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.

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

By 1969 at the latest, Dieter Moebius was synonymous with the avant-garde electronic music scene in Germany. He and Hans-Joachim Roedelius formed Cluster, a seminal electronic/ambient duo, whilst Moebius was also a member of the so-called Krautrock supergroup Harmonia (with Michael Rother and Roedelius), as well as collaborating on various other projects with the likes of Brian Eno and Mani Neumeier from Guru Guru. Somehow, it took Moebius until 1983 to release his own solo debut album, Tonspuren.

Tonspuren is an album of minimalisms, miniatures and stringent form, ten consistently concise and precise pieces. Moebius develops tonal variations out of minimalistic, rhythmic, harmonic basic tracks, sometimes coming close to tangible melodies. Yet this is exactly the point at which he purposely steers clear of electronic pop criteria. Nevertheless, Tonspuren is a pop album, its radically stripped down contents replenished with harmonious elements of prevalent popular music.

Echoes of Cluster notwithstanding, the music of Tonspuren is a separate entity altogether. Moebius seems to be avoiding improvisation as the devil keeps his distance from holy water. Each piece is thoughtfully composed, as Moebius crafts his miniatures layer by layer. Spontaneous inaccuracies have no place here, noise escapades are nipped in the bud. Baroque, folklore and frivolity are not admitted into the studio when the red light is on.

Thanks to Tonspuren, the keen listener now has the opportunity of direct comparison in his appraisal of the solo albums of Dieter Moebius, Hans Joachim Roedelius and Michael Rother. What role did each of the Harmonia triumvirate play in creating the style of the supergroup? Tonspuren thus represents a vital piece of the Harmonia puzzle.

TRACK LISTING

01. Contramio
02. Hasenheide
03. Rattenwiesel
04. Transport
05. Etwas
06. Nervös
07. B 36
08. Furbo
09. Sinister
10. Immerhin

In 1983, Dieter Moebius (Cluster) and legendary producer Conny Plank teamed up for the third time, resulting in the Zero Set project. On this occasion, they were backed up by one of the best drummers on the German rock scene: Mani Neumeier of Guru Guru. Moebius had got to know and admire him as the live drummer for Harmonia (Moebius, Roedelius, Rother) and during the recording sessions for their second album (De Luxe).

Conny Plank, usually more of a background figure as producer, takes an equal share of the limelight alongside the musicians. His supermodern studio is brought into play like an instrument in its own right; Plank explores the full range of audio editing, pushing recording techniques to the limit to achieve maximum brilliance and plasticity. Neumeier uses all of his many years of experience as a drummer, demonstrating the precision and stamina of a drum machine, just infinitely livelier and more inventive. And finally, to Moebius. Always one of the patriarchs of German electronic music, a creator of the most bizarre sound happenings, yet never sounding forced or arbitrary. On the contrary, he consistently worked within the context of the tracks themselves and their relationship to each other.

The music on Zero Set flows both smoothly and energetically. No single idea is overplayed, none of the tracks hits the ten minute mark. Aural and musical structures are concentrated to the point of askesis, yet there is no mistaking just how much the musicians are relishing playing together - these are the two very different, yet defining characteristics of the album. Moebius, Neumeier and Plank are unsentimental in their use of technology, exploiting it as an effective tool in pursuit of their musical vision. Three musicians at the top of their game and far too smart to allow their efforts to drift into psychedelic meanderings.

TRACK LISTING

01. Speed Display
02. Load
03. Pitch Control
04. All Repro
05. Recall
06. Search Zero

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)

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 and Stockhausen, 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 red album from 1973 was Schnitzler's first solo LP.

There was a particular type of artist who could only have emerged in the legendary early 1970s. Few musicians fit the bill better than Konrad Schnitzler. Revolution, pop art and Fluxus created a climate which engendered unbridled artistic and social development. Radical utopias, excessive experiment- ation with drugs, ruthless (in a positive way) transgression of aesthetic frontiers were characteristic of the period. The magic words were "subcultur", "progressivity" and "avantgardism". West Berlin, with its unique political status, was a crucible of turbulence. Founded in 1968, Zodiak was the ultimate point of convergence for subculture in West Berlin, with Konrad Schnitzler the driving force behind it. It was also here that Tangerine Dream and Kluster first met up to perform in public.

The red album ("Rot") was Schnitzler's first solo effort. As a member of Tangerine Dream, however, he had participated in the band's debut release "Electronic Meditation" some three years earlier (1970). He, Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius had also already founded Kluster, whose first album "Klopfzeichen" attracted a wealth of attention. On "Rot", meanwhile, Schnitzler uncompromisingly pursued his very own vision of electronic music. As an acolyte of action and object artist Joseph Beuys, Schnitzler embraced the former's "extended definition of art", in which controlled randomness assumed an important role. Schnitzler actually extended the concept of "music". Or to put it another way: he cared not one iota for existing rules of music, preferring to create his own or conceptualizing a certain degree of lawlessness. Improvisation grew in importance. The most exciting aspect of Schnitzler's music is not the fact that he only used synthetic sound and noise; the apparently chaotic movements of his microscopic particles of sound draw the listener into a paradoxical, yet also crystalline and vibrant artistic world. It doesn't get much more outlandish than this. Schnitzler's debut surpassed virtually every other pioneering artist of the day in terms of radicalness. Not content merely with making psychedelic soundtracks, he turned these on their head with his defiant artistic will. The rigour of his approach has never been matched. Schnitzler's inimitable cascades of sound and their transparency were, and remain, unique.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Meditation
Side 2
Krautrock

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

A1) Plas
A2) Im Süden
A3) Für Die Katz'
B1) Live In Der Fabrik
B2) Georgel
B3) Nabitte

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.

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.

The Berlin project Sprung Aus Den Wolken was part of the "Geniale Dilletanten" movement in the early 1980s, along with Einstürzende Neubauten and Mechanik Destrüktiw Komandöh. The band first released an EP on ZickZack in 1981, followed by further releases on the band's own record label Faux Pas in 1982 and 1983. The track Pas Attendre was part of the soundtrack of Wim Wender’s movie Der Himmel über Berlin and thus became an underground hit. Bureau B is pleased to finally make the long out-of-print, self-titled album from 1982 available again. Carefully remastered, with reconstructed original artwork, numerous photos and liner notes by original member Alexander Hacke (later of Einsturzende Neubauten).

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".

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

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

Welcome to the world of Dunkelziffer - a hip hive mind who buzzed away in the post-industrial decay of Köln’s Stollwerck complex. Taking a radical approach to sound, style and group dynamics, this loose collective of musicians and artists blazed an experimental trail through the 80s, offering an alternative vision of German pop fit for a decade of constant change.
Emerging in the wake of Can’s late seventies supernova, Dunkelziffer became the centre of gravity for a new era of creativity in Köln. Embracing the stylistic freedom of this fresh start alongside the time and space offered by their residency in the Palazzo Schoko, their jam sessions, often including associates from the Food Band, Phantom Band and Catalans Dream Band as well as anyone passing through, soon segued into a (slightly) more formal ensemble, though free-thinking and free-movement remained central ideologies.
Leaving egos well outside the door, Dunkelziffer wrote and recorded with no hierarchy, offering each member an equal stake in songwriting and sonics. Unsurprisingly the result is a wild stylistic fusion, equal parts art-rock, dub, soul, and jazz which, to the eternal credit of the collective comes together with an unconventional brilliance. On their 1983 debut, Colours And Soul, Dunkelziffer offered an hour long odyssey through the fringes of the pop landscape, creating a kaleidoscopic journey through sun-kissed skank, coastal funk, demented drum circles and tachycardic new wave. Appearing from the chaos of an outboard explosion, opener ‘Kedema’ lays the foundations for the seductive strangeness which follows, rewiring a lilting dub rhythm with skewed synth tones and curious percussion as late-Can man Rebop Kwaku Baah’s unique vocals form a lopsided melody. Island undulations give way to angular excitations on ‘Bleib Night So Lang Im Schatten Stehn’, a propulsive piece of new wave live with Wolfgang Schubert’s skronking horns and some poised female vocals. From there the group bask in the light of their own miracle, surrendered to the seven minute groove of ‘This is How You Came’, a sublime psychedelic blend of hypnotic bass, frazzled guitars and jazz-rock interludes. ‘Keine Python’ signposts the way to Babylon by autobahn before tribal electronic trio ‘Dark Number’, ‘Stil Der Neuen Zeit’ and ‘Zufall In Der Wirklichkeit’ take us to the midpoint in a polyrhythmic trance.
’S.O. 36’ opens the B-side with an overload of adrenaline as a lurching AKAI-ready half time transforms into the fast paced motorik stomp of a jazz-punk freakout. The dance-floor friendly ‘Strom’ follows, embracing a similar strain of sticky industrial funk as Unknown Cases’ anthemic ‘Masimba Bele’, while ‘Free’ leads us back into the light, riding the thermals over a sparkling shoreline as the cannabis psychosis gives way to the purest reggae high. The playful ‘Colours And Soul’ serves some hip and horizontal diy-dub on the B4, beachballs splashing into the surf before interlude ‘Arche Noah’ nudges into the highlife heat beat of ‘Don’t Ask Me’. Finally it falls to ‘Beside The Light’ to close out the set, a hazy piece of ecstatic pop equally informed by each of the diverse influences which came before. In some ways this is the story of the LP in a song; experimental ideas in accessible form, delivered by a group free to enjoy their journey without worrying about the destination.

TRACK LISTING

Side 1
1. Kedema (4:11)
2. Bleib Nicht So Lang Im Schatten Stehn (2:30)
3. This Is How You Came (8:03)
4. Keine Python (3:03)
5. Dark Number (2:19)
6. Stil Der Neven Zeit (3:52)
7. Zu Fall In Der Wirklichkeit (2:41)
Side 2
1. SO3 6 (3:07)
2. Strom"(3:52)
3. Free (5:13)
4. Colours & Soul (3:49)
5. Arche Noah (1:38)
6. Don't Ask Me (4:25)
7. Beside The Light (6:39)

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.

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.

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)

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. 

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

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. 

Martin Rev is best known as one half of the seminal duo Suicide (with Alan Vega). Listening to his solo albums, it becomes clear that Rev was responsible for the group’s music. Suicide mirrored the reductive and radical traits of the contemp- oraneous punk scene that was in the process of emerging, but their electronic, minimalist form of language was so unique, so innovative, that they would become a major influence on the likes of Daft Punk, Air and Aphex Twin. Alongside his work with Suicide, Martin Rev continued as a solo artist, releasing his eponymous debut album in 1980 on New York’s Infidelity label. Rev’s early solo excursions can be traced back to the original ideas which can be found – in modified form – in Suicide songs: as instrumental versions which have been texturally enriched, like a familiar figure which has nevertheless taken on a completely new existence.

Clouds of Glory
His second solo effort, was released on the French label New Rose in 1985, although the recordings on Clouds Of Glory actually dated back to the earlier part of the decade, following on from the Suicide sessions for the duo’s second album. Martin Rev remembers: “Clouds of Glory was produced from visual and musical sketches I had in mind which then coincidedwith an invitation by Marty Thau, previously Suicide’s manager, to take advantage of studio time he had accumulated from other projects. The essence of my ideas was then realized in the studio. Clouds was started in 1981 and completed in 1984 when additionalstudio time was made possible to complete it, based on the offer by New Rose Records.” In spite of Clouds Of Glory having been recorded with the sameequipment as the Alan Vega / Martin Rev Suicide album, it occupies a completely different space, evoking the solemnity of religious music through its underlying meditative tone. “I look now upon the album as part of a personal journey into the frontier of music; a process which is never ending in its revealing of possibilities to satisfy my musical aspirations.”

TRACK LISTING

1 Rocking Horse (5:45)
2 Parade (6:45)
3 Whisper (4:04)
4 Rodeo (6:37)
5 Metatron (6:25)
6 Clouds Of Glory (6:22)

Martin Rev is best known as one half of the seminal duo Suicide (with Alan Vega). Listening to his solo albums, it becomes clear that Rev was responsible for the group’s music. Suicide mirrored the reductive and radical traits of the contemp- oraneous punk scene that was in the process of emerging, but their electronic, minimalist form of language was so unique, so innovative, that they would become a major influence on the likes of Daft Punk, Air and Aphex Twin. Alongside his work with Suicide, Martin Rev continued as a solo artist, releasing his eponymous debut album in 1980 on New York’s Infidelity label. Rev’s early solo excursions can be traced back to the original ideas which can be found – in modified form – in Suicide songs: as instrumental versions which have been texturally enriched, like a familiar figure which has nevertheless taken on a completely new existence.

Cheyenne
Although it was not released until 1991, Martin Rev’s third solo album features a wealth of material from the year 1980. For “Cheyenne”, Rev created instrumental versions of many of the tracks which had formed the basis of the second Suicide LP entitled “Alan Vega / Martin Rev”. The sphere of Martin Rev’s influence and the relevance of his music may well be related to the fact that he was one of the first artists who succeeded in grasping the abstraction of electronic music, infusing it with a sense of immediacy built on raw energy. Whilst the likes of La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass and Kraftwerk were busy digging in the electronic music garden, Martin Rev found inspiration in the streets of New York. Rev’s music is informed by characteristic influences of the city, a place where doo-wop harmonies intermingle with the hiss and hum of the metropolis, dissolving into a collage of noise. So it is that dreamy, chiming melodies blur into ominous whirrs and drones emanating from rhythm machines and layers of distorted synthesizer. This polarity between convergence and alienation describes something deeply American, as reflected in the track names and the cover image of a rodeo rider: “The idea came from the way the tracks sounded as instrumentals. They took on a different visually descriptive dimension, even more so in combination. The visualization was an immediate sound- scape of the American landscape. That’s where the titles and cover came from.” Many of the pieces found on Cheyenne can be traced back to the sessions for the second Suicide album Alan Vega / Martin Rev (1980) which was produced by Ric Ocasek, singer for The Cars. Almost a decade passed before Martin Rev got around to editing and developing the material. “Most of the album was recorded in 1980, but the remaining few tracks from 1988 into the early 90’s. The 80’s tracks all went under a concerted editing process, to make them work for me even better as instrumentals. I didn’t get around to that until there was an offer to release them, which was in the early 90’s as well.” Indeed, Cheyenne plays out like a rural, yet intense road movie, crossing a landscape rich in beauty and contradictions.

TRACK LISTING

1 Wings Of The Wind (7:58)
2 Red Sierra (6:36)
3 Dakota (2:58)
4 Cheyenne (3:09)
5 River Of Tears (3:49)
6 Buckeye (2:15)
7 Little Rock (7:00)
8 Prairie Star (2:27)
9 Mustang (2:40)

When you think of the music to have emerged from Seattle, grunge and Sub Pop are probably the first things that come to mind. But Seattle was already home to a vibrant alternative music scene back in the 1970s. One of the most prominent synthesizer acts of the period was the trio Young Scientist. Influenced by the likes of Cluster, Harmonia and Tangerine Dream, they released their music exclusively on cassette. We are delighted to present their superb debut album from 1979, the hypnotic-meditative-cyclical "Results, Not Answers" on vinyl for the very first time!

Five years after the release of the highly acclaimed ‘Streetlife’ album the Cologne based Neo-Kraut/Electro-Pop band returns with new recordings. ‘Under Pressure’ includes collaborations with Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier, with Vivien Goldmann, R. Stevie Moore and Chris A. Cummings who was the guest vocalist on their successful ‘Chain Of Command’ single.

Since 1981, Wilfried Franzen and Thomas Grotz have been developing their own version of experimental pop music, which oscillates between song structures, noise, and psychedelic trance. Bass and keyboards form the instrumental substructure of the duo’s compositions, which are enriched with guitars, violin, piano, electronic percussions, and samples. After self-publishing various cassettes and cds, "Nachtwerk" is the first official release of SOLARIZE, which presents selected pieces from the years 1991 to 1998.

Fourth solo album by French spacerock mastermind Richard Pinhas. 'East West' was his first and only album to be released by a major label (CBS). Some say it is his most commercial one, Pinhas doesn't see it that way. East West contained some surprises for those who were used to Heldon’s extended jams or the sparse and moody atmosphere of the previous year’s Iceland.

East West’s average track length is four minutes, indicating greater accessibility. It also has a David Bowie cover, although Pinhas naturally chose one of the thin white duke’s more avant-garde moments: the foreboding 'Sense Of Doubt' from Heroes. East West’s synth-centric tracks, resemble siblings to the groundbreaking work of Kraftwerk. Others evoke Brian Eno or Tangerine Dream but hold their own distinct flavour.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Houston 69: The Crash Landing (part 1)
A2. London: Sense Of Doubt
A3. Kyoto: Kyoto Number 3
A4. XXXXX: La Ville Sans Nom
A5. Home: Ruitor
B1. New York: West Side
B2. Paris: Beautiful May
B3. Keflavik: The Whale Dance
B4. Houston 69: Houston 69 (part 2)

"Sowas von egal" is a collaboration between the Hamburg record label Bureau B and the Hamburg party series Damaged Goods. The divergent trajectories of a record company on the one hand and DJs on the other are happily aligned through a love and passion for seeking out, collecting, releasing and playing rare, remarkable music which simply needs to be heard.
The Damaged Goods DJs created the party as a danceable party where they could play music beyond the regular and repetitious repertoire of (dark) electro clichés. The focus is on seldom heard post punk and synth wave from the 1980s. Many of the old records had only been pressed in small quantities, often sold exclusively at the respective bands' gigs. More than 30 years later, it is almost impossible to get hold of these tracks... until now. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: I've declared my undying love for Neue Deutsche Welle many times before, so you'll understand I was very happy to see this Bureau B comp land in my lap. What's more, I don't know a single track on here, and it's full of killers!

TRACK LISTING

01. Träneninvasion - Sentimental
02. Der Moderne Man - Blaue Matrosen 
03. Silberstreif - Bei Dir Ist Noch Licht 
04. El Deux - Computermädchen 
05. Nullzeit - Dein Ganzes Leben 
06. Hoffnung & Psyche - Sie Bleibt Kalt 
07. Schwellköper - Liebe, Triebe, Diebe 
08. New Dimension - Stuttgart Schwarz
09. Berlin Express - Die Russen Kommen
10. Pension Stammheim - US-Invasion
11. Alu - Bitte Warten Sie
12. Matthias Schuster - Für Alles Auf Der Welt
13. Gorilla Aktiv - Spiegelbild
14. 08/15 - 1000 Gelbe Tennisbälle

Dennis Young is best known as the percussionist of the New York band LIQUID LIQUID, which is known for their piece "Cavern" from 1983, which in turn became very well known because Grandmaster Flash sampled it and used it as the basis for their hit "White Lines". But Young was more than just a member of the band, he produced plenty of his own music, much of it reflecting his passion for analog electronics. He was fascinated by the pioneers of the genre. In 2016 Bureau B released "Wave", a collection of pieces Young had issued on cassettes between 1985-1988. "Synthesis", by contrast, features tracks from 1984-1988 which have never been previously released.

Der Plan have met in the studio after 25 years and recorded a new album. One can claim without exaggeration that DER PLAN were one of the - and perhaps the most -powerful German bands during the time of musical adventure at the beginning of the 1980s. Maybe they still are?

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. His first two solo works are now being reissued with extensive liner notes and rare photographs. 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

1. Bicentennial Presentation (4:52)
2. Romance (6:08)
3. Phase By Phase (7:41)
4. Meadow Of Infinity Part I (3:48)
5. The Glass Bridge (3:45)
6. Meadow Of Infinity Part II (6:45)

Adelbert von Deyen is a protagonist of the so-called Berlin School (Berliner Schule) of electronic music. On his debut album Sternzeit, he takes his time to develop sound structures, often drifting, floating blissfully into tonal interference. The listener also requires time and patience, but will be rewarded with a Zen-like state of contemplation. Adelbert von Deyen's musical backstory follows a less than typical path.

He recalls: "To make the best use of my evenings, I finally bought a second-hand synthesizer, various electronic keyboard instruments and a tape machine, plus a few bits and pieces you need to make music. If I didn't have enough money, I asked the bank. During the day I worked as a retoucher for a newspaper and in the evenings, I composed my celestial electronic sounds, invariably deep into the night. It took me around eight months to finish my first compositions. I made tape copies which I sent out to various record companies. I struck lucky straight away: Sky Records in Hamburg were interested in my music and my first record was granted a worldwide release in 1978. I called it Sternzeit and I painted the cover myself."

This was indeed a stroke of luck for a newcomer like Adelbert von Deyen. Founded by Gunter Kurber in 1975, the label had already hosted acclaimed releases from electronic and Krautrock stars like Michael Rother, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and even Brian Eno. A decent level of public interest was thus guaranteed.

The Sternzeit album was issued as catalogue number SKY 019, one of the early releases on the label.In principle, many elements on this first album reappear on the two which followed (to be reissued January 2017): rich analogue layers, the swirling winds of the ARP Odyssey, masterful synth effects sprinkled so delicately.

The second side of the record is devoted to a single track which is based on an incessant organ tone and played with vibrato, engendering a hypnotic sense of weightlessness. Keyboarders often taped down keys on their organs or synthesizers to create such effects back in the day. Adelbert von Deyen is an unconventional musician. When he performs, he sits down with his back to the audience, focussed on his arsenal of equipment. The way he has unreservedly followed his passions for music and artistic creativity speaks volumes about his free-thinking nature. Adelbert von Deyen mixed and produced this album in his own small studio on a Revox A77 tape recorder.

Lloyd Cole is mostly know for his outstanding pop music, but he certainly has a taste for electronic music. In 2013 he released an highly acclaimed album together with electronic music legend Hans-Joachim Roedelius (BB124 "Selected Studies Vol. 1") for whom he also curated a compilation of his electronic music recordings (BB187 "Kollektion 2. Roedelius - Electronic Music. Compiled by Lloyd Cole"). Finally we are happy to announce the release of a solo album with lloyd's electronic music on September 4th: "1D Electronics 2012-2014". Some pieces were originally created with overdubs by another in mind. Some were simply experiments. One or two may have had loftier ambitions…. None of the pieces involves the use of a piano keyboard or a computer, except to record it. Some modulations were executed by hand. Most were generated by programmed sequencers and logic. Each piece is a self contained electronic circuit.

Harald Grosskopf is best known as drummer in the band Ashra and for Klaus Schulze and as an electronic musician. Following “Synthesist” (1980), “Oceanheart” was his second solo album. It may sound like a child of the 1980s, but in a compositional sense it is related to the Berliner Schule / Berlin School of the 70's
.
Tired of the rock format and excited by the freedoms promised by electronic music, Harald Grosskopf quit Wallenstein, a conventional rock band, in the mid-seventies to turn his attention to electronica. Grosskopf thus became the first drummer to specialize in the electronic music field. He played drums on Klaus Schulze’s albums “Moondawn” and “Body Love” and on YOU’s “Electric Day”. When Manuel Göttsching from Ash Ra Tempel asked him if he would consider enrolling as the regular drummer in the group now rechristened Ashra, he did not need to think about it for long. Grosskopf changed course again in the eighties, this time in pursuit of commercial success: he played in the NDW (Neue Deutsche Welle) group Lilli Berlin and backed Joachim Witt on his best-selling “Silberblick” LP, which featured the hit “Goldener Reiter”.

Sky, the record company, were more than a little disappointed with the performance of Grosskopf’s first solo effort “Synthesist”, so there was no great sense of urgency as far as its successor was concerned. “They even halved my advance!” Grosskopf recalls. “Oceanheart” was released some six years after “Synthesist”. “The album title reflects my love of transcendental meditation, of course it might be taken for watery esoterics.” (A similar vibe was evident in the cover art, hence fresh artwork has been created for the reissue.) Musical equipment for the production was limited by the label’s ongoing thrift programme. The first “Oceanheart” recordings took place “under the roof” in the Lilli Berlin Studio, Kreuzberg. They were completed at the Spandauer Studio by former Tangerine Dream member Christoph Franke. “We mixed everything down and recorded the drums there.” Harald Grosskopf again played everything himself, except for the tablas. In keeping with its predecessor, “Oceanheart” was no bestseller, but, like “Synthesist”, it attained cult status, rediscovered in recent years through the internet by a younger generation. Harald Grosskopf himself needed time to appreciate the work: “I only really discovered the musical quality of ‘Oceanheart’ years later. I finally realized that I had created something quite special.” - Christoph Dallach

TRACK LISTING

1. Eve On The Hill (10:30)
2. While I'm Walking (4:44)
3. Oceanheart (4:59)
4. Coming Out (3:25)
5. Pondicherry Dream (3:42)
6. Minimal Boogie (10:54)

2014 marks twenty years of Kreidler. The band has outgrown adolescence, but remains juvenile, reckless, impetuous. They recorded their new album ABC in Tbilisi, Georgia. And there will also be a film - by Heinz Emigholz, who accompanied the last album DEN with film clips.ABC. Like Tank, it's two times three: Six tracks characterized by elliptical shifts, where suddenly the bass and drums take over the helm - or a choir appears.Indeed, a choir. Kreidler worked together with Georgian singers: Either hovering freely in the meditative pop piece Ceramic,or defining a new space within a space,as in Nino. As always with Kreidler, ABC is about the exploration of freedoms within a previously determined framework. It is a formulation of convergences, of possibilities within a procedural movement, based on a notion of democracy, with socialism in mind, where one understands that restraint is not merely a strategy of a conceptually inclined band, but that it serves to strengthen the validity, precision and majestic authority of expression.

Cluster (Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius) are pioneers of electronic music and key Krautrock protagonists. In the late 1960s, together with Konrad Schnitzler as the trio Kluster, they changed the world of music for ever with their radical improvisations.Having split from Schnitzler, Moebius and Roedelius continued as Cluster, releasing eight further milestones of electronic and ambient music up until 1981, two of them with Brian Eno. A hiatus lasting almost a decade was brought to an end in 1990 when Cluster made a surprise comeback with 'Apropos Cluster'.Liner notes by Asmus Tietchens.

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2014 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

2014 sees the 20th anniversary of German electronic pioneers Kreidler. There'll be a tour, a movie by Heinz Emigholz and new album release “ABC” (which has been recorded in Tbilisi, Georgia). Featured here is an unreleased outtake from the album session. Jochen Arbeit, Achim Färber and Georg Zeitblom have been collaborating under the name Automat since the end of 2011. Their debut album will be available from 4th April 2014, featured here are three unreleased outtakes from the album. The song “Berlin Wall” is a collaboration with Throbbing Gristle’s & Psychic TV’s Genesis Breyer POrridge.

TRACK LISTING

A1: KREIDLER: Snowblind /
A2: Escaped
B1: AUTOMAT: Berlin Wall (Feat. Genesis Breyer P-Orridge)
B2: AUTOMAT: MTY
B3: CUL

Electronic duo Ulrich Schnauss (A Long Way to Fall, A Strangely Isolated Place) and Mark Peters (of the band Engineers) return with a second collaborative album titled Tomorrow is Another Day, released by Bureau B. This second project offers a sublime exploration into their signature expressionistic landscapes while exploring the potential of a collaborative model in which Schnauss's keyboards and Peters's guitar work together in juxtaposition.

Ulrich Schnauss, born in the industrial port town of Kiel in northern Germany in 1977, emerged in Berlin's drum 'n bass scene in the mid-1990s. Mark Peters was born in Liverpool in 1975 and embraced a deeply euphonic pop aesthetic that incorporated intricate formal structures. The two musicians met years ago when both were making shoegaze music and formed a close friendship. Schnauss joined Peters's band Engineers as a keyboardist in 2010. After the collapse of the second-wave shoegaze movement in the early 2000s, both musicians drifted away from the genre's dreamy, shimmering aesthetic and returned solidly to their own musical roots. Peters has subsequently explored classic, guitar-based music and Schnauss has returned to his origins as an electronica producer.

Tomorrow is Another Day represents a maturing of the pair's creative process. Following their first collaborative album titled Underrated Silence (2012), which seamlessly blends the two instrumental voices into an integrated sonic landscape that delivers surprisingly intense emotion beneath the surface of its delicate composition, Schnauss and Peters subsequently began to craft a musical exchange in which each musician's contribution was emphasized in contrast to the other's voice. The differences in Schnauss' and Peters's musical backgrounds are highlighted and embraced as their two voices emerge in dialogue. Here, the synths are drier, the guitars more discreet. The shifting tonality of the music's richly layered patterning defines its composition with punctuated gestures as melodic lines emerge in sharper relief. With neither musical style overpowering the other, the effect is that of two equally masterful voices in coherent conversation, celebrating the dynamic nature of instrumental combination and exploring a new method of creative approach - one that allows for concurrence and dissent, in turn.

TRACK LISTING

1. Slow Southern Skies
2. Tomorrow Is Another Day
3. Das Volk Hat Keine Seele
4. Inconvenient Truths
5. One Finger And Someone Else's Chords
6. Additional Ghosts
7. Walking With My Eyes Closed
8. Rosmarine
9. Bound By Lies
10. There's Always Tomorrow

Originally released 1982 on Sky 072

The music: electronical chamber music that impressively renders audible Roedelius' musical transition from the 70s into the 80s. Complex, vibrant, enigmatic, avant-garde, timelessy beautiful.

"Offene Türen" is a purely electronic album. Without losing himself in their infinite tonal possibilities, Roedelius delights in playing a selection of synthesizers. He even deploys an analogue rhythm machine now and then to discreet effect. Roedelius takes great care to steer well clear of any cosmic fog or depersonalised abstractions. Nothing of the sort can be heard, as he focusses intensely and exclusively on the relationships of rhythm, harmony and melody. Roedelius conjures up their delicate timbres on synthesizer with the greatest of ease. The seasoned electronic musician would have found similar results beyond the reach of his good old Farfisa organ.

180g vinyl.

Kreidler was founded in Düsseldorf in 1994 by Thomas Klein, Andreas Reihse, Detlef Weinrich and Stefan Schneider (who left to form To Rococo Rot) Kreidler have been asked to remix artists such as Depeche Mode, Einstürzende Neubauten and Faust among 20 others and cooperated with artists like Klaus Dinger (NEU!), Add (N) to X, Young Gods, Theo Altenberg, Momus, Leo Garcia, Pyrolator and Chicks on Speed

'Den' is Kreidler's eleventh regular album It could be said that 'Tank' - Kreidler's critically acclaimed previous album - is a drum album. Not in the sense of the brute force of a Ginger Baker or a John Bonham, but more in terms of the elastic muscularity of a Budgie, a Robert Görl or a Klaus Dinger. So in the case of 'Den', if attempting yet another such broad categorization, one might draw attention to the album's viscous musicality. Indeed, for recording and mixing, Kreidler chose to work at LowSwing, a studio renowned for its round sonic character, with the magnificent Guy Sternberg at the controls. The album's opening track 'Sun' displays an inspired beauty that is perhaps reminiscent of Eno during those periods in which he was interested in songwriting. Pan-Asian counter-melodies interplay around the stoic but light architecture of 'Deadwringer'. And 'Rote Wuste' is a mysterious painting, spanning a vast emotional arc between it's dark beginnings and the possibility of a conciliatory resolution. The heavily grooving 'Cascade' finds an utterly mesmerized Alex Paulick on guitar - just how many chord changes does Andreas Reihse get through? But one nice aspect of Kreidler is that those kinds of things hardly matter. Kreidler never burden the listener with strict didacticism. Everything flows naturally.

The blue album from 1974 and was Schnitzler's second solo LP. Digipak reissue with liner notes by Asmus Tietchens, rare photos and six bonus track (CD + download only) On the red album, Konrad Schnitzler laid down the direction his musical artistry would take. The blue album ("Blau") offered confirmation of his intent. Maybe the "Rot" and "Blau" tracks were recorded in the same session. Structure, sound and timbre of both LPs are so similar as to suggest that this was the case (an unverified assumption nevertheless!). Far more important than this historical pedantry is the fact that Schnitzler included two brand new compositions on "Blau" which followed on seamlessly from the previous album. Quite simply, he had found his way, a course from which he would not stray as long as he lived.

The so-called Berlin School (Berliner Schule) - with Konrad Schnitzler one of their number - had developed its own style of minimalist music. Clearly distinct from Anglo-American pop music, and no less removed from the minimalist art music of Steve Reich or Philip Glass, the focus here was on electronics and elementary rhythmics. The Berlin musicians showed no great interest in instrumental or vocal virtuosity, nor were they in thrall to exuberant interleaving of rhythm. With the aid of synthesizers and studio technology, they were bent on breaking into territory hitherto considered the province of a privileged elite, clouded in mystery and secrecy, resonating with uncharted sounds and noise. "Blau" is an archetypal example of this very phenomenon. Schnitzler's style was really too idiosyncratic ever to set a precedent, but he was, and still is, one of the most significant inspirations for pop music in more recent times. Already a figure of prominence, perhaps he will one day be elevated to the status of a legend.

TRACK LISTING

1. Die Rebellen Haben Sich In Den Bergen Versteckt
2. Jupiter
3. Wild Space 1 (Bonus Track)
4. Wild Space 2 (Bonus Track)
5. Wild Space 3 (Bonus Track)
6. Wild Space 4 (Bonus Track)
7. Wild Space 5 (Bonus Track)
8. Wild Space 6 (Bonus Track)

The debut by Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft was a feat of musical pioneering. Later to find global fame as a duo, DAF's 1979 line-up of Robert Gorl, Wolfgang Spelmans, Kurt Dahlke (Pyrolator) and Michael Kemner created what was quite possibly the worlds first noise-rock album. Radical, brutish, instrumental.

Originally released in 1979 on Warning Records (later Ata Tak)

Reissue in digipak with liner notes, rare photos and memorabilia.

True DAF connoisseurs will, of course, be aware of the early phase of the Dusseldorf-Wuppertal combo. But most fans of the subsequently world famous duo may well be taken aback when confronted with their debut album: forceful synth bass sounds, snappy rhythms, Gabi Delgado and leather all conspicuously absent. In their place, pure instrumental, unstructured noise-rock, played by long-haired and moustachioed types! A band can barely have undergone a more extreme metamorphosis. Gabi Delgado joined the band before the band discarded the name of YOU and christened themselves Deutsch- Amerikanische Freundschaft. A tape machine and two microphones were set up in Wolfgang Spelmans living room and ten days of unbounded improvisation ensued. And thus it was completed, Produkt der Deutsch- Amerikanischen Freundschaft ; 22 tracks, ranging from 19 seconds to three minutes in length. The influence of Can is clearly audible. Considering the fact that other prominent noise-rock bands such as Chrome, Flipper or even Sonic Youth recorded similar music at a much later date, this 'product of Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaf¨ should certainly be recognized as a pioneering work. Possibly even the first noise-rock album.

Produced by the team at Machines With Magnets who have worked with Lightning Bolt, Clap Your Hands, Say Yeah, Fang Island and Battles

Latest in Bureau B's series of Kraut Rock reissues.

'Ersatz' was originally released in 1990 on the Pinpoint label.

The music: surrealist, minimal / experimental electronics. "Adventures in sound, a world brought to life by the most remarkable characters and atmospheres." (Asmus Tietchens)

Dieter Moebius is one of the most important protagonists of avant-garde electronic music in Germany. Alongside his bands Cluster and Harmonia he participated in numerous collabo-rations (e.g. with Brian Eno, Mani Neumeier/Guru Guru and Conny Plank).

1990 sees Dieter Moebius enter new musical territory, cautiously reconnoitering the digital world. His companion on this excursion is Karl Renziehausen, a visual artist and constructor of sound sculptures. The two of them distance themselves sonically and musically from existing Moebius collaborations with Conny Plank and Gerd Beerbohm (almost all of which have been reissued on Bureau B); similarly, only sporadic echoes can be heard of Cluster and Harmonia, two projects whose style Moebius influenced significantly over a number of years. There is an exactness to the music of Moebius und Renzie-hausen, who allow nothing to stray from their chosen path. They stage seven little musical comedies with different plots, much as if they were writing for the theatre. Common to each of the pieces is a prevailing mood of surrealism. Although Moebius and Renziehausen frequently cross the boundaries of tonality, they still remain firmly grounded. The connection to the real world is never completely severed. Which is what makes this music so puzzling to anyone willing to engage with it: the occasional fleeting sense of something familiar, yet no sooner than something appears which one might have heard before, it disappears again, replaced by something new and unrecognizable. Listeners can look forward to nine meticulously crafted soundscapes of uncharted, fantastic regions.

The musicians: Ulrich Schnauss, born in Kiel in 1977, now residing in London, three solo albums released to date, Engineers keyboard player and an in-demand remixer (Mojave 3, Depeche Mode, Lunz/Roedelius, to name just a few). Mark Peters, born in Liverpool in 1975, bass player, guitarist, vocalist and songwriter in the British band Engineers, also three album releases to their name thus far.

The music: synthesizer, piano, guitar and drum computer, a reduced, yet bacchanal instrumental combination of ambient, electronica and shoegaze sounds. Transporting the sound of shoegazer aesthetics into an electronic context, this is how Ulrich Schnauss once described his artistic goal. Influenced by bands such as My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Cocteau Twins and Chapterhouse on the one hand, yet wholly at ease with the electronica of bands like The Orb, Bionaut, Orbital, 808 State and unequivocally appreciative of veterans of the genre, Tangerine Dream or Manuel Gottsching for example. A brother in spirit of Robin Guthrie one might say, an apposite epithet for Schnauss. His collaborative partner Mark Peters might also be considered his soul brother. Through his band, Engineers, he has similarly found success in following the footsteps of his musical paragons. Engineers have released wonderful albums of dream pop, infused with the same spirit as the solo efforts of Schnauss.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Messiah Is Falling
2. Long Distance Call
3. Forgotten
4. Yesterday Didn't Exist
5. Rosen Im Asphalt
6. The Child Or The Pigeon
7. Ekaterina
8. Amoxicilin
9. Gift Horse's Mouth
10. Underrated Silence

Tenth solo album, first released in 1984. His most commercially successful album to date.

On “Gift of the Moment” Roedelius broke away unequivocally from purely electronic music. If “Lustwandel” and “Jardin au fou” had seen the process set in motion, this was the album that completed the transition. Following the “Selbstportraits”, which had at least been created through the use of electric organ and synthesizers, Roedelius focussed on the grand piano, sometimes accompanied by a cello, violin and guitar. Distant echoes of a not so distant musical past could only be detected in the occasional appearance of sparse chords played on a polyphonic synthesizer. The album wore a veil of delicate melancholy: no vibrant folk dances, no colourful carousels, no cheerful melodies. Instead, Roedelius offered a calm, almost detached form of music, openly acknowledging romantic heritage. “Gift of the Moment” eluded contemporary definitions of the “experimental” concept, as Roedelius was now experimenting in new, eclectic areas, too weighty, too grainy to be labelled “Proto New Age”. Roedelius was not striving for perfection, but for authenticity, a music stripped of disguise; and to this end he left little playing errors in the mix, fading out tracks rigorously to eliminate any bigger blunders.

1980 album from post Can project.

Phantom Band is: Jaki Liebezeit (Can etc.), Rosko Gee (Can, Traffic), Helmut Zerlett (eg Dunkelziffer, Unknown Cases), Dominik von Senger (eg Dunkelziffer, Damo Suzuki Band/Network), Olek Gelba, Sheldon Ancel.

Guest musician: Holger Czukay

The music on “Phantom Band”: Can-style monotonic polyrhythms meets afrobeat, funk, jazz, disco, reggae, dub.

Originally released in 1976; melodic and atmospheric, the blend of electronic rhythms and quirky bubbly sounds combined with piano and a few bits of guitar here and there to create pure bliss.

'The evocative toybox melodies (usually the Roedelius compositions) on 1974's "Zuckerzeit" reached their peak with "Sowiesoso", courtesy of ambling pieces like "Dem Wanderer", the title track, and the vaguely Oriental "Halwa". The drum programs are still irresistibly simplistic (not to say simple), but even when Sowiesoso stretches out into primarily beatless terrain ("Es War Einmal", "Zum Wohl"), the album retains its power.' (All Music Guide)

"Jardin Au Fou" is the second solo album by German keyboardist Hans-Joachim Roedelius, best known for his work with Cluster, Harmonia, and Aquarello. Recorded from April through July, 1978 at Paragon Studios in Berlin, it was produced by former Tangerine Dream member Peter Baumann and released by the French label Egg in 1979. The original release included 10 tracks but the final short piece, "Final", was left off the tracklisting on the original album cover.