Another dose of whirring rhythms and dark drones courtesy of Stefan Schneider and Sven Kacirek. This time around they have introduced the beguiling tones of Swedish singer Sofia Jernberg on three pieces, taking their music to a new level.Since their debut release, they have toured extensively with the likes of John McEntire (Tortoise, The Sea and Cake).A fascination with repetitive rhythm is the common thread which runs through the musical development of both musicians: listen to Stefan Schneider in his other projects, the bands Kreidler and To Rococo Rot and his albums with Hans-Joachim Roedelius. Further evidence can be heard on Kacirek's solo albums, in particular on his much-lauded "Kenya Sessions". 

Music from the "Rauhnächte" - DIE WILDE JAGD go hunting in the thicket of Neo-Krautrock, Electronica and Synthpop.

Every year anew, during the Rauhnächte (those harsh nights between Christmas and Twelfth Day), the Wild Hunt (Die Wilde Jagd) rides across the country: raucous, jeering hunters from the nether world, whose path it is better not to cross. This is an ancient Germanic myth, which, in slightly varied form, is known in many parts of Europe and whose name Ralf Beck and Sebastian Lee Philipp have aptly chosen for their new project. The two first met in 2006 in Düsseldorf's Salon des Amateurs , a meeting place for new and established experimental musicians and artists, also known as Germany's "postpunk Hacienda". It seems no coincidence that Düsseldorf is the duo's founding city: their music is full of subtle references to local acts, such as Kraftwerk, NEU!, DAF, Liaisons Dangereuses, Pyrolator, the Krupps and Propaganda. Since their first meeting, Beck and Philipp regularly come together during the time of the Rauhnächte to record in Beck's well-equipped studio. Using the numerous analog keyboards and recording devices assembled there, and combining them with a diverse range of percussion instruments, they create their own "hunting music", which at times sounds unsettling, like swampland or a dark forest, but also urgent and pressing, like incandescent lasers or a hypnotic dance. Their soundscape is marked by repetitive guitar loops, electronic percussion, drums and synthesizers. Booming tom-toms and medieval-sounding flutes herald the start of the hunt. Whispering, reciting voices conjure up the spirits of the woods, while synthetic sounds, melodies and noises flit about before they are re-captured, structured and grounded by crystalline beats and pulsating bass lines.

About the musicians: Ralf Beck is a musician and producer from Düsseldorf. He has released several albums as part of the duo Nalin & Kane, as well as under the name Unit 4. He collects old synthesizers and effect pedals and has already worked together with Karl Bartos. In his studio Uhrwald Orange he has recorded music by Propaganda, Kreidler, Black Devil Disco and many more.

Sebastian Lee Philipp is part of the Berlin-based electro-wave duo Noblesse Oblige and composes music for theatre and radio plays. Between 2001 and 2006 he lived in London where he ran the club night "Caligula" and performed as a DJ.

TRACK LISTING

1 Wah Wah Wallenstein (7:46)
2 Austerlitz (7:24)
3 Torpedovogel (3:59)
4 Durch Dunkle Tannen (4:56)
5 Der Elektrische Reiter (6:45)
6 Morgenrot (6:27)
7 Jagd Auf Den Hirsch (7:25)
8 Der Meister (4:18)

The legendary Harald Grosskopf continues his long-standing relationship with Hamburg’s Bureau B with 'Glitches Brew', a vital new LP and the latest stage in his ongoing dialogue with electronic possibility. The titular nod to Miles Davis’ masterpiece Bitches Brew reflects Grosskopf’s sense of humour, while also hinting at the album’s underlying theme: the productive friction between man and machine.

TRACK LISTING

1. Leisure Life
2. Spheroids
3. Flow
4. Stranger Strings
5. Panta Rei
6. LiLaLu
7. Kalter Lärm

In 2026, Bureau B reissues 'Nothing', the 2001 album by Ata Tak’s Frank Fenstermacher and Kurt Dahlke (Pyrolator) aka A Certain Frank, newly remastered and available on vinyl for the first time. Marking its 25th anniversary, the record stands as a quietly distinctive chapter in Düsseldorf’s post-Kraut electronic lineage – understated, atmospheric, and strikingly timeless.

A Certain Frank emerged in the mid-1990s from Düsseldorf’s uniquely fertile musical environment. Kurt Dahlke (Pyrolator) and Frank Fenstermacher were already central figures in the city’s post-war pop modernism: pioneers of the so-called Neue Deutsche Welle, members of Der Plan and Fehlfarben, and co-founders of the influential Ata Tak label. Since its founding in 1980, Ata Tak had championed an alternative German aesthetic that combined conceptual thinking with pop sensibility, releasing early work by artists such as DAF, Andreas Dorau, S.Y.P.H., Holger Hiller and later Oval. By the late 1990s, German electronic music had become largely synonymous with techno and club culture. Against this backdrop, A Certain Frank proposed a different trajectory – not oppositional, but deliberately understated. Rather than pursuing dancefloor functionality or revivalist gestures, Dahlke and Fenstermacher turned toward reduction, atmosphere, and subtle reconstruction. Drawing on easy listening and the once so-called “exotica,” they treated these references as malleable material, reshaping them into something restrained yet contemporary. Following 'No End of No' (1996) and 'Nobody? No!' (1998), Nothing completed an informal trilogy shaped by denial and refinement. Conceived from the outset as a fully collaborative work, the album moved beyond sample-based construction toward a largely self-generated sound. Basslines, drum grooves, and synthesizer textures were played live, joined by the voices of Mai Lingani, Karin Knipphals, and Fenstermacher himself – integrated as tonal elements within a fluid sonic fabric rather than traditional lead vocals. Dutch bassist Pascal Plantinga and Austrian drummer Mike Daliot contributed significantly to the record’s light-footed, groove-oriented energy. Originally released at the threshold of the new millennium, Nothing occupies a distinct space between jazz-inflected electronica, cinematic ambience, digital dub, and understated traces of drum & bass and lounge. Neither functional club music nor retro exercise, it embodies a quietly confident strain of Düsseldorf modernism – reflective, precise, and resistant to spectacle.

With this anniversary edition, Bureau B once again highlights a strand of German electronic music that exists between eras and categories. Carefully remastered and now pressed on vinyl for the first time, Nothing returns not as a relic, but as a work whose understated clarity continues to resonate – a testament to Bureau B’s ongoing dedication to preserving and recontextualising Germany’s experimental pop heritage.

TRACK LISTING

1. Nothing
2. Peace Again
3. Donde Vas
4. Secret Love
5. We Belong To Someone
6. Without You
7. In The Sky
8. Man-Day
9. Blue & White

Richard Pinhas’ Heldon remains a crucial outlier in the 1970s European underground, fusing the more radical edges of progressive rock with early synthesizer experimentation in ways that still feel ahead of their time. Released in 1976, 'Agneta Nilsson' captures a moment of consolidation, as extended pieces evolve through cycles of tension, drift, and release. The album’s internal logic feels both rigorous and open-ended, balancing restraint with sudden surges of intensity. Essential material, sharpened for collectors and new listeners alike.

'Agneta Nilsson' opens with a mind-paralyzing track that proves stillness can have a pulse. 'Perspective I' spends ten minutes poring through tectonic layers of heavy sound, piling everything so thick that the song becomes like quicksand for your brain. It’s one of the most daunting works in the Heldon catalog, made all the more impressive by how simple it is. It’s just sounds put together and turned up. It’s the vital alchemy of Pinhas’s wizardry, deployed with maximum force.

As on other early Heldon albums, the rest of 'Agneta Nilsson' is diverse in a nearly contrarian way. Each track refuses to mimic its predecessor in a way that feels rebellious, like a child running away from home. This is true despite the fact that three of the four pieces are actually chapters of 'Perspective', partners in a thematic whole. “Each one is a different point of view on the same field,” explains Pinhas. “Different parts, different arrangements, but with a full concept in place.” It’s not easy to divine that concept in these pieces, but their sibling nature has a subconscious effect.

The album-closing 'Perspective IV' is one of Pinhas’ most unabashedly proto-prog guitar-hero epics, boosted by a technical upgrade. “This was the first album where I had enough money to rent one or two days in a real studio to do the drumming,” says Pinhas. “After that we had real budgets for studio time. That all changed with and after Agneta Nilsson — that was a good turn."

Pinhas parlayed Heldon’s change of direction into three more adventurous albums in the 70s, and simultaneously spurred himself toward a solo career that continues to prod and probe the sonic universe today, over 40 years since he began. It would be wrong to say this album was the big bang of this singular career; the seeds of were planted years before, and every work Pinhas has been involved with sprouts more sounds and ideas that can grow into their own branches. But 'Agneta Nilsson' is one of the most convincing pieces of evidence that Pinhas in incapable of sitting still.

TRACK LISTING

1. Perspective I (Ou Comment Procéde Le Nihilisme Actif)
2. Perspective II
3. Perspective III (Baader-Meinhof Blues)
4. Intermède & Bassong
5. Perspective IV

With 'Un Rêve Sans Conséquence Spéciale', released in 1976, Heldon extend their vocabulary into darker and more concentrated territory. The interplay of synthesizer and guitar is sharpened here, shaped into structures that feel both deliberate and unstable, balancing precision with a latent volatility. The album unfolds with a heightened sense of pressure, its pieces moving between propulsion and fragmentation without settling into fixed form. A compelling document of Heldon at their most focused and intense.

Heldon’s Richard Pinhas has never been shy of pinpointing his influences while, at the same time, making music that is noticeably distinct from any of his designated sources. He has, for instance, made it clear that a significant font of inspiration was Robert Fripp’s guitar style and melding of rock music with cutting-edge electronics (especially in collaboration with Brian Eno). Indeed, Heldon’s fifth album — 1976’s 'Un Rêve Sans Conséquence Spéciale' — was named after a live bootleg of a King Crimson concert.

Pinhas first met Fripp in 1974. The pair became friends, and have remained in contact ever since. Pinhas was even offered a deal with E.G. Records, the company that oversaw King Crimson alongside other successful groups like Roxy Music and ELP. “That was a dream,” says Pinhas. “But when you are 22, you are in a hurry. They asked me to wait one or two years before joining the team. I couldn’t wait two years! At 22, two years is too much.”

Instead, Pinhas forged another path. He launched his own label, Disjuncta, which he later sold to purchase the Moog synthesiser that would make a huge difference to Heldon’s sound. Musical benchmarks aside, Heldon’s output also drew from radical science fiction (Philip K. Dick, Norman Spinrad, etc.) as well as philosophy. The sleeve of the fifth LP features a quote from Pierre Klossowski’s Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle (1969). The book had profound impact on thinkers such as Jean-François Lyotard, who was Pinhas’ PhD supervisor at the Sorbonne, and Gilles Deleuze, another mentor and friend to Pinhas right up until the end of Deleuze’s life.

Pinhas compares his readiness to signpost his influences to citations in academic publications: “In the field of philosophy at university, it’s a normal thing to do.” Besides, Heldon never represented a mere facsimile of Pinhas’ musical touchstones: King Crimson, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, or Frank Zappa. “I don’t want to be them, of course. I don’t feel there is a real relationship between King Crimson’s music and mine. I think Crimson is much better!” Some listeners would beg to differ.

TRACK LISTING

1. Marie Virginie C.
2. Elephanta
3. MVC II
4. Toward The Red Line 

On their ninth album for Bureau B, the internationally renowned Berlin/Düsseldorf-based outfit Kreidler focus on atmospheric soundscapes – of course maintaining their signature rhythmic groove, which on 'Schemes' is simply more buoyant and less insistent. 'Schemes' is also characterised by the more pronounced use of nature/outdoor recordings. The track featuring Leo Garcia as a guest vocalist is based on just such a field recording.

With 'Schemes', Kreidler step into a more ambient space of possibilities, crafting an album that feels both carefully considered and delightfully unguarded.

From the first moments, 'Schemes' signals a shift in tactics. Where other Kreidler recordings often move with propellent insistence, here motion feels lighter on its feet. Rhythms skip rather than stride. Synth lines meander, overlap, or gently collide. The music seems less determined to arrive somewhere; more curious to discover new places along the way.

The title hints at design, but the album delights in unravelling rigidity. If a scheme is a plan, here it is a starting point rather than a set of orders. Structures are sketched lightly, leaving an ample margin for chance. The effect is playful without being restless. There is a subtle humour running through 'Schemes'. Less in the form of overt gestures, but in the mischief of its arrangements.

The trio of Thomas Klein (percussion, drums, found sounds), Alexander Paulick (fretless bass guitar) and Andreas Reihse (synthesisers, electronics, field recordings) set up in Berlin for the sessions – initially at Morphine Raum on the sideline of public performances. But the bulk of the recording took place more privately, at andereBaustelle. Here the group made good use of various instruments and objects discovered onsite – most notably a gigantic cuboid steel oil tank. 'Schemes' reflects this spontaneity, with the impulses developed primarily in situ.

Much of the album’s quality comes from the band’s embrace of ambient space. The result is music that feels generous rather than dense. Yet the ambient character of 'Schemes' does not imply stasis. There is movement everywhere, but it is subtle and multidirectional. Even at its most stoic moments, it never feels solemn. 'Schemes' reflects intentionality that is embedded in the fluidity of the music. It is heard in the balance of timbres and in the way disparate elements coexist. Precision remains, but here it is relaxed.

The plurality of the title is suggesting multiple approaches and various possibilities coexisting. Each composition proposes its own internal logic, its own small world. Some tracks hover in near-weightlessness, built from slowly shifting textures and delicate fragments. Others introduce a more defined rhythmic undercurrent, though even here the emphasis is on bounce rather than drive. The result is a record that shimmers with curiosity, balancing intention with improvisation, and finding joy in the disciplines of folding and unfolding.

The songs on 'Schemes' are like beads hanging on a string. Each one distinct, yet connected. Swinging in a warm breeze. Catching the light from different angles. And so we begin: 'Beads', with a funky stabby synth drives the song, which nonetheless maintains a hazy ambivalence. „Klove Twin“ begins with tiny bells emanating some foggy substance intoxicating the band into a mid tempo shuffle with some brash brush strokes. Scrap Metal might be the genre. 'Snowflakes' are enjoying a summer dance, layers of synth melodies intertwined. No one melts here. 'Bellboy'. Something is slightly off with this ace. The suit suits them, indeed, but I’ve heard rumours. 'The distance between you' is a dreamy love song of sorts, slightly melancholic, a longing going round in a ritornello like the protagonists do in L'Année dernière à Marienbad. 'Looming Large' is simply looming large, like a caterpillar on an upward spiral, based on a rhythmic sequence the other instruments care about only occasionally. 'Marble Upset' plays with our memory, activating recollections of present past, a slowed down rave, faint images, glimpses and gasps. 'Via de me', big city, nocturnal lights, an ambient pop take. It may be really quiet, still there are better things to do than to sleep. Leading to 'Fenix': Leo Garcia just happened to be in Berlin for a concert. The old friend from Buenos Aires built his euphoric vocal melody impromptu over a noisy urban field recording. The bird rising up out of the ashes, fighting the miseries, towards the light. It is a protest song of the unusual kind.The home stretch is 'Tar', where some cicadas continue in a similar spirit, tiny animals having a night on the tiles. The smell of tar in the sun, soft and deep black, in sharp contrast with the background of gently curved hills, pastel-coloured, asking what it takes to live peacefully together.

The cover artwork by Luzie Meyer mirrors this spirit: A dialogue of sorts, on a string, a psychoanalytic dance. Ideas clash, yet disputes are solved amicably.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: I love a bit of Kriedler, and their latest continues the German outfit's domination of modern outsider kosmische music, with repeated phrases blooming into hidden melodies and nigh-concrete counterpoint. Schemes seems to partially eschew the more melodic of their pieces for more industrial momentum and rattling, crackling unease. A characteristically deep and texturally diverse outing.

TRACK LISTING

1. Beads
2. Klove Twin
3. Snowflakes
4. Bellboy
5. The Distance Between You
6. Looming Large
7. Marble Upset
8. Via Da Me
9. Fenix [with Leo Garcia]
10. Tar

With 'Grumpy Pieces', Düsseldorf-based musician Stefan Schwander, aka Harmonious Thelonious, returns with an album that gathers many of the elements that have defined the project over the years – while simultaneously pushing them apart. The record feels like a tightening of earlier ideas: interlocking melodies, hypnotic patterns, a sustained focus on rhythm and texture, paired with a sound that is rougher, drier and more immediate than before.

TRACK LISTING

1. And You May Find Yourself
2. Tzing
3. Flip The Script (Dispair)
4. Tropical + Electronical
5. Beacon
6. Made In Italy
7. Les Belles Vacances
8. Dissolving

From 1971 to 1977, Peter Baumann was a member of the legendary Berlin band TANGERINE DREAM. The group were pioneers of the so called Berliner Schule (Berlin School) which had such a profound impact on electronic music. He produced a number of momentous albums at his Paragon Studio (by the likes of Conrad Schnitzler, Cluster, Hans-Joachim Roedelius) and also enjoyed success as a solo artist. The influence of Tangerine Dream can clearly be heard on “Romance 76”, although the arrangements are comparatively minimalist—a state of affairs for which David Bowie can be held partially responsible (see below).

With Peter Baumann on board, Tangerine Dream grew into one of the most influential bands in electronic Krautrock, sited somewhere between experimental electronica and progressive rock. Open to new ideas, Baumann’s positive aura and eagerness to experiment galvanized the band’s music almost instantaneously. His catchy melodies, rich in positivity, propelled Tangerine Dream into the charts.

After five years of chart appearances and extensive touring through Europe and North America, punctuated by several albums—including “Atem”, John Peel’s nominated import album of 1973—Baumann called time on his solo career with “Romance 76”. “We found some time between tours and record productions, so Edgar recorded a solo disc and helped Christoph and me to develop our own music too. ‘Romance 76’ resulted from the urge to create new music. I felt we had begun repeating ourselves in Tangerine Dream and I was keen to discover new things, to carry on experimenting. Improvisation had been common to us all, but on your own it isn’t quite so simple. I started to work on my own pieces.” This shift in focus led him to leave Tangerine Dream towards the end of 1977. He and a friend set up the Paragon Studio in Berlin, which would earn a prominent place in music production history, but that’s another story.

Still a member of the band in 1976, Baumann rented a hall in the ufaFabrik, Berlin to record “Romance 76”. Sonic similarities to Tangerine Dream can be explained by the fact that the group used the same space for gig rehearsals, giving Baumann access to their instruments. The distinctive sound of a modular synthesizer system christened “The Big One” can be detected on “Romance 76”, for example, along with a Mellotron.

Some tracks on the album, such as “Romance” and “Phase By Phase”, are relatively minimalist in character. This airiness lends the unusual synth sounds space to unfold in all their glory. A state of affairs for which David Bowie is partially responsible, as Baumann recalls: “We were in Berlin and met him for dinner, then he would call in while I was recording the album, listening carefully to what I was working on. I explained to him what still needed to be done, but Bowie suggested: ‘Leave it as it is, there’s enough there already.’” At which point Baumann decided to look at the tracks in question as finished.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Bicentennial Presentation
A2 Romance
A3 Phase By Phase

B1 Meadow Of Infinity Part I
B2 The Glass Bridge
B3 Meadow Of Infinity Part II

'Control' was created during a phase of Schnitzler's work in which his friendship with Peter Baumann (formerly of Tangerine Dream) allowed him to try out and use new electronic sound generators and peripheral technologies. He never used these innovations merely for their own sake, but always put them at the service of his artistic flair for experimentation. His signature style is clearly recognizable on 'Control'. The album seems to be a kind of compilation of different musical approaches. Tracks 5 and 9, for example, are classic Schnitzler: sparkling cascades of electronic sound particles, interspersed with longer and shorter glissandi, constant movement in all directions. But then there are tracks 1, 8, 11, and 12 – and here I can only speculate – where it seems as if Schnitzler wanted to combine a few elements of traditional harmony with his own sound aesthetic in these pieces. And why not? He was completely undaunted by new things. Most important was that the music remained within the framework of his strict overall concept. There is no spacing between the tracks on the original LP, released in 1981 by the DYS label in the US. The A and B sides are originally titled simply ‘Control A’ and ‘Control B’, and the thirteen pieces are strung together without interruption. Strange.

About half of the tracks on 'Control' are apparently faded in and/or out. This could indicate that Schnitzler either drew on “overlong” archive material to extract passages suitable for the album, or that he shortened the newly recorded music. Speculation is pointless – we can no longer ask Schnitzler. In any case, he opted for relatively short pieces averaging three minutes in length, some even shorter, others a little longer. All in all, this creates the impression of sketches. Sketches with sharply defined contours, however: as with almost all his albums, Schnitzler gives us listeners clear information about where he currently resides in his musical universe. For Schnitzler, too, the journey was its own reward, and there were many stops “on the way to the complete Schnitzler”; he never lingered at any of them for long. His artistic restlessness and curiosity were his lifeblood. And to stay with the metaphor, 'Control' is a strong dose of that elixir.

TRACK LISTING

1. Control 1
2. Control 2
3. Control 3
4. Control 4
5. Control 5
6. Control 6
7. Control 7
8. Control 8
9. Control 9
10. Control 10
11. Control 11
12. Control 12

'Convex' is one of a series of LPs that Schnitzler released himself in the 1980s. Some of the covers of these LPs contain useful information such as track titles, instruments, date of origin, et cetera. Sometimes the LPs also come with DIN A4 or other format sheets printed with text and artwork. 'Convex', however, is one of Schnitzler's LPs that convey virtually no visible information. Only the title is printed in large letters on the cover of 'Convex', and in tiny letters that are easy to overlook, it says: “Cover Conrad und Richard.” The labels on the original LP indicate that one side is called ‘Convex’ and the other 'Concav'. That's all the information there is.

On 'Convex', as on many of his other albums, Schnitzler definitely used a sample-and-hold generator (S/H generator), a device that converts sounds stored as desired into random sequences of tones. This is important to know because this album is also non-keyboard music, i.e., it was not played ‘by hand’; instead, the experimental setup is: synthesizer – sequencer – S/H generator. Whether Schnitzler could foresee the respective results for each piece or whether he let himself be surprised is uncertain. But I believe he let himself be surprised and decided in each case whether to accept the result or not. Because one of the cornerstones of his artistic concept is controlled chance. However, it is not this method that makes 'Convex' so special, but the slow tempo of the music. With one exception, the other pieces are almost sluggishly slow. Schnitzler certainly never had ambient music in mind, as his music is defined throughout by transparency and dynamic movement. However, 'Convex' does meet some of the criteria defined by Eric Satie for “musique d'ameublement” and also the concept of “ambient” further developed by Brian Eno: its calmness and apparent uniformity – both of which require no attention and yet are a pleasant addition to the atmosphere of a room. A prerequisite for this, however, is a discreet volume level. Schnitzler would probably turn in his grave if he knew that I was placing his music in the vicinity of ambient. And of course it's not ambient. With 'Convex', Schnitzler remains consistently true to himself. The only unusual thing is that he experiments with “slowness” here. Schnitzler has carefully faded out some pieces, even though they are suitable for filling an entire LP side. If I were to stick with my thought experiment, this would be another characteristic of ambient music.

'Convex' raises questions that cannot be answered with certainty. But that is precisely why Schnitzler's music remains so interesting. No one has the authority to interpret it; every listener can and should let their imagination run wild, because Schnitzler never gave any listening instructions. And it's impossible to misunderstand Schnitzler: either you understand him or you don't. There is no in-between.

TRACK LISTING

1. Convex 1
2. Convex 2
3. Convex 3
4. Convex 4
5. Convex 5
6. Convex 6
7. Convex 7
8. Convex 8 

Camouflage are one of the few German bands to have been making music successfully at home and abroad for the last couple of decades. 'The Great Commandment' (1987) and 'Love Is A Shield' (1989) were actually worldwide hits. After four albums, Camouflage felt it was time to experiment. This phase reached its zenith with the album 'Spice Crackers' in 1995 – the most daring, most interesting work they ever released. Electropop tracks sit side by side with hypnotic, repetitive, spheric tracks. Now, 30 years later, 'Spice Crackers' will finally be released on vinyl for the first time!

Heiko Maile, Camouflage founder member and producer of 'Spice Crackers', has this to say about working on the album: "On our previous productions, we started out with just a few songs, worked on these as demos and then went to an external studio to completely re-record them with a producer. Having the idea to produce an album in our own studio, thus giving us more time to experiment, basically wanting to do the whole thing differently, was the beginning of an interminable recording session. Once we got going, surrounded by synthesizers, drum machines, guitars, microphones, a mammoth analogue mixing desk and a few pieces of recording equipment, we simply taped everything that came into our heads. Only a few of these tracks – I’m deliberately refraining from calling them songs – ended up on the original CD. It was a very formative and inspiring time for us in terms of album production."

TRACK LISTING

1. Spice Crackers
2. X-Ray
3. Kraft
4. Electronic Music
5. Bad News
6. Days Run Wild
7. A Place In China (Heaven's Not)
8. Zwischenspiel 2
9. Funky Service (What Do You Want To Drink?)
10. Back To Heaven
11. Je Suis Le Dieu
12. Ronda's Trigger
13. Travelling Without Moving
14. Spacetrain

'So Far’, so far out. By 1972, Faust had already dismantled the concept of a rock album. With their self-titled debut, they tore through convention with tape edits, abstract structures, and a scathing collage of cultural detritus. Its successor, recorded just six months later, was not a retreat from that radicalism, but its evolution. Instead of challenging form through outright fragmentation, the band now disguised their subversion in structures that almost, almost, resemble songs. But don’t be fooled. This is still Faust: unpredictable, subversive, and unbound by convention.

The circumstances surrounding the album’s creation were no less unconventional than those of their debut. Faust were still ensconced in the converted schoolhouse in Wümme, Lower Saxony, and its improvised studio - a riddle of cabling, tape and custom electronics. By this point, the band had grown more cohesive as a unit but remained steadfastly anti-commercial, despite the pleas of their label.

'It’s A Rainy Day Sunshine Girl' sets the tone, sixteen bars of primal percussion exploding into a relentless rhythmic mantra, somewhere between a ritual and a rave-up. Sosna’s deadpan vocals and skeletal guitar, Diermaier’s thudding pulse, and Peron’s circular bassline create a mood both hypnotic and unsettling, on a track which feels as if it was beamed in from both the Velvet Underground’s New York loft and the outer edges of the Zodiak Free Arts Lab. The song’s descent into a howling maelstrom of Irmler’s droning organ and Wüsthoff’s screaming sax captures Faust’s unique balance of chaos and clarity. Through its taut two and a half minutes of folky finger picking and icy electronics, 'On the Way to Abamäe' oscillates between pastoral prettiness and gloomy paranoia while 'No Harm' sets a new standard for tone shift. Muted horns and swaying syncopation, gradually joined by bass and organ, build into a pensive wave of orchestral heft, cresting into a bruised and bluesy vision of tender Germanicana, which is quickly cast aside in favour all out freak-funk. It’s the kind of acid overload which would leave today’s microdosers a quivering wreck, but in the hands of Faust finds the sweet-spot of spectral joy, where mind expanding magic never quite takes you to the point of madness.

The madness soon comes, taking the form of the overlapped, unhinged and tape-chewed slide guitar which introduces the irresistible psych groove of the title track. Driven by the syncopated repetition of a jazzy rhythm section, punctuated by staccato horns, and topped with all kinds of swirling, swooning electronics and vox, 'So Far' is arguably the most catchy moment in the Faust Oeuvre. 'Mamie Is Blue' pivots sharply into proto-industrial terrain, prefiguring post-punk’s darkest urges by nearly a decade, while 'I’ve Got My Car and My TV' is pure Dada, with radio static, voice fragments, and machine-like repetition coalescing into a media-age mantra of alienation. Brief and baffling interludes 'Picnic On A Frozen River' and 'Me Lack Space' dial up the disorientation before 'Put On Your Socks' closes out the set with a foray into swing and ragtime, refracted through that particularly Faustian prism.

Taken as a whole, ‘So Far’ is less a linear progression from Faust’s debut than a sideways leap into a parallel sonic dimension. Where the first album exploded rock from the inside out, ‘So Far’ rearranges the wreckage into strange new shapes. There’s a sly humour here too, buried under the fuzz and tape edits, a knowing wink that these sonic detours aren’t acts of nihilism, but of creation. Faust were building something. What, exactly, remains elusive, and still utterly intoxicating.

TRACK LISTING

1. It's A Rainy Day Sunshine Girl
2. On The Way To Abamäe
3. No Harm
4. So Far
5. Mamie Is Blue
6. I've Got My Car And MyTV
7. Picnic On A Frozen River
8. Me Lack Space…
9. …In The Spirit

By 1973, Faust had already rewired the circuits of German rock. Their first two albums had exploded traditional song form with a joyous disregard for continuity, coherence, or commercial appeal. 'The Faust Tapes', released earlier that year for 49p as a surreal sampler of their cut-and-paste genius, had earned them a curious British audience and the indulgence of Virgin Records. For a brief moment, it seemed as though Faust might finally play the game, just a little. What emerged instead was 'Faust IV', their most paradoxical work: accessible enough to lure listeners in, complex enough to keep them guessing.

For the first time, the band left the rustic headquarters in Wümme, a former schoolhouse in rural Lower Saxony, stuffed with cabling, hand-built electronics, and limitless weed, and entered the professional confines of The Manor, Virgin’s newly christened studio in Oxfordshire. Gone was the radical freedom of the commune. In its place: deadlines, engineers, and a rapidly dwindling budget. The sessions stretched on and grew increasingly fraught, yielding a mixture of fresh material and fragments drawn in from earlier experiments in Wümme. 'Faust IV' is the result: part studio artefact, part salvage operation, part séance.

Tongues deeply in cheek or else aimed squarely at the British music press responsible for the reductive term, Faust open this oeuvre with 'Krautrock'. Over eleven minutes, Faust lay down insistent sequencers, seesawing guitars and subterranean fuzz, slowly building before erupting into the funkiest motorik imaginable, fizzing with smart syncopation, fills and accents. Though the track is a titular parody of a sonic stereotype, Faust’s version has far more texture and technique than the rest of the pack. 'The Sad Skinhead' enters with a gleeful shout and settles into a bizarre reggae lurch, complete with marimba plinks and arch lyrics about heartbreak and hairstyle, which skirt the surreal in typically Faustian fashion. Squint your ears and it’s almost three minute pop perfection. Almost. That same tension animates much of the album: a shrugging flirtation with form, always undercut by whimsy or abrasion. 'Jennifer', perhaps the band’s most beautiful creation, floats on pulsing bass and delicate guitar, a dream-pop prototype two decades ahead of schedule. It mutates as it plays, descending into feedback and eventually collapsing into a broken piano jig, as if self-conscious of its own beauty.

The B-side trades coherence for combustion. 'Just A Second (Starts Like That!)' is all twitching electronics and FX-laden riffage, spiralling into a surreal chamber of wah pedals and pastoral keys. 'Picnic on a Frozen River, Deuxième Tableaux' offers some of Faust’s jazziest interplay, bass nimble, sax carefree, before taking a hard swerve into proto-funk and chaotic organ. 'Giggy Smile' opens mid-conversation and dissolves into Francophone acid folk, while 'Lauft… Heisst Das Es Läuft Oder Es Kommt Bald… Läuft' sees a contemplative organ grow ever more resonant across its run-time, double tracking and reverb seeing it snaking through the long grass of the stereo field. Then comes the sting in the tail: 'It’s A Bit of a Pain', the album’s closer and its emotional knot. A hushed acoustic ballad soon ruptured by fizzing electronics and Swedish monologues, it’s half Stones-y love song, half electro-acoustic prank, a fitting send off to this head-spinning listen.

'Faust IV' is uneven, restless, and full of contradictions, and that’s exactly what makes it compelling. Its rough edges and loose threads sit right alongside moments of real focus, giving the sense of a band following ideas wherever they lead. Rather than polish things smooth, Faust left the seams visible, and the result feels all the more vital for it. Nearly half a century on, its spirit remains intact: mischievous, mysterious, and gloriously unfinished. If Faust had set out to build a new language, 'Faust IV' shows them mid-sentence, trailing off, cracking jokes, then suddenly profound. Don’t expect to follow the conversation, just keep listening.

TRACK LISTING

1. Krautrock
2. The Sad Skinhead
3. Jennifer
4. Just A Second / Picnic On A Frozen River, Deuxième Tableau
5. Giggy Smile
6. Läuft… Heisst Das, Es Läuft Oder Es Kommt Bald?… Läuft!
7. It's A Bit Of A Pain

This year, Finnish musician and composer Jimi Tenor celebrated his 60th birthday. He couldn't have imagined a better place to do so than on stage, and so Tenor came to Hamburg with his band in March, not only to celebrate his personal anniversary, but also to record new music. Partly with Hamburg producer Tobias Levin at his Electric Avenue Studio, and partly at Lauri Kallio's Kiikala Center of the Universe Studio Complex, 'Selenites, Selenites!' - the first album by the Jimi Tenor Band - was recorded in spring 2025.

Tenor can now look back on numerous collaborations, including with Tony Allen, UMO Helsinki Jazz Orchestra,Kabukabu and Freestyle Man. Having attracted considerable attention in the 1990s with his idiosyncratic fusion of lounge jazz and acid techno on Sähko and Warp Records, he turned his attention increasingly to African music in the years that followed. Yet there are no genre boundaries for the multi-instrumentalist - he effortlessly combines a wide variety of styles, from Electronica and Afrobeat to Spiritual Jazz, with his unmistakable musical signature to create a unique musical experience.

During the pandemic years, Tenor decided to look for fellow musicians in his Finnish hometown of Helsinki toform a new band. As it was impossible to go to a rehearsal room or studio, the sessions took place in Jimi's kitchen as pure a cappella rehearsals. To this day, all band members are singing at the live concerts. In recent years, the band consisting of Eeti Nieminen, Heikki Tuhkanen, Ekow Alabi Savage, Lauri Kallio and Jimi Tenor has already played numerous club and festival gigs together, but had not yet released an album.

Recording for the band's debut began at Lauri Kallio's studio in Kiikala, Finland - an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere that has been converted into a recording studio aptly named Kiikala Center of the Universe Studio Complex. While the band was recording, Lauri's parents cooked for them using ingredients from the Finnish forest: chanterelle mushrooms and moose meat. After two initial sessions, the recordings were sent to Bureau B in Hamburg, who invited the band to join Tobias Levin at his Electric Avenue Studio for another session lasting several days.

As the band had already tried out and internalised most of the songs through live performances, the recordings went smoothly and often required only a single take. This quickly resulted in the eight songs that now make up 'Selenites, Selenites!' As so often in the world of Jimi Tenor, it's about space, dimensions and - of course - love, conveyed in that energetic and captivating way that makes it impossible to resist this music. Also featured on the track 'Shine All Night' is Tenor's second collaboration with Florence Adooni, the queen of Ghanaian frafra gospel.

'Selenites, Selenites!' is an impressive debut that showcases a group of virtuoso musicians in absolute joy of playing and exploring new sonic connections. This is not just any Afro-jazz album, but an extraordinary journey into a raw and unadulterated sound, as if you were standing right in front of the stage while listening to the record.

TRACK LISTING

1. Selenites
2. Some Kind Of Good Thing
3. Sunny Song
4. Universal Harmony
5. Alice In Kumasi
6. Looking For The Sunshine
7. Shine All Night
8. Furry Dice

Karl Bartos, renowned as an essential member and songwriter of Kraftwerk during their most innovative years, is reissuing his solo album 'Communication' on Hamburg’s Bureau B. First released in 2003, 13 years after leaving the legendary electronic group, the re-release arrives at a moment when its central theme, the transformation of culture through electronic media, feels more relevant than ever.

When Bartos departed Kraftwerk in 1990, he left behind a catalogue that had redefined electronic music: 'The Model', 'The Robots', 'Numbers', 'Pocket Calculator' and many more bear his imprint as co-writer and melody-maker. With the sharp witted electro-pop of 'Communication', the Kraftwerk legend extended that legacy, turning his focus toward a rapidly evolving media landscape at the turn of the millennium. At the time, the album’s exploration of celebrity culture, digital imagery, and the early internet felt like a glimpse into the future. Today, it reads as sharp cultural analysis of a reality that has since become ordinary.

Two decades later, this reissue allows 'Communication' to be reconsidered on its own terms. The questions Bartos posed, about image saturation, reality fragmentation, and identity commodification, resonate more strongly in the age of smartphones, social media, and streaming platforms than they did in the early 2000s. 

TRACK LISTING

1. The Camera
2. I'm The Message
3. 15 Minutes Of Fame
4. Reality
5. Electronic Apeman
6. Life 
7. Cyberspace 
8. Interview 
9. Ultraviolet 
10. Camera Obscura 
11. Another Reality

CV Vision returns with the follow-up to his last opus “Im Tal der Stutzer” and delivers his sixth studio album “Release The Beast” – where he finds the sweet spot between psych rock, Detroit techno, fried synths, black metal and library music.

Teaming up again with Swedish drummer Uno Bruniusson, CV Vision switched up the last production approach and opted for a return to previous studio methodologies. “I wanted to get a rougher sound on this record,” he says. “I dug out my two broken reel-to-reel tape machines, and patched them together, like Frankenstein. That’s what gels everything really - there’s different musical styles, but it’s the tape machine that brings it all together, sound-wise.”

“Release The Beast” does indeed fly off in several directions over the course of fourteen tracks, and gives us an insight into the full spectrum of the CV Vision musical universe. Fuzzed-out backbeats and psych progressions establish the opening tracks, as the sweet harmonies of ‘RTB’ and ‘The Rhythm’ are offset by raw magnetic hiss. ‘Dungeon Drums I, II, III’ draws on acid and early Detroit techno experiments, tapping into the cosmic elements of the Motor City’s beatdown grooves (and even mediaeval black metal melodies) to bring out a krautrock twist.

The second half of “Release The Beast” takes another turn with instrumental jams, like ‘Nikita’s Tune’ and ‘It’s K-Jazz’, that nod towards the psychedelic soul of David Axelrod and Rotary Connection, and the trippy DIY experiments of L.G. Mair, Jr. Closing out the album, CV Vision lays down the bluesy stomper ‘Town Talk’ and distorted motorik workout ‘The Jam’ next to the folky incantation of ‘Brickwall Symphony’ and stacked layers of heavy guitars on ‘Go Your Way’.

While “Release The Beast” is a varied tapestry of sounds and styles, there’s a common thread running through it all. The cover art depicts the boarded-up entrance of a Berlin stairwell, surrounded by the burnt-out debris of a long-forgotten party. “It’s not just about letting out inner demons,” he says, “but rather coming to the end of a creative process. A chaotic, troubled process, but also one where something good comes out at the end!”

TRACK LISTING

A1 RTB
A2 The Rhythm
A3 Fast Intervention
A4 Dungeon Drums I
A5 Dungeon Drums II
A6 Dungeon Drums III
A7 A Memory
A8 Nikitas Tune
B1 Block Rock
B2 It’s K-Jazz
B3 Town Talk
B4 The Jam
B5 Brickwall Symphony
B6 Go Your Way

While working in Berlin Wedding at andereBaustelle studio on their upcoming album – scheduled for release in May 2026 on Bureau B – Kreidler found also time to dig deep into the vaults of their Düsseldorf and Berlin archives. Thirty years ago Kreidler's eponymous mini-album was released on Cologne-based label Finlayson; and for RIVA, their first outing, on cassette tape it is even 31 years. Both released in limited physical formats and long unavailable. This edition documents the band‘s beginnings, with threads that can be followed throughout their whole history to their current work. Still, they are straight out of a certain scene, at a certain place, at a certain time.

TRACK LISTING

1. Beginn / Drücken
2. Café Dello Sport
3. Glashütte Gerresheim
4. Charles Wilp Fotografiert Muhammed Ali
5. Flames
6. Tierfilm
7. Das Wilde Heinefeld
8. Angst
9. Die Sexy Antwort Auf Beige
10. Anti-Car
11. Soft Niveau
12. Boccia
13. Sportfläche
14. Bikini
15. Im Betrieb (IV)

Schnitzler's collaborations with Wolf Sequenza aka Wolfgang Seidel occupy a special place in his vast musical output. They brought him closer to pop music than ever before or since, with the possible exception of “Berlin Express” and “Auf dem schwarzen Kanal”. Following “Consequenz” (BB 121) and “Con 3” (BB 122), “Consequenz III” is now the third album to be released from this phase of his work.

Peter Baumann (formerly of Tangerine Dream) also played an important role in “Consequenz III”. As so often before, Baumann generously provided Schnitzler and Seidel with studio space at his Paragon Studio. The recordings for this album were the immediate continuation of “Con 3”. Seidel's additional drums and percussion were still being set up, Schnitzler's Korg MS 10 and the obligatory sequencer were still warm – and another recording session began straight away. There seemed to be enough time to finish an album. Baumann's Paragon Studio was a veritable El Dorado. Although Schnitzler and Seidel used their own comparatively modest setups, here they had access to highly professional recording equipment and an acoustically ideal recording space. And then there was British sound engineer Will Roper, a studio nerd in a class of his own, who had already provided extremely constructive and sensitive advice and, above all, practical support to the two musicians on “Con 3” and now also on “Consequenz III”. This was no longer home recording with one or two tape machines; this was top-notch recording technology.

“Consequenz III” follows on directly from the two previous albums. Once again, the pieces sound almost like pop music, once again they are rhythmically and harmoniously structured, once again they are between three and four minutes long. And once again, they are not 100% pop music, but rather a balancing act between strict, abstract seriality and contemporary electronics: no melodies, no vocals, and it's up to each listener to decide whether the pieces are danceable. Rather, the eleven pieces are rhythmic études or finger exercises, especially for Seidel, who once again plays with incredible precision, as if he were a sequencer himself. It is not for nothing that Schnitzler gave him the pseudonym Wolf Sequenza for their joint productions. Musicians such as Wolfgang Seidel continue to lend Schnitzler's sonic universe additional radiance.

The fact that the pieces on “Consequenz III” have already been released in 2006 by the Japanese label Captain Trip under the title “Consequenz 2 +” was probably only noticed by very few Schnitzler fans outside Japan. Only a small number of the limited edition ever reached Europe, and sold out in no time. “Consequenz III” therefore reissues material that was previously known only to a few. And there's no end to it: Schnitzler left behind music that was either only released in very small editions (e.g. on cassettes or CDRs) or has never been released at all. There is still plenty to discover in the various archives. Will we ever get to know the “whole Schnitzler”? I don't think so.
Asmus Tietchens, 2025

TRACK LISTING

A1 Consequenz III 1
A2 Consequenz III 2
A3 Consequenz III 3
A4 Consequenz III 4
A5 Consequenz III 5
B1 Consequenz III 6
B2 Consequenz III 7
B3 Consequenz III 8
B4 Consequenz III 9
B5 Consequenz III 10
B6 Consequenz III 11

Few debut albums arrive with the kind of self-contained logic and radical spirit found on the self titled ‘Faust’. Released in 1971, it marked the beginning of a project that would sidestep genre and expectation, offering a fractured, exploratory take on rock music, blending tape experiments, improvised structures, and surreal collage. This Bureau B reissue offers a fresh opportunity to engage with one of the most curious and uncompromising records of its time.

The story of Faust begins in 1969, when cultural journalist Uwe Nettelbeck met with Horst Schmolzi, an A&R man at Polydor in Hamburg. Schmolzi was looking for a German answer to The Beatles, but Nettelbeck had other ideas. With a generous advance in hand, he set out to assemble something far more radical. Nettlebeck headed into the Hamburg underground and fused members of the bands Nukleus and Campylognatus Citelli into a new six-piece lineup. From Nukleus came bassist Jean-Hervé Péron, guitarist Rudolf Sosna, and saxophonist Gunther Wüsthoff. From Campylognatus Citelli, he brought in keyboardist Hans-Joachim Irmler and drummers Werner “Zappi” Diermaier and Arnulf Meifert.

Installed in a converted schoolhouse in the rural village of Wümme, Lower Saxony, the band lived and worked communally, while Nettelbeck oversaw the project as producer, alongside engineer Kurt Graupner. Much of the Polydor money went not into marketing, but into building a custom studio on-site, allowing the band complete creative autonomy. Extensive cabling allowed instruments to be played without needing to leave the bedroom, clothing was optional and intoxicants were abundant. The actual recording process didn’t begin until three days before the deadline, and what followed was a spontaneous burst of experimental creativity, equal parts anarchic and inspired. Remarkably, the resulting album doesn’t sound rushed. On the contrary, ‘Faust’ feels deliberate in its unpredictability: a meticulously chaotic document of six musicians discovering a new musical language in real time.

The trip begins with “Why Don’t You Eat Carrots,” a collage of absurdist theatre and sound sculpture. Its snarling guitar feedback, shuddering electronics and tape-scratched pop samples mutate into a post-structuralist meltdown. Stones’ “Satisfaction” and Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love” are reduced to spectral phrases, mocking the very idea of cultural consensus. From there horns squeal, pianos splinter and voices swirl in delay, as if the entirety of a circus is being squeezed through the hoop of a bubble blower, leaving us to watch the whole spectacle bend, shake and shimmer in the sunlight. Next, “Meadow Meal” opens with resonant industrial tones, like air forced through plumbing, and gradually blossoms into a surrealist jazz-folk ritual. Fingerpicked guitar cohabits with blasts of reverb-heavy organ and beat-poet vocal incantations. At its heart lies a groove so deep and syncopated it borders on funk, only to collapse into chaos once more. And then there is “Miss Fortune”, a 16-minute live improvisation soaked in hashish and reverb. One-note bass lines throb like minimalist mantras beneath swirling organs and mutant sax. Drums stutter toward cohesion and then back away in terror. Guitars unravel into smoke. And in the final moments, the music recedes, leaving behind a broken narrative, fragmented speech, laughter, coughs, like a bedtime story told by ghosts of a Europe still recovering from war.

Despite the experimental nature, surrealist lyrics and a complete rejection of conventional music form, this isn’t an over intellectual exercise, or a display of wilful antagonism. Instead, Faust packed these three sprawling, sputtering pieces with the breadth of human emotion, capturing the chaos and complexity of existence in an audio analogue to Jackson Pollock’s abstract expressionism. More than 50 years on, it remains a thrilling reminder of what can happen when artists abandon the map and follow instinct instead.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Why Don't You Eat Carrots?
A2 Meadow Meal
B1 Miss Fortune

Electronic pioneers Propaganda follow up their acclaimed 2024 comeback with Remix Encounters, a broad and brilliant remix album featuring Moby, Tangerine Dream, Rhys Fulber, Schiller, and more. After the widely praised release of their self-titled comeback album in October 2024, Düsseldorf’s legendary art-synth auteurs return with Remix Encounters, a thrilling reimagining of their latest work. Released on Bureau B, this remix collection reflects the enthusiasm Propaganda’s return after three decades of silence has ignited among contemporary artists, who approached the project with fresh energy and creative freedom.

Since breaking new ground with their seminal 1985 debut A Secret Wish and its pioneering remix companion Wishful Thinking, Propaganda have thrived on transformation. Yet rather than revisiting the past, Remix Encounters looks forward, building on the vitality of last year’s album and celebrating its widespread critical and fan acclaim.

What began as a remix request from Finnish electronic maestro Jori Hulkkonen, returning the favour after Ralf Dörper’s contribution to his last album, quickly blossomed into an international collaboration, drawing in luminaries such as Moby, Tangerine Dream, Rhys Fulber (Front Line Assembly, Delerium), and Schiller.

Embracing openness, Propaganda spent the fourth quarter of 2024 encouraging the wide range of musicians inspired by their triumphant return to offer their own interpretations. Each brought their distinctive voice to the material, resulting in a thrilling journey through electronic subgenres, from EBM and industrial to rave, ambient, house, and beyond.

Rhys Fulber opens the album with a brooding, machine-funk reinvention of “They Call Me Nocebo,” evolving from a sleek, sinuous introduction into a relentless pneumatic stomp. Next, Schiller offers a powerful remix of “Distant” that balances raw electro-house and techno energy with the emotional depth of EBM, before Moby transforms “Purveyor of Pleasure” into a furious early-’90s rave anthem, fusing breakbeats and rolling basslines that pulse with nostalgic urgency yet feel unmistakably modern. Elsewhere, Finnish polymath Jimi Tenor infuses “Vicious Circle” with cosmic jazz and dub textures, while Pyrolator, a key figure in Düsseldorf’s avant-garde scene, delivers a shadowy reinterpretation of “Love Craft.” Cult With No Name also contribute a brooding electro-ballad version of the same track. Propaganda’s own Michael Mertens teams up with longtime collaborator Hans Steingen to re-envision “Dystopian Waltz,” shifting its time signature to a gripping 4/4 and intensifying its ominous mood for darker dance floors. The range ofremixers speaks volumes: from industrial punks Gewalt and synth purists Metroland to ambient pioneers Tangerine Dream, Remix Encounters unites an eclectic group of electronic artists bound by a shared reverence for innovation and Propaganda’s distinctive voice.

Recorded and remixed across creative hubs from Düsseldorf to Los Angeles, Helsinki to Paris, Remix Encounters is far more than a companion piece. It is a celebration of Propaganda’s enduring influence and the vibrant, evolving electronic landscape they helped shape. Each artist engaged deeply with the band’s richly textured and cinematic sound world, reinterpreting it with enthusiasm and respect, producing a collection as diverse as it is cohesive.

TRACK LISTING

CD Tracklist
01 They Call Me Nocebo (Rhys Fulber Remix)
02 Distant (Schiller Remix)
03 Purveyor Of Pleasure (Moby Remix)
04 Tipping Point (Jori Hulkkonnen Remix)
05 Love:Craft (Pyrolator Remix)
06 Vicious Circle (Jimi Tenor Remix)
07 They Call Me Nocebo (Tangerine Dream Remix)
08 Distant (Gewalt Remix)
09 Dystopian (Steingen & Mertens Remix)
10 Love:Craft (Cult With No Name Remix)
11 They Call Me Nocebo (Metroland Remix)

2-LP Tracklist
A1 Purveyor Of Pleasure (Moby Remix)
A2 Distant (Schiller Remix)
A3 Dystopian (Steingen & Mertens Remix)
B1 They Call Me Nocebo (Rhys Fulber Remix)
B2 They Call Me Nocebo (Metroland Remix)
B3 They Call Me Nocebo (Tangerine Dream Remix)
C1 Tipping Point (Jori Hulkkonnen Remix)
C2 Love:Craft (Cult With No Name Remix)
C3 Vicious Circle (Jimi Tenor Remix)
D1 Distant (Gewalt Remix)
D2 Love:Craft (Pyrolator Remix)
D3 Vicious Circle (Thunder Bae Remix)

A Piece Of The Action is a long-overdue retrospective celebrating Hamburg duo Egoexpress, whose rebellious blend of punk spirit and club energy defied genre conventions. From 1995 to 2005, Mense Reents and Berndt “Jimi” Siebels forged an offbeat, emotional, and rhythm-driven path through Germany’s electronic underground, which still pulses with defiant vitality today.

Formed in 1995 and rooted in the radical spirit of Hamburg’s St. Pauli district, Egoexpress began as a friendly rebellion. Jimi and Mense, two East Frisians who’d known each other since adolescence, came to the city in 1990 as part of the broader wave surrounding the Hamburger Schule - but theirs was a brief cameo in that particular scene. While peers like Blumfeld mastered literate rock and existential dissection, Egoexpress turned instead toward the bass drum: blunt, immediate, and liberating. Their musical upbringing, punk, mod culture, Neue Deutsche Welle, and a love for the hypnotic intensity of Suicide and Bohannon, translated into a fierce commitment to DIY ethos and sonic play.

Originally tethered to indie imprint L’Age D’Or via their earlier band projects, the duo delivered the inaugural outing on Ladomat 2000, a sublabel designed for club cuts and electronic excursions. Their first release, “Bungalow”, smuggled house music into German indie culture with lopsided charm - German vocals and a disarming lack of polish. What followed was a body of work as defiant as it was danceable. Between 1995 and 2005, the pair developed their sound from minimalist, Atari-driven loops to sprawling, psychedelic club tracks that gestured at house, electro, and pop, without fully belonging to any of them.

Though an immediate sensation around Hamburg’s Golden Pudel club, their sound took longer to become established outside their city. Egoexpress played techno parties with a Fostex 8-track recorder and punk energy, and the club crew didn’t quite know what to make of them. They weren’t Detroit purists, nor Berlin minimalists, nor 80s revivalists, and they couldn’t care less. Influenced as much by Green Velvet as garage rock, they charted their own course, resisting the predictable forms of verse and chorus, choosing instead repetition, grit, and groove. A residency at the margins gave their music a lasting edge, a refusal to conform that now sounds oddly prescient.

By 1999, thanks in part to an invitation from Westbam to play Mayday, they were finally embraced into the wider electronic fold. But by then, their work had already crystalised its core ideas. The ‘00s wore on and electroclash exploded. With their punk background, brash saw-saves and towering beats, it would be easy to consider Egoexpress as forerunners, though in truth they bristled at the retro fixations of the scene. They didn’t want to return to the 80s and the boredom of East Frisian adolescence — they wanted to burn through the now.

This retrospective, compiled and curated by Mense, offers a long-overdue reintroduction to one of Germany’s most fearless electronic duos. Neither early enough to ride the house wave nor comfortable cashing in on the electroclash moment, Egoexpress fell between the cracks. What they left behind is timeless: a heartfelt, headstrong catalog that celebrates instinct over intellect, rhythm over rigidity, and emotional intensity over sonic orthodoxy. A Piece Of The Action is a reminder that often the most vital music doesn’t fit the moment, it defines one of its own. - Patrick Ryder.

TRACK LISTING

CD Tracklist
1 We Are Here (Remastered)
2 Dumkraft (Remastered)
3 Hot Wire My Heart (EDIT)
4 Weiter (Remastered)
5 Smily Blu (Remastered)
6 Aranda (Remastered)
7 Beautiful Music/Dangerous Rhythm (EDIT)
8 Knartz Iv (Remastered)
9 Everybody (Remastered)
10 Live At Sirius Prime (Remastered)
11 Nobody Expected It To Happen That Way (Remastered)
12 Telefunken (Remastered)
13 Disco Past Perfect (Remastered)
14 Hohl Von Innen (EDIT)
15 A Piece Of The Action (Remastered)
16 Memories Can Wait (EDIT)

Gatefold 2LP Tracklisting
A1 We Are Here (Remastered)
A2 Dumkraft (Remastered)
A3 Hot Wire My Heart (EDIT)
A4 Weiter (Remastered)
B1 Beautiful Music/Dangerous Rhythm (EDIT)
B2 Knartz Iv (Remastered)
B3 Smily Blu (Remastered)
B4 Aranda (Remastered)
C1 Everybody (Remastered)
C2 Live At Sirius Prime (Remastered)
C3 Nobody Expected It To Happen That Way (Remastered)
C4 A Piece Of The Action (Vinyl Version) (Remastered)
D1 Hohl Von Innen (EDIT)
D2 Telefunken (Remastered)
D3 Disco Past Perfect (Remastered)
D4 Memories Can Wait (EDIT)

On their last trip to Silberland, Bureau B hurtled along the chrome highways and glass skyways of the kosmische landscape, powered ever onwards in perpetual motorik motion. This time, however, the Hamburg imprint opt for an unhurried itinerary, coasting far beyond the familiar rhythmic terrain to explore crystal caverns and emerald pastures, immersing listeners in the ambient side of this alternative Allemagne. Building on the tape loops, tone poems, and minimalist compositions of the 60's avant-garde, these musicians utilised the sweeping scope of the synthesiser to create expansive meditations on outer-planetary escapism, human connection, and the natural world. This compilation offers a survey of this singular era, blending pioneering voices with lesser-known artists for an immersive sonic experience.

TRACK LISTING

1. Cluster & Eno - Ho Renomo
2. Roedelius - Veilchenwurzeln
3. Der Plan - Die Wuste
4. Rolf Trostel - Hope Is The Answer
5. Vono - Hitze
6. You - E-Night (Bureau B Edit)
7. Serge Blenner - Phrase IV
8. Moebius - Falsche Ruhe
9. Harald Grosskopf - Oceanheart
10. Lapre - Tedan (Bureau B Edit)
11. Riechmann - Abendlicht
12. Adelbert Von Deyen - Per Aspera Ad Astra - Mental Voyage (Bureau B Edit)
13. Faust - Lampe An, Tur Zu, Leute Rein! (Bureau B Edit)
14. Conrad Schnitzler - Electric Garden (Bureau B Edit)
15. Moebius & Plank - Nordostliches Gefuhl (Bureau B Edit)
16. Deutsche Wertarbeit - Unter Tage (Bureau B Edit)
17. Asmus Tietchens - Rauschlinge
18. Pyrolator - Minimal Tape 1/8
19. Rudiger Lorenz - Southland (Bureau B Edit)
20. Thomas Dinger - Alleewalzer

In the shadow of the nuclear accident in Fukushima in 2011, Japanese musician Phew, artist Erika Kobayashi, and German electronic music pioneer Dieter Moebius (Cluster, Harmonia) came together for an extraordinary project. Together, they developed the concept album 'Radium Girls' 2011, which they released in 2012 under the project name Project UNDARK - 114 years after the discovery of radium by Marie and Pierre Curie. The album is dedicated to the so-called Radium Girls, female factory workers in the United States during the 1920s who painted watch dials with radioactive luminous paint and suffered severe health consequences from radium poisoning. On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the label Bureau B is reissuing 'Radium Girls' — for the first time also on vinyl.

TRACK LISTING

1. Radium Girls
2. Evelyn
3. Tracy
4. Marie
5. Helena
6. Anna
7. Manhattan Project
8. Little Boy And Fat Man
9. Katherine
10. Argonne National Laboratory
11. EBR-1
12. Radium226

Sophomore album from the French space rock electro combo (1975).

Here, Heldon mastermind Richard Pinhas has formed a duo with Georges Grunblatt.

The music: an interplay of feather-light acoustic guitars, Mellotron textures, fuzzy sounds and heavy, spherical synthesizers.

TRACK LISTING

1. In The Wake Of King Fripp
2. Aphanisis
3. Omar Diop Blondin
4. Moebius
5. Fluence (Continuum Mobile/Disjonction Inclusive)
6. St Mikael Samstag Abends
7. Michel Ettori

Third album from the French spacerock electro combo masterminded by Richard Pinhas. Heldon’s darkest work lays another stone in their sonic mosaic: synths,drones, fuzz and trippy improvisations. Intense Heldon!!

TRACK LISTING

1. Ics Machinique
2. Cotes De Cachalot A La Psylocybine
3. Mechammment Rock
4. Cocaine Blues
5. Aurore
6. Virgin Swedish Blues
7. Ocean Boogi
8. Zind Destruction (Bouillie Blues)
9. Doctor Bloodmoney

Thumbing through the back pages of German electronic music, Bureau B uncovers another hidden gem from the Sky Records archive: 'Inventions', the 1983 collaboration between Adelbert von Deyen and Dieter Schütz. Fusing expansive kosmische textures with biting rock guitars, motorik rhythms, and the growl of '80s synth-pop, the duo conjure a sonic singularity which still sounds like the future today. Compact yet cosmic, 'Inventions' distils ambient drift and experimental edge into taut, three-minute pop miniatures, with the occasional longer track extending the energy without losing any of the impact.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Awakening
2. Speed For You
3. Peace On Earth
4. Baltic Sea
5. Lunar Opera Part 1-3
6. Farland
7. Apache's Pain
8. Jungle
9. Vulcano '78
10. Valley Of The Monsters

Bureau B once again dive into the Sky archive, unearthing another overlooked masterpiece long due for rediscovery. Originally released in 1985, 'Voyage' finds Dieter Schütz venturing beyond his Berlin School roots into a realm of lo-fi immediacy and New Age naivety. Every instrument is played by Schütz himself, except for the drums on 'Above', which are performed with syncopated zeal by Michael Fecker. While its textured synthscapes and wistful melodies may echo the aesthetics of 2010s Vaporwave, 'Voyage' captured a longing for another world, not through borrowed nostalgia, but through a contemporary vision of escape. Here, Schütz’s music is lush yet unpretentious, full of warmth, curiosity, and the gentle imperfections of handmade sound, his combination of organic and synthetic instruments marrying to summon faraway landscapes — Amazonian forests, sunlit coasts, and cosmic night skies.

TRACK LISTING

1. Amazona
2. In Dreams
3. Bizarre
4. Fireland
5. Above
6. Voyage
7. Exotic Nights
8. Little Plant
9. The Coast
10. Back Home

Cluster can be counted among the most important international protagonists of the electronic avant-garde. Some credit them with having invented ambient music, others as pioneers of synthesizer pop, whilst to some they are firmly embedded in the krautrock universe. There is some truth in all of these notions. Cluster (or Kluster as they were in the beginning) were founded in 1970 in Berlin by Conrad Schnitzler, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius. A change in direction and musical differences moved Moebius and Roedelius to split from Schnitzler after which the duo recorded 10 regular studio albums between 1971 and 2009. Their debut album ("Cluster 71") was in Wire Magazine's "One Hundred Records That Set The World On Fire" list. Follow up, Cluster II, has now reached it's 50th anniversary and to celebrate bureau b are releasing a limited anniversary edition, vinyl only, gatefold sleeve limited to a 1000 copies.

TRACK LISTING

1. Plas
2. Im Süden
3. Für Die Katz'
4. Live In Der Fabrik
5. Georgel
6. Nabitte

Hamburg’s kosmische custodians at Bureau B proudly welcome legendary synth maestro Peter Baumann back into the studio for his first solo album since Machines Of Desire (2016). A defining force in the Berlin School of electronic music, both as a member of Tangerine Dream in their most essential era, and as a solo artist, Baumann has always bridged the cerebral and the cinematic.

With Nightfall, he embarks on another sonic odyssey, crafting an atmospheric album steeped in mystery and evocative storytelling. Baumann’s artistic vision has long been shaped by his exploration of the human condition. From his pioneering work with Tangerine Dream to his influential New Age imprint, Private Music, and his philosophical pursuits through the Baumann Foundation, his creativity and curiosity remain undiminished.

Nightfall is the latest chapter in his five-decade journey - a deeply emotional album that embraces impermanence to transport the listener into a series of shapeshifting soundscapes.

"The cover of Nightfall shows an imprint on a sand dune, symbolising the fleeting nature of our lives, our experiences, our existence," Baumann explains. "The track titles, as with much of my work, reflect the ephemeral, ungraspable nature of our existence."

The misty melancholia of opener "No One Knows" pairs hypnotic woodblock rhythms with desert guitars, while "Lost In A Pale Blue Sky" floats through celestial choirs and rolling timpani, evoking dreamlike introspection. Elsewhere, "On The Long Road" pulses with insect-like percussion and serrated synth tones, exuding a ritualistic energy. Tracks like "A World Apart" and "From A Far Land" build tension through cascading melodies and rhythmic precision, evoking distant horizons and uncharted territories. "Sailing Past Midnight" melds bass mallets with feedback-laden synths, conjuring a sense of movement and urgency, while "I'm Sitting Here, Just For A While" layers snaking saxophones and hand percussion into a mystical, arcane soundscape. The album closes with the title track, "Nightfall", a deeply atmospheric piece wrapped in choral textures and shadowy undertones.

"I love instrumental music because it bypasses any concepts, it is an expression that words can never capture," Baumann reflects. "We can’t hear music exactly the same way twice, it’s always experienced differently, sometime slightly sometimes substantially. Like a river, never exactly the same."

From the very beginnings of his career, Peter Baumann has infused his work with a sense of the beyond and Nightfall is no exception. Each track invites the listener to interpret, to feel, and to immerse themselves in its crepuscular beauty. “

For the better part of five decades in every music project I was involved in, I aimed to infuse it with a transcendent quality." Baumann states.

With Nightfall, the composer has created a shimmering doorway, just waiting for you to step through.

TRACK LISTING

A1 No One Knows
A2 Lost In A Pale Blue Sky
A3 On The Long Road
A4 A World Apart
B1 From A Far Land
B2 Sailing Past Midnight
B3 I'm Sitting Here, Just For A While
B4 Nightfall

Agree to disagree: A selected Krautrock discography

Krautrock, what is it anyway? A genre, a derogative term, a song by Faust, … or: a welcome (and recurring) opportunity to talk about all of this. The music associated with the term in question has eagerly been canonized. From the enthusiastic and idiosyncratic ramblings of Julian Cope’s 'Krautrocksampler' to encyclopaedic approaches like Alan and Stephen Freeman’s 'Crack in the Cosmic Egg', there are plenty of books to read and lists to discuss: Who’s in, who isn’t? The quarrels and disputes surrounding the terms "Krautrock" and "Kosmische Musik" are a testament to their enduring relevance and fascination. I won’t get into the weeds discussing how to separate one from the other – for all those who do want to, the book 'Krautrock Eruption' by Wolfgang Seidel addresses some of those questions. In this book, you will find an annotated discography of fifty albums. Out of these fifty, we are presenting an even narrower selection of tracks from twelve albums on this compilation. Lists and compilation track listings inevitably see tracks missing and being left out. In our case, the compilation was produced in cooperation with the label Bureau B and therefore has a partial focus on some of their back catalogue. That said, the list is meant to inspire repeated or further listening, to spark discussions and – potentially – to provoke new lists, perhaps your own! It’s all part of the fun. Music is made for enjoyment in the first and for friendly debate in the second place, after all.

TRACK LISTING

1. Conrad Schnitzler - Ballet Statique
2. Faust - I’ve Heard That One Before/Watch Your Step
3. Eno Moebius Roedelius - Foreign Affairs
4. Harald Grosskopf - Emphasis
5. Cluster - 21:32 (bureau B Edit)
6. Moebius & Plank - Rastakraut Pasta
7. Roedelius - Glaubersalz
8. Pyrolator - Minimal Tape 3/7.2
9. Riechmann - Himmelblau (bureau B Edit)
10. Kluster - Kluster 2 (Electric Music) (bureau B Edit)
11. Günter Schickert - Apricot Brandy II (bureau B Edit)
12. Asmus Tietchens - Falter-Lamento

Conrad Schnitzler (1937–2011), composer and concept artist, is one of the most important representatives of Germany’s electronic music avant-garde. A student of Beuys, he founded Berlin’s legendary Zodiak Free Arts Lab, a subculture club, in 1967/68, was a member of Tangerine Dream (together with Klaus Schulze and Edgar Froese) and Kluster (with Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius) and also released countless solo albums. The yellow album appeared in 1981, yet it contained recordings from the year 1974, originally released in a limited run on cassette.

Exactly 50 years after its original release, "Samtvogel" has returned. Günter Schickert used only guitars, echo devices and a modest recording technique for "Samtvogel". The album is a genuine DIY production – radical in every respect and not at all in keeping with the zeitgeist of the time. "Samtvogel" is a particularly important album because it makes it clear what was musically possible in the 70s. There is no doubt that the album is extreme, even though it is of high quality musically and technically. Schickert initially self-released "Samtvogel" in 1974 in an edition of 500 copies.

Area Silenzio is eat-girls' debut record and it is both haunted and haunting. For the past four years, the French trio have been crafting their songs into little self-contained worlds with the patience of entomologists, taking them out all over the country and Europe to confront them with the wilderness of a live audience. The ten resulting tracks are a collection of electronic madrigals, groove-driven songs played on a mischievous multi-speed Victrola, ranging from languid dub drips to full-on drum machine cavalcades. Part no-wave disco rhythms, part post-punk throbbing basses, folk tunes and synthesizers in equal measures, with a perpetual attention to hooks and melodies.

Forty years since their inception, and almost two decades since their last release, art-synth auteurs Propaganda return with a brand new chapter in their enthralling story. This self-titled set from principal songwriting partnership Ralf Dörper and Michael Mertens embodies the depth and drama of their early work, while exploring fresh sounds and styles, and reflecting the personal and societal changes since their last outing. Conceived and crafted entirely in their native Düsseldorf, a deliberate decision to help them stay true to themselves, and featuring guest appearances from the acclaimed Hauschka and ascendant Thunder Bae, this is Propaganda at their most essential.

Though an embryonic incarnation was formed by Ralf Dörper, former synthesist with electro-punks Die Krupps, and Andreas Thein in 1982, it wasn’t until the addition of Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra percussionist Michael Mertens that the outfit emerged as the dark synth-pop powerhouse which would see chart success as part of the ZTT machine. Upon signing with Trevor Horn’s irreverent imprint in 1983, Propaganda, now comprised of vocalists Claudia Bruecken and Susanne Freytag alongside Dörper and Mertens, delivered their classic debut LP A Secret Wish and a slew of international hit singles, “Dr Mabuse”, “Duel” and “P Machinery”, leaving an indelible mark on the alternative scene and securing an enduring place within the pantheon of synth-dance greats. After a late 80s hiatus spent escaping their unfavourable contracts, during which the singers went their separate ways, the project returned on Virgin in 1990, with a new line-up, including Betsi Miller on vocals and former Simple Minds rhythm section Derek Forbes and Brian McGee. Working alongside producers Ian Stanley and Chris Hughes, the ensemble delivered the smoother sophomore offering 1234, featuring collaborations with the likes of Howard Jones and David Gilmour. After which our protagonists pressed pause and pursued separate goals, Dörper resurrecting Die Krupps and Mertens moving into TV and Film composition and providing a conduit for Düsseldorf’s experimental electronic scene via his Amontillado Music label. The intervening decades passed with the persistent rumble of reunion from outside voices, but it was a 2015 remix request from Zang Tumb Tuum chum and former Frankie Goes To Hollywood frontman Holly Johnson which finally prompted the pair to reconvene behind the console. The success of those sessions behind them, Dörper and Mertens began to consider what the Propaganda of the present would be. A lot had changed since 1990 – they had changed since 1990, and a new incarnation of the project would have to reflect that. So they waved goodbye to the Pop-aganda of the past, left the clubs to the kids, and pressed forward with complete creative freedom. The result is the immersive, emotive tour de force Propaganda.

At once sleek, sensual and cerebral, album opener “They Call Me Nocebo” is the perfect introduction to their sonic evolution. This taut and toxic love/lust song is imbued with the nocturnal mood of vintage Propaganda but expresses itself within the context of the IDM and electronic sounds reverberating through the 21st Century. “Purveyor Of Pleasure” provides the perfect foil, as a rhythm section of infectious synth drums and swelling bass recalls the dance floor preoccupations of the past, but sates itself with a supporting rolehere, allowing the widescreen chord progressions and Thunder Bae’s expressive vocals to take centre stage. Their lyrical lineage of subversive subject matter remains intact, but these meditations on sex and sin contain seasoned self-reflection. The operatic inflections and cinematic grandeur of “Vicious Circle” (emphatically reworked from its 1234 origin), “Love:Craft” (with its lyrical homage to the American master of cosmic horror) and neo-classical instrumental “Dystopian Waltz”, attest to Propaganda’s perennial penchant for the dramatic, now enriched through Mertens’ subsequent soundtrack work into searing, swooning heights. Elsewhere, “Tipping Point” offers an ecological poem set to the trancelike chug of swirling arpeggiators, and “Distant” dissects loneliness and isolation, particularly poignant after the shared experience of lockdown. The beautifully gothic “Wenn Ich Mir Was Wuenschen Duerfte” closes both the album and a loop, its English translation “If I Had A Wish” harking back to the title of their debut album, while the song itself continues the exploration of new sonic territories. A German standard from the thirties, written by Friedrich Hollaender and popularised by Marlene Dietrich’s 1960 recording, the song presents sadness as political strength, and remains as pertinent and powerful now as it ever has. This rich and textured rendition, featuring haunting prepared piano from Hauschka, a long-time musical acquaintance of Mertens’ and now AcademyAward winner, is a fitting finale to this powerful album. And make no mistake, this is an album. In an era of impermanence, Propaganda wanted to produce something real - to be played from start to finish, with artwork and packaging which allows a deeper understanding of the theme of the release. Finding the perfect label to match their ambitions in Bureau B, Propaganda have delivered a third album well worth the wait.

TRACK LISTING

LP (Black/Yellow LP/CD)
A1) They Call Me Nocebo
A2) Purveyor Of Pleasure
A3) Vicious Circle
A4) Tipping Point
B1) Distant
B2) Love:Craft
B3) Dystopian Waltz
B4) Wenn Ich Mir Was Wünschen Dürfte

Tracks On LP2/CD2
C1) Not Good For You
C2) Solace In Sin
C3) World Out Of Joint
D1) I Feel Mysterious
D2) The Calling

After dipping into the archive to deliver a series of essential reissues, Bureau B continue to encourage the chaotic brilliance of Faust with an LP of brand new music curated by originator Zappi Diermaier and a band of musical friends, including fellow founder Gunther Wüsthoff. Over the years Faust has become many things, each as separate as the fingers, but as together as the hand which makes up their eponymous fist. From 1971 to 1974 the Hamburg band blazed a bold sonic trail, helping to create the distinct and delirious strand of German music we've come to know as Krautrock. Uncompromising, innovative and experimental, their releases in that period, and the stories accompanying their creation, are nothing short of legendary, and the fact that after a hiatus, the band returned and remained active in a variety of separate and simultaneous incarnations is entirely fitting for these musical revolutionaries. On Blickwinkel, Diermaier's incarnation embrace synchronicity and chance in order to capture the moment in a six track snapshot of industrial churn, unsettling ambience and psychedelic motorik.

Sonically and politically, Blickwinkel is a profoundly Faustian venture, a communal project based on democratic ideals which eschews external influences to create something entirely out on its own. As with the previous LP, Daumenbruch, the journey started with Zappi behind a drum kit at the home studio of his neighbour Dirk Dresselhaus AKA Schneider TM (bass), alongside electronics whizz Elke Drapatz (drum effects). The trio embarked on a session of instant composition, playing wordlessly with a deep empathy to each other as well as the energy in the room. While the Daumenbruch session, which took place in the midst of lockdown, delivered three long-form pieces, this two hour spell served up six diverse tracks, an audio analogue for the speed of life post-lockdown. These considered and complex creations, as far from simple jams as it gets, were mixed by Dirk in a third hour, and then sent off to a varied cast of collaborators, each adding their overdubs independently with no knowledge of what the others were doing.

These contributions came via a multidisciplinary melange of approaches and instruments including Gunther Wusthoff's Spieluhr (a sequencer unit he built for his ARP synth back in the early 1970s) and Andrew Unruh's percussive objects; the guitar, kalimba and harmonium of Jochen Arbeit (all twisted through an fx unit, naturally) and Sonja Kosche's inventive use of a harp fashioned out of the wires of a bed and a ventilator. Drones, delays, clatter and clang came from all corners - in fact, only Uwe Bastiansen (Stadtfisch) added melodies, lending long distance support to Dirk Dresselhaus' insistent bass sequences, and channeling the magic of their moment into potent pagan tonalities. Despite their differing practices and processes, these musicians all have a long history together, and their free association produced unexpected outcomes which were embraced by Zappi and Dirk when it came to reassemblage. Dismissing veto power as the height of neo-liberal bullshit, they chose to keep more or less all the overdubs on the album, harnessing the power of arrangement and the mixing desk to fuse all these assorted elements into the impactful entities you hear on Blickwinkel.

The result is a shapeshifter, at times commune friendly psychedelia, then grinding industrial, eerie ambient or driving motorik, but always refusing easy categorisation. The stylistic definitions are constantly disrupted by unexpected guests - baroque strings, impish horns, found sound breakdowns, or else mind melting phasing and flanging - each offering a new combination on this

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: You know you're always in for a winner with a Bureau B release, and this time sees the turn of legendary Krautrockers, Faust. Zappi Diermaier and a host of collaborators smash through a selection of wild psychedelic grooves and insistent hypnotic jangles. Brilliantly done, as ever.

TRACK LISTING

A1 For Schlaghammer
A2 Künstliche Intelligenz
A3 Sunny Night
B1 Kriminelle Kur
B2 Die 5. Revolution
B3 Kratie

"A positive sonic chocolate box".
With Sähkömies, Jimi Tenor released his legendary solo debut in 1994 on Puu, a spin-off of the Finnish label Sähkö Recordings founded by Tommi Grönlund and Mika Vainio in 1993. Recorded in Tenor's former home in New York, the album offers a previously unheard mixture of drum machine driven, electronic sounds and Sun Ra-inspired jazz. Written, recorded and produced entirely by Tenor in his apartment, the pieces have lost none of their spontaneous, roughcast charm to this day.

TRACK LISTING

Theme Sax
Crazy Hammond
Union Ave
Take Me Baby
Matti B
Teräsmies
Voimamies
Travelin Dem Spaceways

In the beginning. Martin Rev's eponymous debut solo record was released in 1980, not long after the second Suicide LP appeared. It is one of the most seminal albums to have emerged in the early years of electronic music.

Musician and writer Karl Bartos has long been admirer of Weimar-era culture. During his time in Kraftwerk, he helped create the stunning track 'Metropolis', directly inspired by a band viewing of the classic 1927 Fritz Lang film of the same name.

The original orchestral music composed for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari by Giuseppe Becce had long been lost and in 2005, after watching the film, Bartos imagined what it would be like to create an entirely new one in the 21st Century in his home studios in Hamburg. Now with crystal clear images, digitally restored by the Friedrich-Wilhelm -Murnau-Foundation, the film is visually the best quality it has ever been, and now, with Bartos' soundtrack, there is impressive sound to go with the haunting vision. Narrative film music and sound design for Robert Wiene's classic 1920 psychological thriller.

For the task, Bartos ransacked his own library of musical compositions, recreating pieces he had written as a young classical musician in his pre-Kraftwerk days whilst creating new sounds, melodies and textures. The intention was not simply to write a film score per se. This was to be an immersive listening experience with special sound effects to match the action as we enter the film as both spectator and participant. A creaking door, footsteps on gravel, the turning of pages in a ledger, a half-heard fragment of dialogue are seamlessly synchronised to the action on screen. By taking the characteristics of Expressionism in the arts, and transferring them into film making, a disturbing, distorted depiction of reality enwrapped and entrapped the viewer.

The subjective replaces the objective. We are sucked into a parallel world lit in menacing chiaroscuro, where dimension, proportion and perspective are all off skew. From the convex polygon-shaped windows of precipitously sharp-inclined buildings to the surreally odd tables and chairs with long spindly legs to be found in preposterously small and oddly shaped rooms, alienating camera angles and impossible vanishing points, the town of Holstenwall in which much of the action takes place, is the world of the imagination, not the empirical world of our own eyes and ears. 'The cinema image must become an engraving,' the film's set designer Hermann Warm said. We can hear melodies that lie within the tradition of the Baroque Age of Bach, the early Romanticism of Mozart, the dissonance of Schoenberg, the unsettling metric play of Stravinsky and the harshly dramatic repetitions of Philip Glass.

From outside of the classical tradition there is the folklorist bricolage of the fair- ground barrel organ tempered playfully by some psychedelic backwards musique concrete along with some melodies which would not have been out of place on a Kraftwerk album from the classic era. All the time the listener is on a journey, sounds move in and out, music weaves and entwines, the soundscape is immersive and intoxicatingly rich. It is music which is, by turns, beautiful, amusing, playful and profoundly dis- quieting and it is perfect fit for the aesthetic of era-jumping in the actual film. Dr. Caligari's action switches from the then present day to the past century and even further back before rebooting back to the imagined present. 'There's something about this film. No matter how often you watch it, it keeps its secrets. Who is mad and who is not always remains a question of interpretation,' says Bartos. The film remains an enigma, but now one with the soundtrack and soundscape it deserves.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's a classic format isn't it, wise synth maestro crafts found-sound collage (in this instance it's his own 'lost sounds' that got 'found'), over classic psychological thriller. It's on Bureau B, and Karl Bartos and it's an absorbing and beautifully crafted listen. What's not to love.

TRACK LISTING

1. Prologue
2. Scary Memories
3. Atonal Floating
4. Full Of Life
5. In The Town Hall
6. At The Funfair
7. A Mysterious Crime
8. At The Funfair 2
9. The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari
10. Jane's Theme
11. March Grotesque 2
12. Janeâs Theme 2
13. Shadows
14. Tragic Message
15. Suspicion
16. Tragic Message 2
17. The Plan
18. A Dark Figure
19. Caligari's Theme
20. Arrest Of The Suspect
21. Caligari's Theme 2
22. Worried Jane
23. Interrogation
24. Jane's Fear
25. Francis's Observation
26. Cesare's Attack And Escape
27. Safe And Sound
28. Francis At A Loss
29. Caligari's Deception
30. Lunatic Asylum
31. In Search Of The Truth
32. Out In The Field
33. The Director Rants And Rages
34. Scary Memories 2
35. Who's Mad Here?
36. Francis Rants And Rages
37. Epilogue

Kreidler's seventh long-playing record for Bureau B is an affair of electronic pop music nurtured in now-clubs and rooted in Rhenish kraut, British post-punk (with a touch of NYC and Brussels) and international polyrhythm. In the 30th year of the band's history, on Twists (a visitor arrives) "Düsseldorf's second most famous band" (Boomkat) collaborated on four of the nine tracks with guests Khan Of Finland, Maxim Bosch, Natalie Beridze and Timuçin Dündar. They left the cover design in the hands of Fette Sans.

Welcome to Kreidler's postpostpostpostpostpostpostpostmodern album!

The band has been around for 30 years now. And I've gotten into the habit of synchronizing the phases of my life with the respective current Kreidler album. It’s a game I've come up with – my checkup: I listen. And this listening does something to me. And there I have to name this something, I have to mark it, find words. Then I treat the record like a symphony. And I envy Thomas Klein, Alex Paulick and Andreas Reihse, because they can tell stories with music even without stories – unlike in my profession of filmmaking, where it's always about stories for the story. So here I write my libretto for an album that probably wanted to tell something else. Because what Kreidler had in mind, I don't know. Kreidler don't know it either. There's nothing to guess, it's about giving another life to something inside you and this other will be a completely different child. And that is the most beautiful sign that something is interesting and exciting. I don't know anything about the source of this music, but I can check how my perception is to the perceptions of the band that translated it into the medium of music.

(Zaza Rusadze)
+ Zaza Rusadze is a renowned director and filmmaker who also works in theater. In 2020, together with Andreas Reihse, he won the MUVI Award for Best German Music Videoat the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen for directing the video Kreidler – Eurydike +

TRACK LISTING

01. Polaris
02. Tanger Telex
03. Diver
04. Loisaida Sisters
05. Arithmétique
06. Hands
07. Hopscotch
08. Mount Mason
09. Kandili

Holger Hiller presented his solo debut having left Palais Schaumburg. Originally released in 1983 on the Düsseldorf scene label Ata Tak, an international release followed in 1984 via Cherry Red Records. Combining electronic sequencer sounds and sampling fragments with unconventional lyrics its multidisciplinary approach locates it somewhere between the pop and avant-garde. Bureau B is now making the work accessible again on its 40th anniversary.

The archetypal Martin Rev sound – a perennial influence on generations of musicians – is most prominently in evidence in the works of Suicide, the duo he played in across the decades with Alan Vega. However, the radical and distinctive nature of his music can be traced further back in time, originating in the base energy of rock’n’roll which the teenage Rev experienced as the ubiquitous soundtrack to his home city of New York.

Rev initially explored free jazz and similarly free forms of musical expression before discovering the magnetic attraction of electronic production and instrumentation, enabling him to create music in a wholly independent and autonomous environment. Using the most rudimentary equipment, he grafted the roots of rock’n’roll into the process of combining effects and devices to generate electrified sounds, the likes of which had never been heard before. This music would map out the way forward not only for Suicide, but also for a fascinating solo career.

Martin Rev’s predilection for experimentation knew no bounds. At home, he played around with rough ideas, trying out all manner of variations and colorations. These tape recordings provide a captivating insight into his modus operandi, often representing the early stages of what would later become Suicide tracks or cuts on Rev’s solo albums.

Spanning the period 1973 to 1985, the recordings on "The Sum of Our Wounds" are much more than a collection of demos and outtakes. One has the sense of listening to a rounded album of familiar compositions, now portrayed in a completely new light. The brittle fragility of these cassette pieces reveals a deep-lying sensitivity, like a collection of wounds.

Martin Rev himself remains as transfixed as ever by these recordings, as if he could immediately pick up where he left off and continue to expand on the ideas that came to him decades ago: »They often have a certain freshness or unpolished energy here... and (there is) always scope for new ideas, to be derived from them as a whole or even in small areas.«

The cassette medium proves to be more than a means to an end – the tape recorder itself has a role to play as an instrument, the ideal basis for an artist who understands how to condense an idea into its fundamental elements: »The cassette sound, with its individual peculiarities, many even thought of in terms of inferior sound, can have an interesting dynamic. Maybe especially in certain minimal contexts when they are not being overloaded. Although they often seem to take on a lot of texture as well and with a warm response.«

And so these snapshots can be seen as stages of a ceaseless evolution, one we are allowed to witness as we sit alongside Martin Rev at the tape deck, listening as he captures the sounds of the unquiet city. - Daniel Jahn, June 2023

TRACK LISTING

01. Yearning
02. Dreams
03. Skateboard
04. Laredo
05. Zeitpunkt
06. Rio Grande
07. Baby O Baby (Mix)
08. Abracadabra
09. Lineup
10. El Barrio
11. She's Back
12. Temptation (Mix)
13. Asia (Mix)
14. Around The Corner
15. Mari (Mix)
16. Whisper (Vocal)

Over the last ten years a strange mycelium was sprouting from the ground of Germany’s sound topography, going widely unnoticed while creeping its way up through the copse of the ubiquitous “Neo-Kraut”, “Diskurs-Pop” and the like. We’re talking about a small underground network of artists and projects with poetic, mysterious names such as Brannten Schnüre, Baldruin, Kirschstein, Freundliche Kreisel and Balint Brösel. Operating in the margins and intersections of folklore, experimental electronics, dreams and nightmares, the “Gespensterland” LP archives and compiles their magic works for the very first time and already today it stands as a contemporary testament with an auratic presence comparable to that of Pordenone’s “Great Complotto”.

This compilation represents an initial – and long overdue – foray into the years 1980 - 82, when KLAR! 80 was a cassette label, paired with a shop of the same name in Düsseldorf. Founded by Rainer Rabowski, KLAR!80 released 18 cassettes of varying length and a box set containing three 12” vinyl Eps which fetch handsome prices among collectors nowadays.The KLAR!80 - Ein Kassettenlabel aus Düsseldorf 1980-1982 collection reaches even further back in time than the SAMMLUNG - Düsseldorfer Kassettenmusik 1982-1989 (BB236/2017) collection, similarly curated by Stefan Schneider, which focused on the mid-1980s Düsseldorf cassette scene. It captures the brief period between the end of punk and the looming capitalisation and digitalisation of so many aspects of life.

Welcome to Silberland - where the streets are paved with strobes. Home to neon lights, straight lines and open roads, this futurist fantasy was first founded in the mid-seventies, when Germany’s creative class chose musical therapy in order to indulge their shared hallucination of a new Europe. Fuelled by the catalytic fusion of globalisation and new technology, the world was turning ever faster and the kosmische generation were ready to keep the pace. With synthesisers, rhythm computers and human metronomes turned to a gallop, these electronic innovators set modernity to a motorik beat, and Bureau B’s second trip into Silberland cuts right to the thrust of the genre.

The set begins with the propulsive opener from Harald Grosskopf’s 1986 LP Oceanheart, in which pristine sequences play in counterpoint atop a mechanical kick, hurtling forward until the rest of the kit catches up. Live drums take centre stage for Cluster’s feverish “Prothese” and the time travelling “Elektroklang” by Conrad Schnitzler, which foreshadows industrial and techno innovations while maintaining a primal punch. You offer astral ascension on “Son Of A True Star”, weaving proggy square waves and pulsating arps around an irresistible shuffle from mysterious percussionist Lhan Gopal (Grosskopf in disguise), before the optimistic “Für Dich” fuses classic kosmische chords with Thomas Dinger’s pummelling beat. Asmus Tietchens’ detuned keys and drum machine samba are imbued with a punk spirit shared by Moebius Plank Neumeier’s discordant jazz-tanz jam “Search Zero”. “Beat For Ikutaro”, plucked from a mid 80s demo tape by Camouflage keyboardist Heiko Maile, swerves into icy electroid territories where moonlit melodies ride robotic riffs and a whirring low end. The cassette energy continues with the mechanised boogie of Lapre’s “Flokati”, a funkier take on the style in wonderful contrast with Adelbert Von Deyen’s breakneck, straight shooting “Time Machine”, a massively motorik night drive down the A7 which finally runs out of gas at the compilation’s midpoint. Günter Schickert takes us inside the fuel pump on the weird and watery “Puls”, while the charmingly disruptive Faust complete the pitstop via the blasted blues of “Juggernaut”, a fuzzbox stampede which builds from ratchet whirrs to a V8 purr in no time at all. Moebius & Plank return sans Neumeier for the deep and dubby “Feedback 66”, all murmured vocals and surging pedals powered by a seismic bassline from Holger Czukay, whose collaborations recur throughout the duo’s 1980 classic Rastakraut Pasta. Wheels spun and rubber burned, we move up through the gears via the airy tones of Roedelius to arrive at the high tension electronics of Serge Blenner’s “Phonique”, an anxious amalgam of insistent percussion and agitated sequences from the French import’s 1981 release. Moebius & Beerbohm’s “Subito” follows in a flurry of tribal drumming, guttural distortion and corrosive drone, a synthesised translation of punk spirit which mellows into the soft focus serenade of Tyndall’s “Wolkenlos”, a thrilling contradiction of pastoral motifs and breathless tempo. Pyrolator’s 1981 creation “180°” maintains the lightening pace, lurching forward in bursts of chaotic drum programming and sampler abuse, sending us spinning out into the strange beauty of Die Partei’s “Guten Morgen In Köln”. Enmeshing fragments of musique concrète and yearning guitar with throbbing sequences and a rigid rhythm grid, the duo signpost a melodic destination finally delivered by Streetmark keyboardist Dorothea Raukes under her Deutsche Wertabeit alias. A fitting finale, “Auf Engelsflügeln” radiates human warmth and cosmic wonder, serving electronic emotion from start to finish.

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: Bureau B are one of the greatest labels in the game, and responsible for some of the greatest records in electronic music history, so when they bring you a compilation, you listen. Every bit as brilliant as you'd expect, this is a beautifully curated and perfectly paced cosmic synth tome.

TRACK LISTING

01. Harald Grosskopf - Eve On The Hill (bureau B Edit)
02. Cluster - Prothese
03. Conrad Schnitzler - Elektroklang
04. You - Son Of A True Star (bureau B Edit)
05. Thomas Dinger - Für Dich (bureau B Edit)
06. Asmus Tietchens - Bockwurst á La Maîtresse
07. Moebius Plank Neumeier - Search Zero (bureau B Edit)
08. Heiko Maile - Beat For Ikutaro (Tape 52) (bureau B Edit)
09. Lapre - Flokati (bureau B Edit)
10. Adelbert Von Deyen - Time Machine
11. Günter Schickert - Puls (bureau B Edit)
12. Faust - Juggernaut
13. Moebius & Plank - Feedback 66 (bureau B Edit)
14. Roedelius - Band 068 3 Bock Auf Rock (nicht Verwendetes Stück)
15. Serge Blenner - Phonique
16. Moebius & Beerbohm - Subito
17. Tyndall - Wolkenlos (bureau B Edit)
18. Pyrolator - 180°
19. Die Partei - Guten Morgen In Köln
20. Deutsche Wertarbeit - Auf Engelsflügeln (bureau B Edit)

After a period of distance Station 17 just wanted to stand in a room together again and make some music, so they drove out of Hamburg to a remote site in the hills of the Hohe Geest in Schleswig-Holstein and played some new song sketches together – all day and late into the night. Afterwards they wanted to play the results live at a concert in Fabrik, a venue in Hamburg.

No one in the band expected that the sessions would result in an entire album, but the music told them once again: what had been created here in the radiance of the moment could not be reproduced. A moment of happiness for the band collective. "Oui Bitte", Station 17’s 11th album had been born – quite unexpectedly, between pool and trout pond

Konzert in der Erlöserkirche, Ost-Berlin, 3.9.1986 In 1982 Schnitzler had already met the New York musician Ken Gen Montgomery, who then regularly performed Schnitzlers' compositions live at various venues worldwide. And so Schnitzler also produced 4 cassettes especially for his concert in East Berlin, which were sent by courier from West to East Berlin. On the evening of 3.9.1986, the privately announced and illegal concert took place in the Erlöserkirche in East Berlin/GDR. Montgomery mixed Schnitzler's music live from the tapes. The elaborately restored original recording is now being released for the first time on LP and CD.

Renowned acid cosmologist Johannes Auvinen, best known by his alias Tin Man, leaves the club floor behind for a full-length kosmische excursion on Bureau B. Since his first Tin Man records nearly 20 years ago, Auvinen has impelled acid—in the grand tradition of Phuture and co.—into shapes and forms heretofore uncharted. He does it again on his latest, "Arles," exploring a new realm of impressionistic beauty where pristine, heartfelt melodies dance delicately atop austere motorik rhythms. It's a trip you'll want to take again and again.

Gegenwelt (Parallel World) is the second LP by CEL, a duo Kubin and Zemler formed. More melodically evolved than their eponymous 2020 debut, it is an even more explicit example of the syncretic impulse that impelled these guys to form the band. Their basic notion was to explore the juncture between two streams of German underground sounds -- the Motorik 4/4 rhythms first posited by Can's Jaki Liebezeit and Kraftwerk's Klaus Dinger, and the sequencer-driven brain loops of early, experimental pioneers of the NDW, such as der Plan.

Originally part of 2021’s Faust Box Set release commemorating the bands 50th anniversary Momentaufnahme I and II are now set for their own stand alone release by popular demand. This is for all those that missed out on the limited edition box set release. They collect together music recorded at the band's studio - a converted schoolhouse in rural Wümme between 1971 and 1974 in a similar vein to the way in which 'The Faust Tapes’ (released in 1973) was assembled. These two albums range from minimal electronic pulses, ambient dreamscapes, vocal collages to heavy drone, ritualistic percussion and psychedelic grooves. Highlights include the hypnotic space jams of ‘Vorsatz’ and ‘Rückwärts Durch Die Drehtür’, the delicate acoustics of ‘I Am… An Artist' and the radiophonic workship-esq 'Weird Sounds Sound Bizarre‘.

Let’s let founding member Jean-Hervé Peron explain more…. Faust were originally a group of musicians, each following our own inspirations, desires, illusions: many facets, many directions, different styles, different languages. We often had to struggle with the clash of our egos but there was also a natural tacit understanding of each other's role. We had the privilege to work with a great producer and an extraordinary recording engineer. From spring 1971 to spring 1974 we existed as a group. Then Faust became a Gestalt with various incarnations. Momentaufnahme? Don't panic here, it is only German for 'Snapshot’. Momentaufnahme I and II present a collection of unreleased snapshots which offer a wonderful insight into the world of Faust. Some tracks are extremely raw and experimental, others are fully rounded productions. So far we have MA I and MA II but we plan to do more of these when we come up with more material or new ideas.

TRACK LISTING

01. Naja
02. Flaflas
03. Es Ist Wieder Da
04. Mechanika
05. Weird Sounds Sound Bizarre
06. Karotten
07. RéMaj7
08. Fin De Face
09. Vorsatz
10. Acouphènes
11. Interlude 18. Juni
12. Dadalibal
13. Bonne Soupe Au Fromage
14. Rückwärts Durch Die Drehtür

For eight years now, songwriter and producer Sebastian Lee Philipp has been steering his project Die Wilde Jagd through the field of tension between contemporary electronic music and avant-pop. Between 2015 and 2020, three studio albums were produced as documents of Philipp's rigorous musical creativity. Most recently, «Atem», a composition for Roadburn Festival, was released in 2022, documenting yet another, more experi- mental side of the project. On the new, eagerly awaited fourth album, all these multi- faceted worlds are brought together in an impressive way.

«Ophio, Ophio» you say. Lies in the end of you Still the best ahead of me? With these lines from the title track, Sebastian Lee Philipp poses the question that spans over the entire album like a parenthesis. The work entitled «ophio» tells of constant trans- formation, the blurring of beginning, end, and the various dimensions in between.

«It's about the constant unfolding of the self, about the seductive forces of life, an ode to existence and the transformation to happiness.» Says Philipp himself about his concept- tual direction of the album. The meandering between leaving behind and starting anew is not only found in the lyrics, but also in the music itself. The production seems more consistent than ever before, stripping away all frills and trinkets, like a skin that has become too tight. The compositions form a concentrate in which every single sound finds its space. In a certain sense, it's like listening to an introspection in which the bundled voices become a single, demanding murmur that is both drone and whisper in equal measure.

I see you in blows of delight
Where have you been?
Make my eyes to love the things that want to love
(From «In Wonnenhieben», engl. «In Blows of Delight»)

As on the previous album «Haut», the drums were played by long-time stage partner Ran Levari. The new album also features cellist and singer Lih Qun Wong («Lihla»), who first joined Die Wilde Jagd for the Live performance of «Atem». This collaboration sounds particularly impressive on «The Hearth», the band's first English-language song. A beguiling track as if of shiny, heavy tar, carried by Philipp's dense composition, Levari's pulsating beats and lyricist Wong's voice. Other production partners were Philipp Otterbach («Kelch») and Vactrol Park («In Wonnenhieben»). Nina Siegler, who could already be heard as a duet partner in the song «Himmelfahrten», also lends her voice again to the tracks «Ouroboros» and «In Wonnenhieben».

When the journey ends after just under 50 minutes with the questions «Will your songs blind me again? Be sparkling eyes to me in the dark?» and dissonant choirs release you out into the distance, it's as if you're right back at the beginning again, only to set off once more. An album as strange as it is beautiful.

TRACK LISTING

1) Ein Anfang
2) Ophio
3) Perseveranz
4) Gnafna Nie
5) The Hearth (ft. Lihla)
6) In Wonnenhieben
7) Kelch
8) Ouroboros

Bonus 12":
1. Obus
2. The Hearth (Shelter Mix Ft. Lihla)
3. In Wonnenhieben (Douce Mix Ft. The Allegorist)

With "Leave Me Alone", Detlef Weinrich presents his fifth album under the moniker Tolouse Low Trax. Weinrich, who has meanwhile turned his back on Düsseldorf and lives in Paris, has long since ceased to be an insider tip and is a guest in renowned clubs and festivals all over Europe. With his new album, he succeeds in an exciting, unforeseen new direction. The velvety heaviness and rawness of earlier records seems to have given way to a new playfulness. A playfulness perhaps in the sense of an electronica reminiscent of the late 1990s, which in its idea of deconstruction and reduction is currently enjoying a new appreciation in the clubs. But also in the sense of an urban vibe of hip hop and dub references, which are woven into a very unique mix in Weinrich's tracks.

Nervous mechanical murmurs, drifting comic-like through razor-sharp rhythm cliffs: welcome to "Leave Me Alone", a loop meta-level dreamland of styles and mental meteorology. A repetitive notion on the overwhelming speechlessness towards the world, its clocking, and all the despairs that come along with it. Wholly veiled in a sharp sonorous language, that brings a complete agreement of the expression with the idea, a sense of harmony, of a secret beauty, that often escapes the judgment of the crowd. It marks the latest longplayer by Tolouse Low Trax. After his stunning collaboration with French singer and hurdy gurdy player Emmanuelle Parrenin and myriad remixes for artists like Aksak Maboul, Ex Ponto, or Sebastian Tellier, he sharpened his artistic skills for a fresh musical treasure hunt. "Leave Me Alone" is a renunciation from the industrial slow drone zones, waving into spectacular decon- structed style collages.

13 veiled drum machine experiments, featuring dubby jazz districts, hip-hop flair, haunting little melodies, and the TLT signature funk. Again, he listened to the prose of his rhythms deeply, connecting the tones, placing rhythmic commas judiciously, like stops on a long road. All obscured into a new, ironic, yet totally serious sound layout, that is mirrored in the minimalistic shaped cover art- work full of suggestions to ramified cultural meanings. For a wonder, this time almost no pocketed vocal samples in the TLT creations. Instead, freshly recorded spoken words and singing by Brooklyn based producer Chris Hontos aka Beat Detectives, poet and multidisciplinary artist Fran from Paris and Italian synthesist and singer Andrea Noce aka Eva Geist, chanting introspective verses and Pier Paolo Pasolini poems over rugged grooves and suggestive sounds, opening his creative universe into a crisp manic eroticism. A cluster of genres, dancing in a rebellious, blistering swing, whirling styles upside down with an overall atmosphere that is flourishing on a positive spirit. An accessibility unusual for TLT and his non- conformist MPC driven music. So, let’s leave him alone and get lost in a wavering jaunt that chase away angst and depression with smoky musical spells and dramatic interlocking beat patterns.

TRACK LISTING

1. Albatros
2. How To Beat The Sea
3. Gates
4. Impure Nature
5. I Would Prefer Not To
6. My
7. Non Giudicare
8. Yellows
9. A Great, Strange And Moving Work
10. Ossia
11. White Flicker
12. Muddy Floors
13. Bianca From Rome

Hazy dream chronicles.

A Martin Rev album is always liable to spring a surprise. Think of the rough guitars which unexpectedly appeared on his 2003 release "To Live" instead of synthesizers.

"Les Nymphes", which followed in 2008, saw Rev return to dream-laden melodic miniatures, but came from a resolutely more radical place than its predecessors. Once again, this work demonstrates the rigour of Martin Rev's approach, his willingness to embrace risk and his uncompromising rejection of a single aesthetic framework. "Les Nymphes" is, without question, the work of an artist who is constantly in search mode.

American indie label File 13 Records released what was already Martin Rev's sixth solo album in the autumn of 2003. The previous year, Rev and his musical partner Alan Vega had struck out in a new direction on their "American Supreme" album and Rev's solo works continued in a similar vein. If "Strangeworld" from the year 2000 actually felt more like a timeless abstract of Martin Rev's entire spectrum of musical influences,

"To Live", three years later, introduces more contemporary elements, including guitar samples for the first time. "To Live" is not easy to digest, a work of contradictions which marks a transition in Martin Rev's overall output as a child of its time, worthy of special attention in his legacy.

Without a doubt, To Rococo Rot are an exception within the German music landscape. From 1995 until they broke up in 2014, the group around Robert Lippok, Ronald Lippok and Stefan Schneider researched a unique sound between electronic music, ambient, post-melancholy and the further development of a new, free music like krautrock. The trio was invited 3 times by John Peel to record radio sessions in the BBC. Available on record for the first time, which, in addition to the versions of selected album tracks, also contains exclusive, unreleased songs.

TRACK LISTING

Intro
Thomson Colour
Tour De Repechage
Glück
This Sandy Piece
Prado
A Little Asphalt Here And There
Rocket Fuel
Telema
Esther
Glas

For their second foray into the fringes of German pop, Bureau B delve deeper than before, raiding cassette culture, 7" obscurities and overlooked album cuts to further frame this free- thinking strain of sonic expression. Starting the count from punk’s year zero, this set sees a newly liberated generation get weird and wild with anything they could lay their hands on, delivering demented, detuned and disorienting tracks brimming with DIY spirit. Where their kosmische predecessors preferred immersive, expansive compositions, these artists opted for immediacy, quickly capturing one idea before moving on to the next. Exploiting advances in home recording to say outside of industry confines, these art-school extroverts and commune drop outs often came together in unplanned collaborations and one off projects, capturing their whole creative lifespan on one side of a C45. As such, there’s a youthful charm to the sounds found on this compilation – an infectious combination of energy, expression and naivety running though each unlikely melody. This shift in approach and outlook even informed established acts, as evidenced by the perverse pop curiosities from Cluster and Moebius & Beerbohm lurking on the line up beside unreleased and un- remembered gems from the likes of Maria Zerfall and E.M.P.

Once again those expert selectors at Bureau B have done the hard work, digging deep to deliver a disparate, different and dissident side of German Pop Music. All you have to do is press play.

The sparse drum machine of ALU’s »Aludome« opens proceedings, laying the foundation for wavy guitar chords and simple melodies on this tender 1980 composition, which only came to light in 2005. From there we sink into the watery electronics, free jazz bass and abstract guitars of Detlef Diederichsen charmingly abrupt »Pissnelke 2000«, before Maria Zerfall moves us into the shadows with the dark and punkish dirge »Der Mond«, a haunting track with double tracked and distorted spoken vocals. Butzmann / Kapielski’s avant-dance masterpiece »Do The VoPo« diverts us to the dance-floor, where the oddball synth sounds and skewed sampler vox of Rüdiger Lorenz’ »Francis & Friends« traps us in a strange slow motion groove. The tempo raises via E.M.P.’s dubbish sabotage of 80s smooth jazz, turns inside out on Vono’s charming interlude “Der Zauberer”, then finds its feet again via Reichmann’s ’78 composition »Wunderbar« taken from the Sky LP of the same name. This frazzled fusion of cosmic country and Asiatic melody shares a widescreen worldview with Deux Baleines Blanches’ »Draht 9«, on which post punk electronics and chiming guitars combine with bittersweet beauty. The time-travelling Rolf Trostel takes us to the midpoint with pulsating chords which predate Basic Channel by a decade, while Phantom Band’s »Dream Machine« stitches together two decades of the psychedelic continuum in a riot of tumbling toms, panning sequences and brain melting waveforms. »Glucose« sees Moebius & Beerbohm unleash their strange music at a delinquent tempo, before Jimmy, Jenny + Jonny offer a second subversion of smooth jazz with their skronking Mediterranean fantasy »Salome«. Thomas Dinger’s frosty music box romance »Alleewalzer« and The Wirtschaftswunder’s stomping ska-like »Television« follow in quick succession, leading us into Cluster’s narcotic fairground »Oh Odessa«, a queasy assemblage of detuned FM bells and percussive piston bursts. From there, the dubbed out post punk of Sprung Aus Den Wolken, experimental dance of Notorische Reflexe and unhinged disco of Günter Schickert capture different ends of the alternative dance floor, before the pastoral outsider pop of Lapre’s »Septer« signs in a swell of yearning melody.

TRACK LISTING

01. ALU – Aludome
02. Detlef Diederichsen - Pissnelke 2000
03. Maria Zerfall – Der Mond
04. Butzmann / Kapielski – Do The VoPo
05. Rüdiger Lorenz – Francis & Friends
06. E.M.P. - Tanne-totSamba
07. Vono – Der Zauberer
08. Riechmann – Wunderbar
09. Deux Baleines Blanches – Draht 9
10. Rolf Trostel – Hope Is The Answer
11. Phantom Band – Dream Machine
12. Moebius & Beerbohm – Glucose
13. Jimmy, Jenny + Jonny – Salome
14. Thomas Dinger - Alleewalzer
15. The Wirtschaftswunder - Television
16. Cluster – Oh Odessa
17. Sprung Aus Den Wolken – Noch Lange Nicht
18. Notorische Reflexe – The Wisp
19. Günter Schickert – Leihst Du Mir Dein Ohr
20. Lapre – Septe

Conrad Schnitzler is one of the great pioneers of electronic music. Here Baal & Mortimer constructs new music utilising Schnitzler’s archive. Instead of reworking the material on its own,she chose to find traces of melodies, harmonies, notes within it, using them as seeds to add and derive new compositions. Schnitzler’s archive became the foundation and departure point from which a process of accumulation and chiseling away started. Through playing things on wrong speed, stretching, or warping, fractal structures appeared, one unfolding out of the previous one, almost like chaos magick set in motion.

Krishna Goineau was born in Sri Lanka In 1981 Goinau moved to Düsseldorf, where he met Christo Haas (former DAF member) and Beate Bartel (Einsturzende Neubauten founding member). He became the singer of the joint project Liaisons Dangereuses and lent his unmistakable voice to the band's big hit ("Los Niños Del Parque"). In 2007/2008 he worked at home with analog synthesizers on a series of songs that to this day have never been released. Electronic cut-ups and haunting compositions that sound as contemporary as they are detached from any zeitgeist. Bureau B is very pleased to finally make a selection of these lost recordings available with this collection "I Need A Slow“.

When the Welttraumforscher (world dream explorer) started their journey on July 14, 1981, it was not foreseeable that it would last so long. For over 40 years now, Christian Pfluger from Zurich has been working with drawings, texts and songs on the idiosyncratic and fascinating universe of the imaginary trio. This has resulted in numerous cassettes, LP & CD releases.

Most recently, a two-part retrospective was released in the spring of 2021 on Hamburg's Bureau B, giving an insight into the wonderfully rapturous dream world of the project, which despite the continuous work remains something of an insider tip to this day. With their new collection "Liederbuch", the Welttraumforscher are going on tour for the first time in many years.

The musician Kurt Dahlke is not only a member of the bands Der Plan and Fehlfarben, founding member of the group DAF and co-founder of the label Ata Tak, but also is Pyrolator.The sixth album in Pyrolator’s Land series has a formal language all of its own, meandering between the beauty of crystal clear melodies and restrained ambient moments on the one hand and rugged, dystopian brittleness on the other. A cycle revolving between the hope of a revolution for humanity and arrival in no man’s land.

Dieter Moebius is one of the most important protagonists of avant-garde electronic music in Germany. Alongside his bands Kluster/Cluster and Harmonia, he participated in numerous collaborations (with the likes of Brian Eno and Mani Neumeier/Guru Guru). Asmus Tietchens, one of his musical companions, compiled this collection for Bureau B – he concentrated on his solo works "as they offer the clearest insight into his personality and inventive potential".

Composer and conceptual artist Conrad Schnitzler (1937-2011) was one of the most influential figures of the electronic avant-garde in Germany. In 1967/68, the Joseph Beuys student founded the Zodiak Free Arts Lab, which became a playground for Berlin subculture. In addition to numerous solo releases Schnitzler was also involved in various band formations not least Tangerine Dream and Kluster. Representing another of his musical landmarks are the 'Consequenz' releases. 'Consequenz II' emerged from a collaboration with Wolfgang Seidel alias Wolf Sequenza, and is the follow-up project to 'Consequenz' which was a low-budget production that had an overriding aim of liberating music from its elitist circles in a 'Beuys-ian' sense. 'Consequenz II' returned to the theme with electronic apparatus that professionalised the sound but by no means reduced the fun he found in experimentation.

"There are no secret devices. ERUPTION are proof of that" - thus read the claim on an early 1970s flyer for Conrad Schnitzler's band Eruption, the group he started after splitting from Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius, who persevered as Kluster, and later Cluster.

Schnitzler had studied sculpture under Joseph Beuys and the statement echoed his teacher's philosophy: "Everyone is an artist." The flyer continued in similar vein: "ERUPTION are freeing the prisoners from their ivory towers." Schnitzler viewed art as social practice, not the realm of specialists. Anyone could get involved. You didn't even need to be able to play an instrument. The flyer also announced: "Members of the audience who bring transistor radios will get reduced admission if they play music on their radios inside the venue."

That was back in 1971, ten years before we produced and recorded the Consequenz LP. We included instructions inside the sleeve for setting up just such a project with the minimum of technical fuss, inviting submissions which used the record as a playback tool. One cassette arrived all the way from New York, but that was about it. Not really enough to satisfy our ambition of liberating artistic endeavour from the ivory tower (perhaps not so much of a surprise, considering we only pressed a hundred discs). We had almost resigned ourselves to life in the ivory tower when a letter from a Spanish label (Esplendor Geometrico) reached us, asking for a sequel - Consequenz II. It didn't take long for us to decide to accept the offer, encouraged by the fact that we would not have to finance the release out of our own pockets - as had been the case with the first Consquenz.

Certain "secret devices" had materialized in our ivory tower in the meantime. Conrad Schnitzler had purchased an 8-track recorder with money he had earned from "proper" art. I borrowed various bits of equipment from my band - Populäre Mechanik - including a drum computer, so we could really let rip. The little songs we made sounded much more "professional" than the cheerfully low budget music of the first Consequenz. I'd taken days off work for the sessions and after a week we had enough material to fill one side of an LP. The last track was further evidence of Conrad Schnitzler's sense of humour, as previously revealed on our "pop"album CON 3 (1981) and the "Auf dem schwarzen Kanal" single (1980). "España" on the A-side of Consequenz II is a vocal collage of the words "Buenas Tardes" and "España".

All we needed now was music for the B-side, but our enthusiasm for the borrowed drum computer had waned somewhat. It was always the first track we recorded, which meant that everything else had to follow its lead. The beat itself was singularly unimpressed by what came next. This was an unsatisfactory state of affairs for two players (musicians?) who had begun with free improvisation, with either of the participants able to change the direction of the whole thing. Unsatisfactory, in spite of the fact that I was able to play to the beat with perfect timing, which led Conrad Schnitzler to give me the nickname "Sequenza" (hence the Consequenz title). The natural division of an LP into an A-side and a B-side lends itself to a caesura when the disc is flipped. So we decided to return to free-floating sounds on the B-side and, listening back now, I'm glad we did. Instead of competing with each other, the two sides dovetail perfectly.

TRACK LISTING

1. Von Hand
2. Zack Zack
3. Fiesta
4. Hommage á Gaudi
5. Erotik
6. Windmill
7. Alhambra
8. España
9. Kastilien

Composer and conceptual artist Conrad Schnitzler (1937-2011) was one of the most influential figures of the electronic avant-garde in Germany. In 1967/68, the Joseph Beuys student founded the Zodiak Free Arts Lab, which became a playground for Berlin subculture. In addition to many other musical stations, bustling Schnitzler was a member of the Kraut-Electronic formations Tangerine Dream and Kluster. Numerous solo releases complete his extensive oeuvre. One of them is »CON 84«, probably his most composed work, on which he challenges the traditions of so-called Ernste Musik. The result is a complex electronic sound structure that marks a break with Schnitzler's previous work in a subversive flirtation with traditionalism.

»Schnitzler is an inquisitive chameleon«, as a friend of mine once said, whilst attempting to assemble Schnitzler’s musical output into some form of retrospective system. An enticing zoomorphism at first glance, yet not quite so convincing on closer inspection. Firstly, a chameleon uses its ability to change colour as camouflage. Schnitzler never needed, nor had any desire, to camouflage himself. Secondly, curious as he was (particularly with regard to how his own work developed and the results it would bring), he never, to my knowledge, demonstrated the urge to study his artistic activities through the inquiring prism of science or methodology. Perhaps what my friend was driving at was Schnitzler’s mastery of different forms, moving dexterously between them and integrating them into his own inimitable language. CON 84 is a perfect example thereof.

CON 84 is evidently the product of a computer-supported sound generator – a sampler. The original LP came complete with sheet music inserts, so a music printer must also have been part of the package. It is hard to say which instruments Schnitzler had at his disposal in the early 1980s. And more to the point, where did he record these pieces? Was he still at Peter Baumann’s Paragon Studio? Leaving such questions aside, what really matters here is the opportunity to gain an insight into Schnitzler’s complex musical imagination and powers. It appears as if he wanted to show the listener that he can still compose in the classical sense, creating a series of miniatures which are not so far away from the infinite glittering patterns of the existing Schnitzler cosmos. CON 84 lines up polyphonic compositions from start to finish. John Cage, Fluxus, randomness – nowhere to be seen. Schnitzler the traditionalist? A highbrow composer? On the contrary. Just as he so marvellously subverted common conceptions of art, Schnitzler crafted CON 84 to sound like Ernste Musik - serious (classical) music. He was a master of camouflage (with a wink of the eye) and repeated the trick nine years later on the French release CD CON BRIO. Following Schnitzler has always meant being ready to expect the unexpected. When he could, and had the financial means to do so, Schnitzler liked to use the latest technology. CON 84 was technologically advanced for its time, yet the music was paradoxically conventional. I imagine that Schnitzler took great delight in such contradiction. With shiny new digital technology at his fingertips, he chose to compose music in traditional form. Did »conventional listeners« enjoy the results on CON 84 as much their author? I doubt whether his parodies and twists on traditional composition resonated with them. Alas, there is no record of any Schnitzler reflections on this singular music, I would dearly have liked to have heard his thoughts. When the album appeared in 1984, it enriched an already diverse experimental music scene. The willingness to engage with the genre was growing - regardless of how many listeners there actually were. I clearly remember finding CON 84 in a record shop which specialized in new wave and industrial sounds. How did that happen? Simple: boundaries were now blurred.

TRACK LISTING

1. X19 II
2. X18 II
3. 28.6.84 Blasen
4. 16.4.84 I (1+2)
5. X19
6. X18 # I
7. X18 I
8. 16.4.84 I
9. X19 I
10. X18 (1+2)
11. 16.4.84 Frei
12. X18 # (1+2)

Jimi Tenor has always been something of a Renaissance man. On leaving his Finnish homeland for New York in the early 1990s, and later as he travelled through Europe, he quickly discovered what he calls his ikigai, his great joy in life: to record and produce music in DIY mode at home with the most rudimentary of means, spont- aneously and intuitively. In more than 30 years of making music, Tenor has remained true to his ideal, whether as a solo artist on his early electronic albums or in the widely diverse collaborations and constellations which followed (with the likes of Tony Allen, Kabu Kabu, Abdissa Assefa). "Multiversum" is now his third album for Hamburg-based label Bureau B.

Jimi Tenor and Bureau B first teamed up in 2020 on the former's "NY, Hel, Barca" retrospective and continued their association with the release of "Deep Sound Learning", a collection of rarities, in spring 2021.

Whilst Tenor has predominantly released jazz and Afrobeat records over the past two decades, his live performances have often seen him return to his minimalist roots. Enthralled by how Jimi Tenor the solo artist conjured up his space music with just a synthesizer, flute and saxophone, Bureau B ultimately invited him to record an album with this basic and yet astoundingly effective set-up.

Within just a few months, Tenor delivered an impressive selection of new pieces to Bureau B; all recorded in his Helsinki home studio. These tracks are now presented on "Multiversum", a record which provides further proof of Jimi Tenor's versatility. Based on drum machine beats and synthesizer loops, Tenor's music invites the listener to drift into open, limitless expanses - he is a master of the unforeseeable, audibly infusing all twelve new tunes with a sense of joie de vivre and intuition, with no recourse to standards. "Multiversum" is a declaration of love to the DIY spirit, somewhere between bedroom jazz and deviant techno.

As a counterpoint to the album release, "Omniverse" is one of the first books to be published in ‚Bureau B/Tapete Records' joint venture with the Mainz- based publisher Ventil. It is an impressive portrait of the artist, packed with photos and stories documenting Jimi Tenor's life and career in music.

TRACK LISTING

1. Slow Intro
2. Life Hugger
3. Jazznouveau
4. Uncharted Waters
5. Baby Free Spirit
6. Monday Blue
7. Bass Kalimba Dance
8. Birthday Magic
9. Gare De Noir
10. RajuRaju
11. The Way To Kuusijärvi
12. Bad Trip Good

After the overwhelming success of last years 1971-74 box set release, containing the first four studio albums and for the first time ever this lost 'last' album recording, 'Punkt' gets a deserved and necessary stand alone release to the relief of fans and collectors and the undoubted future gratification of those yet to experience the magic in these recordings.

'While working on the "lost" album which the band recorded in Munich, it became clear that I was listening to the last ever made recordings of this band lineup. It had been their attempt to release another album, which did not happen for several reasons. After this Munich session every band member focused on other things.So this was the end of Faust. No further recordings, no shows. Punkt. Which means "full stop" in German and has "punk" in it as well. An attitude which the band or at least some of the members certainly approved'. Gunther Buskies - bureau b

The band called it 5½, fans referred to it as the "Munich album" and for almost fifty years it's been the missing chapter in Faustian mythology. Now for the first time, the German iconoclasts' previously unreleased fifth album sees the light of day as Punkt. Not only does this title place a bold full stop after the final recording by the group's seminal line up of Péron, Irmler, Sosna, Wüsthoff and Diermaier, but it also references the unflinching anarchism of German rock's ultimate outsiders. Punktis Faust at their most unhindered, untethered and unstoppable.

Returning to Germany after a loss-making U.K. tour and after their manager Uwe Nettelbeck had split with them,the group dusted themselves down and planned their next project, what would have been their second for Richard Branson's Virgin. Joined as always by their engineering genius Kurt Graupner, the band took residence in the Arabella High Rise Building, the luxury hotel which housed Giorgio Moroder's Musicland Studio in its basement. At the time, the Italian's space disco odyssey was yet to blast off, and he gave the group the studio downtime around his sessions with Donna Summer.

Off the leash and on the lash (running up a record breaking room service bill), Faust spent their nights below ground, creating the sublime cacophony which courses through these seven tracks. Driven by Diermaier's primitive repetition and Péron's rabid low end growl, "Morning Land" stomps its way through almost ten minutes of heavy psychedelia. Vocals disintegrate into the sonic landslide of guitar feedback and synth scree, momentum building until the track rends open the hellmouth with its unthinkable heft. A Luciferian spirit courses through the beatless "Crapolino", a tumult of scorched guitar chords, strident FXs and disembodied vocals which bares all the hallmarks of a black mass. And just like that, the group summon some demonic hunting party for "Knochentanz" (bone dance), arguably their most immersive creation. Opening with Péron's plangent horn, the track soon establishes a hypnotic c ounterpoint between Irmler's electronic sequences and Diermaier's sparse rhythm, a pulse which continues to build for six minutes as kick drum, snare, shaker and toms pile on beneath the ever-present drone. The storm clears for a second to allow a celestial chord progression to emerge from the darkness before the heavens open and Sosna's snarling, sawing guitar rains down from above, carrying "Knochentanz" through its final iteration, a collision of muscular fretwork, percussion freakout and bleeping organ which completes the most psychedelic recording you've never heard.

The frazzled optimism of "Fernlicht" buzzes away like an acid Beethoven bathed in neons, before the breathless "Juggernaut" stretches the definition of blues rock to its limit as squirming sine waves, clattering cymbals and corrosive guitars pan, reverse and overlap, each following its own unhinged rhythm. Then for a time the sound and the fury abate, making space for the frankly sublime "Schön Rund", a piano-led diversion into the soul-swelling realms of ECM jazz and fin de siècleimpressionism, which rivals anything else in their catalogue for pure beauty. And in case you thought they'd gone soft, Faust sign off with the guttural groans and course drones of "Prends Ton Temps".

After ten days of recording, it became clear that Branson wasn't footing the bill and Péron, Irmler and Sosna were arrested until the mothers of Sosna and Irmler paid the bill - though not before smuggling the master tapes into an undisclosed location, where they've waited ever since...

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: This final 'Lost' article from the Faust pentalogy sees the German experimental powerhouse in fine form, wildly swaying between avant jazz, lounge funk and krautrock in a musically surprising triumph. Bonkers and brilliant.

TRACK LISTING

1. Morning Land

2. Crapolino

3. Knochentanz

4. Fernlicht

5. Juggernaut

6. Schön Rund

7. Prends Ton Temps

Hamburg synthesist Richard von der Schulenburg returns to Bureau B with the follow up to last year’s Moods & Dances 2021, harnessing hardware crunch, cryptic found sounds and field recordings on a mission for Cosmic Diversity. Taking inspiration from the haunting electronica of BoC and Plaid, refracted here through the half-life of a Zeiss lens, RVDS navigates the musical multiverse, simultaneously straddling electro, IDM, kosmische and dub across eight exploratory compositions.

(Experimenteller Elektronik-Underground DDR 1989) Bureau B presented a compilation of experimental, electronic music from the GDR's underground cassette scene in 2017 under the title "Magnetband" and now the Hamburg label is following up this thematic focus with the release of "MEZ 31,00" by Dieter Zobel aka Didier Leboz, recorded in 1988 and originally released on Thomasius' Kröten Kassetten label in 1989.

Experimenteller Elektronik-Underground DDR 1980-1990) Jörg Thomasius, discovered progressive sounds in the early 1970s. He was increasingly drawn towards the electronic signals emanating from West Berlin, so close and yet so far away, carried on radio waves through the Iron Curtain and surfacing sporadically in eager record collector circles on the eastern side of the wall. The material collected on “Acht Gesänge der schwarzen Hunde” spans the years 1980-1990. Spanning a full decade, the selection presents Thomasius as the multifaceted artist he is, even if he sees himself as more of an experimental DIY sonic creator: spherical, elegaic sounds float around whimsical jewels of extreme playfulness, weaving obscure vocal fragments into strange minimal constructs.

In a year of the moon, Kreidler have produced the album Spells And Daubs. In a year of the moon – and in a year with 13 moons. Such years are known for not being the most comfortable.

In September 2020 the band met for exploratory sessions and initial recordings in Düsseldorf, in the familiar settings of the Kabawil Theater. That already has a certain tradition. The impetus this time was a solitary gig in the conspicuously spacious surroundings of the (former) Philipshalle. In a year that threw everyone back on themselves. Over the winter Kreidler worked remotely, sifting through the material, arranging the pieces, adding textures and contours. They met again in the spring of 2021 for further recordings at the Uhrwerk Orange studio in Hilden, near Düsseldorf. That, too, has a certain tradition.

From fifteen pieces they filtered out ten, and thus held an album in their hands. Then – and this is new – they took it to London, to Peter Walsh, so that he could mix the tracks.

Daubs are in no doubt here. This is a tenfold of colourful-blotches-thrown-onto-canvas. Then a stepping back, contemplating, remixing paint, layering, overlaying, scraping free again elsewhere. And these spells are not devastating curses, rather they are enchanting incantations, a calling forth a spring without having to ban winter in a sombre masks. Spells And Daubs is a melodious interplay. Not that Kreidler neglect the rhythmic; their characteristic drive runs through all the pieces on Spells And Daubs. Perhaps it's like this: The beat is musicalised, the melody rhythmitised.

Spells And Daubs is like a collection of short stories. Its ten pieces explore the same space drawn together by an overlaying arc. All of them have the length of a single, and each one has the potential of a single in the way the arrangements are laid out – so enticing is the melodic line and the beat. This succinctness was perhaps last heard on the 2000 eponymous Kreidler album. The drums are powerful with a light swing. The bass alternates beyond its functionality and its indicator just of the low frequency, swoops up and takes over the melodic lead. Perhaps most beautiful in the irresistible pop gems Arena, Unframed Drawings, and Revery. Aptly Alex Paulick moved to the fretless Bass – conjuring the spirit of Mick Karn.

For all of their Krautrock attributions, Kreidler never tire of reminding us that their musical development stemmed form a love of British pop music. So you might say the co-op with Peter Walsh is a match made in heaven. His illustrious mixing and production skills have lifted works from Shalamar or Lynx to Heaven 17 to Scott Walker, Pulp or FKA Twigs into other spheres. Kreidler had previously collaborated with him in 2013 for two tracks (Snowblind, Escaped, BB169). On Spells And Daubs, Walsh's methods and magic are especially audible in the spatial production, with his hallmark blend of depth and punch. Spells And Daubs is wrapped up in an enigmatic black-and-white drawing by prolific artist and filmmaker Heinz Emigholz from his Basis of Make-Up series. Their ongoing collaboration feels like a constant now. The mutual interference of Heinz Emigholz's and Kreidler's universes started about ten years ago, when he expanded the album Den with seven videos.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Tantrum
A2 Toys I Never Sell
A3 Dirty Laundry
A4 Revery
A5 Unframed Drawings
Side B
B1 Freundchen
B2 Arise Above
B3 Music Follows Suit
B4 Arena
B5 Greetings From Dave

Dinked Edition Bonus Disc:
Side C
C1 Howling At The Third Moon
C2 Moon
Side D
D1 Howling

Die Wilde Jagd is the music project of producer and songwriter Sebastian Lee Philipp. Channelling minimalist, tenebrous intensity, Die Wilde Jagd's music weaves a dense and atmospheric web of drama, romance, ecstasy and melancholy Written for wooden organ pipes, cello, percussion and electronics.

A composition commissioned by Roadburn Festival. Performed by Sebastian Lee Philipp, Lih Qun Wong and Ran Levari.

Berlin based artist Sebastian Lee Philipp releases with his project Die Wilde Jagd a new work: "ATEM", a Live recording of his composition commissioned by the 2021 edition of Roadburn Festival, performed in Tilburg in the Netherlands on April 16th 2021.

An audacious 45-minute trip into the depths of evolution, organism and metabolism, this piece is an exploration of the mechanism and science of breathing and its essential role in life. Philipp himself plays synthesizers and an instrument developed specifically for the performance: a wooden organ pipe construction operated with an air compressor. The composer is joined on stage by collaborators Lih Qun Wong on cello and voice, as well as Ran Levari (who has played drums in Die Wilde Jagd since 2017) on percussion.

Speaking of his composition, Philipp says: "As human evolution enters new realms of reality, I find myself drawn to explore the basic essences of life: the things we are made of, that we take for granted and are, yet, still full of mystery. The parallels between breath and music are undeniable: pace, rhythm, volume and dynamic fluctuations influence us deeply. Breath is the elixir of life and the fuel for one of the most primitive vibrations: the human voice." The themes of creation and spirit within the composition are skillfully enhanced by Turkish Visual Artist Mürsel Güven.

A double album and single CD exploring the explosion of wealth of music springing from the squats and bedsits and artschools of Cologne, Dusseldorf, Hamburg and West Berlin in the aftermath of punk from the likes of Der Plan, Holger Hiller, Palais Schaumberg, Conrad Schnitzler and a host more.

Do not adjust your sets. Take a step back from the tracking. This is the sound of Germany’s musical youth let loose on cheap synths and pawnshop guitars. A record of a disparate s cene of squat pop-stars, artschool upstarts and committed non-musicians who redefined German music in the first half of the 1980s.

By the dawn of the new decade, punk had burnt out in a frenzy of feedback, reshaping the musical landscape before burrowing back into the underground for a period of reinvention. But the scorched earth it left behind proved to be fertile soil, nurturing a new movement grass-rooting through Germany’s major cities. For the first time the country had its own youth culture, spilling out of the squats of Hamburg and West Berlin, occupying the art scene in Düsseldorf and Köln and congregating around independent record shops stocked with angsty import 7”s. Empowered by punk’s DIY spirit, these kids valued conviction over competence, opting to ignore the industry and make music for themselves, sung in their own language. Even the cats we now call krautrock, revolutionary though they were, mostly sang in English, adopting the lingua franca of rock & roll as a shorthand for authenticity for a native crowd who wouldn’t have it any other way. This new scene rejected the expected, celebrating freedom of expression above all else. Armed with unconventional instruments, newly affordable electronics and rudimentary recording gear, they worked from the ground up, building basic rhythms and simple melodies into mutant grooves and following their imagination wherever it took them. The result was a genre-fluid wave of fusion pop pulled from funk, punk, jazz and reggae; united in attitude rather than aesthetic. Lyrically, the groups explored the serious and silly, embracing the irreverence of dadaism to deliberately displease the earnest alternativen of the older generation.

TRACK LISTING

01. Der Plan – Hey Baby Hop
02. Die Partei - Austauschprogramm
03. P!OFF? - Mein Walkman Ist Kaputt
04. Palais Schaumburg - Wir Bauen Ein Neue Stadt
05. Dunkelziffer - Keine Python
06. Populäre Mechanik - Muster
07. Andreas Dorau (Die Doraus & Die Marinas) - Sandkorn
08. Pyrolator - Im Zoo
09. Träneninvasion - Sentimental
10. Deutsche Wertarbeit - Guten Abend, Leute
11. Asmus Tietchens - Höhepunkt Kleiner Mann
12. Die Fische - So Verrückt
13. Conrad Schnitzler - Auf Dem Schwarzen Kanal
14. Carambolage - Die Farbe War Mord
15. Xao Seffcheque - Sample & Hold (Wer Bitter Im Munde Hat,kann Nicht Süßpricken)
16. Foyer Des Arts - Eine Königin Mit Rädern Untendran (Gerd Bluhm Remix)
17. Die Zimmermänner - Erwin, Das Tanzende Messer
18. Östro 430 - Sexueller Notstand
19. Die Radierer - Angriff Aufs Schlaraffenland
20. Holger Hiller - Jonny (Du Lump)

The new album by electronica producer Ulrich Schnauss and the Engineers guitarist Mark Peters 'Destiny Waiving' lands in store on Hamburg's Bureau B.

Hailing from Kiel in North Germany, it's now 20 years since the electronica prodigy Ulrich Schnauss released his debut album. His second, 'A Strangely Isolated Place' cemented his reputation as both a pioneer and an artist who routinely creates inspirational music that is adored by many. As a full time member of Tangerine Dream since 2014, his lifelong passion for their work inspired a creative resurgence for the band, resulting in their most successful new album for over 30 years, 2017's 'Quantum Gate'.

Liverpool born guitarist (and founder of the dream pop outfit Engineers) Mark Peters shared a similar musical path, exploring ambient textures and effect laden songwriting via a series of blissful albums for the band. In 2017 he released his first solo album, 'Innerland' which was enthusiastically received by BBC6 music and later included in Rough Trade's top ten best albums of 2018.

'Destiny Waiving' completes a collaborative trilogy that began with 2011's 'Underrated Silence' and followed by 2013's 'Tomorrow Is Another Day' (Schnauss also became a full time member of Engi-neers at this time). Initial sessions began at Ulrich's East London home studio in early 2017 and final mixes where completed there in late 2020. Despite it's extended conception, most tracks where com-pleted during 2017, in part informed by improvisational sets in London, Dublin and St James' Church in Birmingham (as part of the Seventh Wave electronica festival).

Despite these exercises in exploration, 'Destiny Waiving' is perhaps the most focused and concise collection of all three releases. Ranging in tone from precognitive foreboding to soaring optimism, the album delicately hones a particular atmosphere that is unmistakable in their work. While track titles such as 'The Supposed Middle Class' acutely display a concern for society at large, compositions and performances reveal a great deal more light and shade. This inherent balance is a key facet of the duo's chemistry, signposted by the titles of 'Chiaroscuro' and 'Clair-Obscur' and the shifting moods within the tracks. For every rushing, upward sweep (Hindsight is 20/20, 'Circular Time'), contemplative countering is evident in tracks such as 'Words Can Be Dismissed' and 'So Far', 'The Moment'.

As we're all tired of hearing now, the global situation in 2021 is less than ideal, but if it's any consolation, Ulrich and Mark have fulfilled their destiny by creating a work that's both undeniably potent and endlessly immersive.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. The Supposed Middle Class
2. Hindsight Is 20/20
3. Circular Time
4. Chiaroscuro
Side B
1.Words Can Be Dismissed
2.Speak In Capitals
3.Clair-Obscur
4.So Far, The Moment

Bonus Dinked EP
Side A:
1.Hindsight Is 20/20 (Count Two Four Version)
2.Circular Time (Measure By Measure Version)
Side B:
1.Words Can Be Dismissed (Talking Snare Version)
2.Speak In Capitals (Uppercase Drumming Version)

The most massive of ups goes to Daniel and Gunther at Bureau B for some sterling A&R here, locking the world's daftest drum savant, Niklas Wandt into his first solo LP. This percussive polymath keeps his diary fairly full with production, radio shows, DJing and a shitload of collaborative pursuits, whether with Joshua Gottmanns in N-NDW funksters Neuzeitliche Bodenbeläge, Dusseldorf gee Wolf Müller, Sascha Funke or ambient heart-throb Cass.

For 'Solar Müsli' though, Niklas takes centre stage with a debut solo LP informed by kosmische, jazz, Afrobeat and ambient, but placed in a universe of its own. This is not formalism at work, but an exhilarating, freely flowing album which started out as an exercise in improvised percussion and developed into a multidimensional journey, at times both introverted and ebullient. Stitched through with snippets of spoken word by some of his nearest and dearest, this wildly psychedelic listen is a journey through the nebulous realm of electronic jazz, both emotive and escapist.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Der Glaeserne Tag
A2. Durch Den Spalt
A3. Lo Spettro
A4. Wo Es War
B1. Kusnacht
B2. Solar Musli
B3. Am Rande

Hamburg's post-kraut-electro trio Love-Songs and Ulf Schütte (Datashock, Phantom Horse, Little Whirls) have formed a group named Love-Songs & U. Schütte for the duration of one long-playing record.

This body of work bears the modest title [Spannende Musik] – an attribution which sounds not in the least bit pejorative to those with no skin in the game: "Yes, it really is exciting music!" The adjective pinned to the music may go deeper: "spannend" can also express tension, in this case not to convey a mood or a tense thriller, but in a physical sense.

The musical foursome's nocturnal world tour begins (and ends?) in a shamanistic factory hall with no clocks. Rigorous polyrhythms are accentuated by dexterously frayed edges. Radio wave rituals are revealed by flickering fluorescent lamps, a tribalistic screw box is in danger of falling from a conveyor belt.

The dualism of minimalistic asceticism and long-distance free improvisations create that selfsame tension which lends the spacious music of Tony Conrad, Joshua Abrams or the kosmische, yet earthed music of Pulse Emitter et al, such an original voice and atmosphere. One must search far and wide to find space and movement interlock so seamlessly through such meticulous layering and barely perceptible shifts in order to maintain the tension alluded to earlier.

The purely descriptive titles of the individual tracks, lifted from annotations of music in film sub-titles, lead us further astray than we might have first thought – which brings us back to the actual meaning of tension and what it is capable of evoking on a semantic and aesthetic level, something which contemporary music painfully lacks: a certain unreliability.

TRACK LISTING

Surren Steigert Sich
Dumpfes Hammerndes Drohnen
Unregelmassiges Klicken
Ulf & Thomas Spielt Im Hintergrund
Spannungsvolles Rattern
Dusteres Wabern
Langgezogener Hoher Ton

"Kiosque Of Arrows 2" is Detlef Weinrich's (a.k.a. Tolouse Low Trax) first compilation for Bureau B. Echoing the spirit of the legendary samplers found on Les Disques Du Crépuscule or Made To Measure, this hybrid journal collates unusual pieces of music - rare and undiscovered pearls from the experimental underground of the early 1980s through to contemporary unreleased recordings It all helps to pinpoint Tolouse Low Trax as artist and curator in the grander scheme of things, whilst evoking the spirit of countless nights at the Düsseldorfer Salon des Amateurs.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Macromassa - El Consecuente Aspecto De Geometria
A2. The Stupid Set - Basset
A3. DsorDNE - Il Senso Di Torpore
A4. Techno Twins - Donald & Julie Go Boating
A5. Venus In Furs - La Valse De Salon
A6. Javier Segura - Camino Largo
B1. Bassae - Oedipa Maas Y Los Atomos
B2. Lydia Tomkiw - Hot June Evening
B3. Iueke & Lippie - Van Gogh - La Farandole Op1
B4. Kaoru Hirose - Dah-May-Yoo
B5. Viola Renea - Chariot Of Palace

"Spring" is Thomas Klein's fourth Sølyst release on Bureau B, gleaned from material spanning the past three years. The time he has spent with these pieces has been time well spent. In revisiting them, he has posed new questions, rearranged and reworked some elements, dismissed or discarded others. Photophobic dancers, tar on their shoes, flashes of light, monochrome is our only colour. "Spring" is the soundtrack to a night such as this, plotting its course through to the late morning: take "Sheroes" and play it between Martin Rev and Chris & Cosey, take "Atlas" and play it, if you will, after Tolouse Low Trax. And before the doors reopen, take "Spiral".

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. Sheroes (5:30)
2. Flex (2:53)
3. Thief (6:30)
4. Flush (4:02)
Side 2
1. Hold (5:23)
2. Atlas (3:40)
3. Spiral (6:51)
4. Spring (4:09)

Barely pausing for breath after 1983's Colours And Soul, Dunkelziffer delivered In The Night the following year, their revolving line-up prompting an evolving sound. Though the playful elements of their debut remained through a trio of sun-blushed dubbers, the album also housed the ensemble's most dense, intense and serious tracks to date. After Rebop Kwaku Baah (vocalist on their previous album) sadly died a perfect reinforcement was waiting in the wings, and the unmistakable Damo Suzuki led the charge with Helmut Zerlett taking double duties on backing vocals.

Though better known as fine purveyors of kosmische and 'krautrock', Bureau B have been making excellent inroads into the NDW scene of late, and there are few more sought after records from the Neue Deutsche Welle than this self titled beauty from Munich's P!Off?. Released in 1982 by Transparent, the album achieved some respectable successes at the time, but quickly disappeared in the flood of NDW releases of the early 1980s. Songs like the boogie track "Mein Walkman ist kaputt" or the enchanting slow disco jam "In der Nacht" are still very popular among diggers and DJs to this day. They are happy to finally make this rarity available again. The ‘82 Album has become a sought-after collector’s item and cult object so we are very happy that Bureau B is presenting a lovingly remastered reissue after almost 40 years.

TRACK LISTING

Das Dicke Kind
Mein Walkman Ist Kaputt
Pass Auf!
In Der Nacht
Starker Bruder
Ich Kann Kein Franzosich (Dansez)
Schau Dich Doch An
Was Ist Das?

Irish producer Chris W Ryan (Just Mustard, NewDad and his own Robocobra Quartet) began releasing music under the moniker SORBET in 2020 with the express intention to cleanse the palate; both for the listener and himself. Exploring freely across genre bounds, the world of SORBET is informed by electronic music just as much as classical and alt-pop, with nods to artists like Laurie Anderson, Arthur Russell, Kate Bush and David Byrne.

Vienna, the early 1980s. Krautrock, electronic and ambient pioneer Hans Joachim Roedelius, co-founder Cluster and Harmonia and saxophone free spirit Alexander Czjzek meet for the first time. Their longstanding collaboration found its climax in the fantastic album "Weites Land", which was released in 1987 for the first time, but has been out of print for many decades and became a sought-after rarity.

Bureau B is pleased to make this organic jazz masterpiece finally available again!

TRACK LISTING

A1. Einklang 
A2. Sonniger Morgen
A3. Beruhrung
A4. Ballade
A5. Weisst Du Noch?
B1. Nahe
B2. Weites Land
B3. Hoffnung

Shrouded in myth, 'Save Your Software' is the long-lost album by Der Plan. Back in the mid-1980s, Moritz Reichelt, Kurt Dahlke (Pyrolator) and Frank Fenstermacher initiated the Fanuks project with the aim of making themselves immortal as Mensch-Maschinen or Man-Machines. By the end of the decade, the Fanuks, or their respective human alter egos, had crafted six pieces. These were only rediscovered in 2020 during a thorough inspection of the Ata Tak/ Der Plan archives. Reichelt, Dahlke and Fenstermacher augmented their six visionary masterpieces with three tracks based on compositions from the year 1989. Now it works at least a little with eternity, even if 'only' in the form of the legendary productions that have finally been made available to the public.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Copy Copy Machine
A2. Cyberspace
A3. Uin Uin Mun Kona Bap Uin
A4. LP 3
A5. Repair Yourself
A6. Save Your Software
B1. Die Geschichte Der Fanuks
B2. I Can Love
B3. I Want To Sing Like Ella
B4. Fanuk Rock

Ever since he released his music in the early '80s Michel Banabila has been hard to pinpoint to a specific genre or style. His musical output includes jazz, experimental cut-up electronics, world music (especially influenced by the Fourth World music as developed by Jon Hassell), New Age, eclectic pop tunes, music for dance or other stage projects, and soundtracks for TV. Some listeners may have found it difficult throughout the years to find their way in this versatile output.

For this particular release, Bureau B chose a different approach. Instead of archiving early works from the 1980s, Wah-Wah Whispers focuses on Banabila's more recent output. It is a collection of works showcasing many facets of his music: a journey visiting the minimal and cinematic sample scape, contemplative ambient / fourth world scenes and more. The album ends with a kaleidoscope of atmospheres gradually building up to a noise climax.

This is the eighth Mapstation album Stefan Schneider has released since 2000. Hailing from Dusseldorf, the electronic music artist and producer finds inspiration in African and South American folklore, dub and, naturally, Krautrock, taking his time to process his responses in a consistently thoughtful manner, never resorting to cliche. He has also found time to pursue other projects in recent years, one with Electronic Music pioneer Hans-Joachim Roedelius for example (2011).

With the band’s tenth anniversary in their viewfinder, CAMERA release “Prosthuman”, their fifth studio album. As befits an age in which realities can change in the blink of an eye, from one day to the next, the Berlin band never tire of changing themselves, their music or personnel.

As Karlheinz Stockhausen noted: “New methods change the experience. New experiences change man.”

Taking this as their lead, Michael Drummer (the drummer) and CAMERA surprise us once more on “Prosthuman” as they reinvent and reformulate their sound without sacrificing the project’s identity which has matured over the past decade. Less surprising is the fact that some record stores give CAMERA their own section, alongside Krautrock pioneers like NEU!, Can and La Düsseldorf. “Emotional Detox”, the predecessor to this album, was distinguished by the presence of two keyboard virtuosos (Steffen Kahles and CAMERA founder member Timm Brockmann). Finding replacements for “Prosthuman” was, as Michael Drummer stresses, “a difficult process.” The two keyboardists had – in different creative periods – formed the backbone of a band structure otherwise prone to fluctuations. Decisive input came from an unlikely source: Tim Schroeder, who first teamed up with CAMERA as a performance and video artist on their six-week tour of the USA in 2017.

Over the course of various jams and recording sessions, he was able to offer ample proof of his synthesizers skills. Alex Kozmidi, a musician and composer with a flair for experimentation, completed the triumvirate on guitar, with Michael Drummer adding his own guitar riffs here and there. Change and friction can be useful allies in pursuit of creativity, something to which Drummer has grown accustomed as the only ever-present member of CAMERA. The pleasures and pain of isolation – suddenly a mass phenomenon in pandemic times – are well known to the quasi frontman of the group. Over the years, he has spent many hours alone or with a shifting cast of co-musicians in the band’s basement studio, beneath a former factory site in a less than hip southern district of Berlin. Virus-induced social distancing and quarantine measures that came into force during the recording process (June 2019 to June 2020) thus posed no great challenge.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: It's always a delight when something hits the shelves from Bureau B. This time sees Camera revisiting their familiar heady kosmische groove, albeit with different staff. Drummer and Schroeder here perfect the warmingly organic duality of synthesiser and live percussion, resulting in a fluid but cohesive build and release narrative and a hypnotic, rhythmic nod.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1.Kartoffelstampf
2.Alar Alar
3.Prosthuman / Apptime
4.Überall Teilchen / Teilchen Überall
5.Freundschaft

Side B
1.El Ley
2.Schmwarf
3.A2
4.Chords4 / Kurz Vor
5.Harmonite

Exclusive Dinked Bonus 12”:
A2 – Lloyd Cole Remix
Schmwarf – The Telescopes Threw A Way Through Experimental Health Version
Alar Alar – Love-Songs Remix
Prosthuman – Extnddntwrk Remix (Andrew Robert Lindsay Fearn Of Sleaford Mods)
Freundschaft – Dead Skeletons Planet Book Remix (Ryan Van Kriedt, Henrik Björnsson)

Revered Hamburg musician, synthesist and DJ RVDS joins the Bureau B ranks with the meditative and mellifluous sounds of ‘Moods and Dances 2021’ - a musical present from the future past.

Inspired by the otherworldly exotica and imaginative electronics of library music’s golden age, Richard von der Schulenberg conjures palm trees and pyramids, promenades and portals, all observed from the heart of a Holodeck. Seven Of Nine tracks are named after the equipment used to create them, offering an additional journey through the patch bay-mayhem of the RVDS home studio, and paying homage to the tonal nuance among his collection.

Now whether he’s atop Mt. Acid with a molten 303, caressing tender Fender keys through an improvised jazz set or live scoring some stage-based theatrics, Richard’s music always offers an immersive experience, but perhaps never more directly than this latest opus.

We wash up on the digital shoreline of ‘Mrs Yamaha’s Summer Tune’, sparkling with salt water and the shimmer of polished mallets and subtle percussion. ‘Caravan of the Pentamatics’ heads inland through the tree line, carving a silk road through Ethiopian jazz tones and snaking rhythms until it encounters the mystical presence of The Farfisa Sphinx. Cryptic melodies float a top a bed of spheric bass, intangible and irresistible until they fade into the sand storm. The gentle and jazzy ‘Roland’s Night Walk’ provides a little rest from the desert deities, though distant gunshot and the unceasing cicadas add tension to the moonlit majesty of those delicate keys. The dawn brings heartbreak via the dewy melodies and tonal malady of Richard’s DX7, but somewhere someone’s dancing to the propulsive bassline, eerie vocals and Arabesque sounds of ‘The Space Pentas’, a little kosmische boogie which just builds and builds. But dervish whirls are thirsty business, so it follows you should take a drinks break at the ‘Wersimatic Space Bar’, a sophisticated kind of cantina awash with exotica. Then the boogie is back for the penultimate track, a deranged, demented and diabolical bit of commune chaos brought back from ‘Planet Dragon’, and translated into a Radiophonic workout. Parting is such sweet sorrow on any planet, and ‘The End (Lala)’ captures the sentiment superbly, serving space sirens, somnolent bass sounds and bursts of static at a stately tempo.

Though Library inspired, and undoubtedly indebted to the hardware in action, this intriguing intergalactic trip is more passionate than a pastiche; playful, poetic and enigmatic in true RVDS fashion. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Hamburg's synth genius RVDS fires up the hardware to create a mystical homage to the Italian library records of old. Alongside the Balearic lullabies and digital exotica there are also a couple of groovers for the more adventurous dance floor ("Dance Of The Space Pentax" I'm looking at you!)

TRACK LISTING

A1. Mrs Yamahas Summer Tune
A2. Caravan Of The Pentamatics
A3. Flowers For The Farfisa Sphinx
A4. Rolands Night Walk
A5. DX7s Broken Hearts
B1. Dance Of The Space Pentax
B2. Wersimatic Space Bar
B3. Planet Dragon
B4. The End (La La)

Viennese artist Conny Frischauf's music is a whirl of Kraut, leftfield electronica and synth pop. She playfully shines a new light on on tradition to create a fresh, contemporary sound. Having released a brace of EPs - Effekt & Emotion" (International Major Label, 2018) and Affekt & Tradition" (Kame House, 2019) - Frischauf now presents her debut album, Die Drift. The sheer immediacy of the album owes much to Frischauf's aptitude for integrating experimental sound structures into the microcosm of a pop song. A work of sonic depth, the record marries free music with irresistible pop appeal. Sam Irl, musician and engineer, takes on co-production, mixing and mastering duties. "Es geht rauf, rauf, rauf" - this single line heralds the journey which is about to begin, one on which Conny Frischauf's voice functions as a GPS: a rhythmic, chirping instrument interacting with electronic drum machine grooves, using language as sound to carry words, disorienting material which enhances the overall associative impact.

Texts which go beyond narration, opening up perspectives, locations confusions. Inside is outside is in-between, right, left, front, back, until you don't know whether you're coming or going. An endless drift, as the album title announces, the constant movement of waves generating currents on the water's surface. Frischauf deploys a wide range of instruments, adding a wealth of colour whilst balancing her playful approach with unfailing transparency, each element clearly arranged to create a particular sound. The complexity of simplicity. Sounds shimmer like kaleidoscopic reflections in a rush of echo loops, yet these are never used for mere effect, instead they represent careful brushstrokes on the broader fabric. All ten tracks on the album share an almost random, economically sketched intensity of effect, mirrored in Anna Weisser's cover art. Everything comes together on the closing track of the album, "Freundschaft" – in the end, friendship. Waves ripple outwards like a mantra, still in motion as they dissolve. All you have to do is let yourself fall in.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Bureau B are one of the greatest labels out there for weird electronic music (some of my favourite acts of all time have been on BB), and Die Drift is every bit as exciting and groundbreaking as the rest of their roster. Hypnotic psychedelia mixed with classic krautrock and *that* German bass sound. It's a beautiful journey, and a rewarding one.

TRACK LISTING

1. Rauf
2. Parapiri
3. Fenster Zur Straße
4. Sonntag
5. Auf Wiedersehn
6. Zeit Verdrehen
7. Roulette
8. Eingaben Und Ausnahmen
9. Private Geheimsache
10. Freundschaft

Bureau B have already re-released four classic albums by Der Plan and now they present to you reissue number five. The name of the album is simultaneously the concept. Numerous diverse pieces which illuminate the world in all its absurdity. The album title is lifted from the David Lynch movie Blue Velvet (It’s a strange world). The songs on the album were, for the most part, composed in a legendary session, improvisations really. They decided to play each piece in a different key and use irregular time signatures: Der Plan was often seen as a fun, colourful, NDW (Neue Deutsche Welle) band and they wanted to counter that image by bringing their obscure roots to the fore. Ladies and gentlemen, lean back and enjoy the wonders of a strange and peculiar world.

TRACK LISTING

A1. 1 Moment = 2 Sec
A2. Ich Hab Den Jordan Gesehen
A3. Get Out!
A4. Frisch Verliebt
A5. Die Paranoia Kritische Methode
A6. Kennen Sie Koln?
B1. Komm Zuruck!
B2. Wenn Du Nicht Zuhause Bist
B3. Kreuze Niemals Deinen Weg!
B4. Die Geschichte Des Schwarzen Goldes
B5. Bleib Gold!
B6. Press G Punkt!
B7. 1 Mann, 1 Ball
B8. Bye Bye!

The final instalment (for now) in this little series of classic Der Plan album reissues. Eleven years had passed since the release of "Geri Reig", their debut album. Tiki and electronica, noise and schlager, psychedelia and industrial, Kurt Martin and jerry-rigging, Cargo Cult and Ata Tak, Wuppertal and Dusseldorf, Hans-Albers-Platz and West-Berlin, Emulator I and Emulator II, old pizzas and new masks, making the most out of the least and living in the gallery, abstraction and pop, Japan and Japlan. A lot going on in those eleven years! Good times ... they had a ball. Beautiful.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Es Werde Licht
A2. Die Peitsche Des Lebens
A3. Anders Sein
A4. Wenn Wir Beide Auseinander Gehn
A5. Kathedrale Der Konzentration
A6. Alles Ist Sinnlos
A7. Alter Mann
A8. Vive La Vie
B1. Wir Babies
B2. Kleiner Junge
B3. El Cigarro
B4. Live At The Village Vanguard
B5. Das Bose Kommt Auf Leisen Sohlen
B6. Erst Ich Dann Du
B7. Spiel 77
B8. Das War So Schon

Neuzeitliche Bodenbeläge is the musical vehicle of Niklas Wandt and Joshua Gottmanns. They released a single - Ich verliebe mich nie - in 2018 and an EP entitled Leben in 2019 on the Düsseldorf label Themes For Great Cities. Now the time has come for the Berlin duo’s long-awaited debut album. The 7 tracks comprising Der große Preis distil the inimitable NB sound which blends velvety synth-pop and crystalline digi-dub, basslines like cubes of glass and whiplash snares. The album title certainly lives up to its name: The Grand Prize. This is adventure time, from wild romance to petty crime – it’s all waiting for you right here.
It was early 2019 when, led by their very own energy coach Ali Europa, the band ensconced themselves in an offseason hotel on Lake Constance to record the album, the same procedure that spawned their afore-mentioned
EP. Between a mothballed breakfast buffet and darkened wood furnishings, bright winter sunshine and lonely nights, Wandt and Gottmanns set about conjuring up smoke clouds. The two protagonists have always been drawn to the most contradictory scenes of local nightlife, indeed the project was born in the underground bars of Berlin. On their lakeside sojourn, they paid a quotidianal visit to the neighbourhood watering hole, where a “No Problems” playlist - parts 1 to 5 - blared out of the jukebox and semi-anonymous players lost themselves in a blur of numbers and fruit as the slot machines whirred and flashed at one end of the room. Many a Euro coin was lost here, but a valuable concentrate seeped through the ether which would allow new tracks to grow. A mixture of dark brown artificial leather upholstery and grey FRG decor and synthetics, cosiness and a railway station milieu, aching heads and excitement. The magic ultimately reached completion in the converted studio suite; a pile of analog synthesizers and rhythm machines, a Studer desk, computer, a vocal booth in the shower. Irregular working  ours, and paradoxical daily routines caused considerable friction and, at times, the two musicians worked separately from each other. When contradictions reach breaking point, how rewarding it is for everything falls into place, just like that. Crack open the champagne, pour an Averna and Arabian Mocha.
One eventful year later, the finishing touches were applied in Vienna 1070, or to be more accurate, in Sam Irl’s home studio and the International Major Label Studio just around the corner: Gelb's Groove emerged from smokeladen nothingness in February 2020. The end product was honed with overdubs, refinements and vocals. Finally, the title track, Der große Preis, based on supercharged lyrics that had been floating aound for some time, was completed with Daniel Meuzard piloting his spaceship-like EMS synthesizer. A month later, cultural activities came to an end and Neuzeitliche Bodenbeläge had their debut album in the bag, like one big promise. Sounds evoking fragrances of yesteryear, yet as young as the present day. Tales of long nights and hot mornings, a market square and leather car seats, all as fresh as the day after tomorrow, having outgrown any scene imaginable. Everything pulsating, every one breathing, the expansion of now. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Ja ja ja! Utter gees Niklas Wandt and Joshua Gottmanns are back on an N.B. tip, treating us to a weird, wavey and wonderful LP on the rejuvenated Bureau B! Blending Deutsche boogie and wonky electronics the duo conjure up the stickiest synth funk imaginable on an LP packed with treacle dancers and junk food hallucinations.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Der Grosse Preis
A2. Gelb's Groove (feat Sam Irl)
A3. Haare
B1. Keramik & Konflikte
B2. Marktplatc
B3. Maske
B4. Rausfahr'n

Bureau B continue their awesome A&R work here, delivering the debut longplayer from Hamburg's Love-Songs. Over the course of several EPs and the mini-album 'Inselbegabung', the trio have skirted the neon swamp, fusing kosmische sequences with organic percussion and improvised electronics to create their own brand of auditory hallucinations. Here they extend a hand and pull us into the shimmering water, baptising the listener in their psychedelic sound in a forty minute ritual. Over the course of seven tracks, the German group deliver their most ecstatic tracks to date, mesmeric and mind expanding commune eletronics, tribal bouncers and concentric cuts for all you techno pagans.

TRACK LISTING

Proxy I
Selbstauflöser Teil 2
Das Labyrinth
Nicht Nicht
Tisch Mit Drei Weinen
Proxy II
Og

Martin Rev's fourth solo album See Me Ridin' was released on the New York label Reachout International Records (ROIR) in 1996. Received by the critics with amazement, it proved to be a watershed moment in his career. Martin Rev's vocals are as minimal as they are sentimental, wonderfully poetic like a latter-day Chet Baker perhaps, or Jonathan Richman. This solo album not only blindsided Rev's critics and fans alike, but also painted a personal, nostalgic portrait of his home, New York; fading out the noise and contradictions of the city to channel the romantic energy of the metropolis. 

Martin Rev's fifth solo album - Strangeworld - was released on the cusp of the new millennium. The label responsible was Puu, a Finnish imprint belonging to Tommi Grunlund and Mika Vainio's Sahko Recordings which came to fame in the 1990s on the strength of its uncompromising minimalist sound. Four years earlier, in 1996, Rev had unleashed See Me Ridin, an album which surprised its listeners with keyboard melody sketches and distilled doo-wop compositions. It was also the first solo album to feature Martin Rev on vocals. Strangeworld started where its predecessor left off. Melodic passages dissolved into a thicket of fragments and set pieces, coalescing in a celestial shimmer between rhythm loops and Rev's voice, which assumed the role of an additional instrument rather than a standard singing part. 

Front View is the album debut of film-maker and musician Helena Ratka, alias Pose Dia. A soundtrack and theatre composer, as well as resident DJ at Hamburg's Golden Pudel Club, Ratka emerged onto the scene as one half of Shari Vari (together with Sophia Kennedy). Now all these pathways or winding roads have converged to create Pose Dia and an impressive album of many facets - a self-assured debut. The resulting album takes us on a mysterious journey through a darkish landscape. Pose Dia's tracks assume the most diverse forms - from supercooled synth-wave sounds or the weightless effortlessness of pop on the one hand, to the dsytopian urgency of contemporary club music or flashes of hip-hop on the other.

TRACK LISTING

A1. At The Beach
A2. Smoz Opera
A3. How To Find The Exit In Case Of Fire
A4. Harvest III
A5. Scanner
A6. Walking Running
A7. A Gap In The Step
B1. Phrase Paraphrase
B2. Get Up High
B3. Infinity Pool
B4. Spacerine
B5. Cloud

Schlammpeitziger is the alias of musician, illustrator and performance artist Jo Zimmermann. He has been an integral figure in the evolving sound of Cologne since 1992, releasing his surrealist lo-fi krautronica on imprints such as A-Musik, Pingipung and Sonig. The first notes of the opening title track Weltleck instantly confirm that this is no run-of-the-mill record. Jo Zimmermann confounds expectations as he wraps the art-electro sound of Schlammpeitziger in otherworldly dub echo loops -a surprising, yet perfectly coherent development.

Harmonious Thelonious is the solo project of the Düsseldorf musician Stefan Schwander. His works combine American-influenced minimal music with African rhythms and European melodies.

"I was busy experimenting with noisy rhythms when Bureau B asked me if I would like to release an album on their label. I was aiming for a more industrial sound; backwards cymbals, loops generated from non-musical sources such as slamming doors, and had the feeling that this would align nicely with Bureau B’s own story." Stefan Schwander’s new album Plong is something of a hybrid in the discography of Harmonious Thelonious, drawing on his existing strengths plus a sense of adventure in a mix of all his musical predilections. Dipping into the music, Middle Eastern elements can be heard on "Original Member Of A Wedding Band" and "Mumba", whilst tracks like "Höhlenmenschenmuziek" are characterized by more pronounced bass structures. Tuned down xylophones, evocative of ritual drums, sub bass and electrifying basslines catalyse the idiosyncratic sound of Plong: hypnotic, danceable, irresistible. A powerful head of steam builds across the nine tracks, with subtle changes in harmony ("Geistertrio Booking") or unexpected cameos such as a new wave bassline on "Abu Synth" shaking things up before the album hurtles onward with renewed force. Take "Interpretation de reve" as a case in point – floating sequences and themes sweep ashore in wave after wave of melody; analogous to dreams which enter the subconscious in episodes, their apparent randomness gradually shifting into a correlative pattern. "Totentanz" closes the album in a homage to the Basle club of the same name, a place which played a decisive role in Schwander’s musical socialisation: "I was lucky enough to see bands like Liquid Liquid, Gun Club, Jonathan Richman and a very young Aztec Camera there".

Harmonious Thelonious comes off with an exceptional work in the genre of electronic music, successfully embracing the physical power of a club night soundtrack whilst exploring the dramatic depths of sonic worlds to create an intensive listening experience in total solitude.

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Durian Bro and Dusseldorf sorcerer Stefan Schwander gets industrial and middle eastern on this Bureau B LP, translating his usual sonic manipulations into a hypnotic set of trance dancers for the alternative club kids. I'm gonna buy like 5 copies of this!

TRACK LISTING

A1. Original Member Of A Wedding Band
A2. Höhlenmenschenmuziek
A3. Geistertrio Booking
A4. Abu Synth
A5. Mumba
B1. Young Kong
B2. Interpretation De Reve±
B3. The Roller
B4. Totentanz

This is Tolouse Low Trax’s 4th solo album Jumping Dead Leafs.
A 38 minutes exorcism, dionysac sexyness fueled with romanticism, made of mechanical incantations mixed with spectral vocals of forgotten imaginary tribes, words from a physicist (Incomprehensible Image), and mystical breathings… To remind you that music is demanding your soul and body, fully. A master irritator, disclosing this talent all the way, down to every chosen title, for the album itself and all of its components (would you put Milk in Water ?). As repetitive or minimalist music may already make some of you feel nervous, it seems more accurate to talk here about primitive music - notwithstanding a non violent anarchism. But those are only words and vain attempts to attach TLT to a region or a family. Neither the burden of classical European music legacy, which eventually lead to pop music, seemed to interfere with his wild mind, and if it is no surprising to hear Bach in German electronic music, there is here a clear statement that you are out of this sirupy prison… For D.W. is a sorcerer. He’s been empirically learning the speaking of trance with years of touring and experimenting with all kinds of audience and venues, from clubs to museums, from Mongolia to Brazil, from his performances with his bands Kreidler or Toresch to solo ones, sustained by a steady limited set up, as the one used when he’s recording : one MPC, rudimentary synths, few effects and a mixer. No sound engineer on stage as only he knows his secret language… Raw dubmaking, leaning towards
hip hop, indubitably underlining here a significant distanciation from his previous industrial inspirations. The bewitchment of this record is operating with no warning from the very first seconds until the last epiphany of Sales Pitch. He is using his knowledge of techno, psychedelism (Inverted Sea), UK bass (Jumping Dead Leafs), only to bring you out of it. We all tend to be slaves, without even being conscious about it, and a balance must be existing between being a slave and showing off. Mr. Weinrich’s answer is unsettling because it is an utter call to this balance, in our world of black and white and political correctness. There is no morality in music… Don’t expect anything else than an unaccountable liberating immediate experience. Don’t expect any kind of music because you are already in the past or the future… From his recording technique mainly relying on one takes, his adoration of mistakes and jeopardy, to the core essence of repetitive music, it is all hereabout being in the present. No ears no glasses. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Dusseldorf's dance floor Derrida comes correct with his first solo album in six years, providing a little club deconstruction for the fringe DJ and haunted home listener! Frankly, no one sounds like Detlef, and as this LP blazes its hazy trail through warehouse smog, dislocated dubspace and an entirely crepuscular strand of psychedelia, it becomes increasingly clear how much we've missed him.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Inverted Sea
A2. Berrytone Souvenier
A3. The Incomprehensible Image
B1. Jumping Dead Leafs
B2. Milk In Water
B3. Dawn Is Temporal
B4. Pulse Skit
B5. Sales Pitch

Rudolf Langer (formerly of Tyndall) and Peter Preu teamed up to create Lapre as a vehicle for their adventures in sonic experimentation. They set about capturing their nocturnal rehearsal room sessions on tape, Langer on synthesizer and Preu on guitar. With the exception of a solitary single and a few extremely limited cassette runs, Lapre released no further material during their active phase. It was not until 2018 that their works became accessible to a wider audience, when Bureau B released the Auferstehung retrospective, drawing on tracks from 1983 to 1984.? Banzai, the second collection of Lapre recordings, follows up by concentrating on their creative output from the years 1985 to 1987. A well-kept secret at the time of its inception, this music was barely audible beyond the borders of Berlin's underground scene. It thus gives us great pleasure to give these tracks the attention they ultimately deserve, more than 30 years later.

Composer, radio dramatist and performance artist Frieder Butzmann began exploring experimental music in the late 1960s. One of the pioneers of German industrial music and a member of the Geniale Dilettanten movement, Butzmann has collaborated with artists such as Genesis P-Orridge, Blixa Bargeld, and Santrra Oxyd, as well as releasing numerous solo works. Frieder Butzmann joined forces with author and artist Thomas Kapielski in the early 1980s. Most of their compositions are minimalist tracks interspersed with everyday noises and fragments of speech, as can be heard on their WAR PUR WAR album, first released on Zensor in 1987. This utterly unique work is an idiosyncratic mix of eccentric electro-pop and bizarre sonic collages and has gone on to become a sought-after collector's item. Now lovingly remastered, with refreshed artwork and two bonus tracks, WAR PUR WAR is being reissued on LP and CD on Bureau B, complete with previously unpublished photos and liner notes by Frieder Butzmann. 

Finnish composer and multi-instrumentalist Jimi Tenor has joined forces with Bureau B to release "NY, Hel, Barca" - a retrospective compilation spanning the years 1994 - 2001. The double LP features early works and selected tracks from his first six albums, long since deleted. The 20 tracks on "NY, Hel, Barca" document key stages of Jimi Tenor's remarkable creative path, underlining the prolific and varied nature of his artistic output. Then as now, he shines like a satellite hovering over the European pop landscape. 

Reissue (originally released 1981 on SKY records).
Cold, concise analogue synthesizer instrumentals — on his second album Serge Blenner remained true to his style, albeit shifting course slightly towards pop territory. The juxtaposition of dark harmonies and pop structures is what makes this album so appealing. In places, it feels like a blueprint for early Depeche Mode.

Having seen his first album La Vogue snapped up by the Sky label and fast tracked for release in 1980, Blenner delivered his second LP (Magazin Frivole) the following year. Mindful of the success of its predecessor, Blenner added the name of his debut in big letters to the front cover of the new sleeve. Better to be safe than sorry.

Blenner remained faithful to his musical style, albeit adding more of a pop flavour. Magazin Frivole would not look out of place filed alongside Depeche Mode on the record shelf, as a certain resemblance is undeniable. Moreover, Blenner was one of the few proponents of electronic music who preferred to keep his songs concise, in contrast to the meandering odysseys of many of his electronic contemporaries. The far better known French artist Jean-Michel Jarre adhered to similar principles, yet although Blenner was often compared to his compatriot, he claims only to have heard his music long after La Vogue had appeared.

Blenner’s creative approach is quite remarkable. He is at pains to point out that he is a composer, not a musician. Improvisation does not play a part in his music. Minor chords dominate his harmonies, the bass performs octave leaps which mirror the zeitgeist. Unexpected key changes abound, adding a restless, almost disquieting quality. Overall, Magazin Frivole is less dark than the preceding album, but a picture of cheerfulness it is not. Nevertheless, a poppy drum computer introduces a lighter note.

From the very first track, chord changes pop up at unexpected junctures — they seem to come in prematurely, before harmonic sequences have run their course. Blenner doesn’t have any explanation for this curiosity, other than to note that “most of the music was played by hand, so of course it wasn’t all perfect.” Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be too catchy. “I did all I could to avoid being successful — on a subconscious level, at least. Unpredictable metrics and irregular beats were definitely part of the process” Blenner admits with an enigmatic smile.

As a matter of fact, Blenner prefers not to listen to his older recordings, dismissive of their adolescent air. Juxtaposed with Blenner’s more recent works, one can see what he means. His latest album Musique de Chambre (2008) comprises modern classical chamber music, built on digitally sampled real instruments. Besides, Blenner points out, handling all of those analogue devices was a convoluted and complex undertaking. Help was at hand. With an impeccable sense of timing, his friend Wolfgang Palm launched the PPG Wave, the first commercially available digital synthesizer. Blenner sings the praises of the PPG (Palm Products GmbH) today as enthusiastically as when he first got his hands on one. “Suddenly I had all the equipment I needed in one box.” He never used analogue equipment again, leaving his first two albums as the only ones of their kind. Which is a real shame.

TRACK LISTING

1. Magazin Frivole (6:46)
2. Envoutement (4:11)
3. Derivatif (3:57)
4. A L’Ouest (3:45)
5. Métropole Agile (4:50)
6. Phonique (5:03)
7. Frivolité (2:44)
8. Polyphase (4:52)