbook of Spectral Music (Oxford University Press, 2024). Liam teaches at BIMM University and lives in Berlin.

BERGHAIN NIGHTS: A Journey Through Techno and Berlin Club Culture will be published by Reaktion Books in 2025.

Berghain Nights is a personal account of Berlin’s "legendary" club scene and the music, people and places which make it unique. It will also include interviews with leading techno DJs and artists. From kinky parties in the labyrinthine KitKat Club to the gloom of Tresor’s basement, from the verdant garden of Buttons to the psychedelic lab of Cocktail d’Amore, Berghain Nights not only captures the excitement of Berlin club culture; it asks how techno in a club context allows people to strip away layers of inherited hang-ups to access a realer self.