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

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

In their 23 years of existence, KREIDLER have often made music that might be described as "dystopian". Kreidler were in a recording studio, in Mexico City, when they were hit by the news of the election of US President Donald Trump. With renewed vigor they realized the studio live sessions of “European Song”, a record that maintains the suppleness and the icy nonchalantly of the the German quartet, but contaminated by a slight claustrophobic feeling, an intensification of the accents as if to face up to exorcised, the fulfillment of such a political event similar to a nightmare that had seemed, until then, rather remote.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Another masterful collection from Kosmische masters Kreidler. Clanging industrious electronics, driving hypnotic basslines, and Kreidler's textbook execution make this another well-deserved notch on their musical bedpost. As brilliant as expected.

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.

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

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.

Ace German band, continuing the work done by Kraftwerk, Neu and more recently Tarwater.