Music from Germany

After the big success of our reissue of Günter Schickert’s amazing Samtvogel LP we present another of his projects, GAM - on which he joined Axel Struck and Michael Leske. A powerful trio of mindexpanding krautrock sounds formed in 1973, they recorded their first sessions in 1976, improvising directly to tape in Schickert’s basement - but these weren’t released until 1986, originally in cassette format - reissued some years later on CD. The sound of GAM 1976 differs a bit to that of Samtvogel. O…

Few copies back in stock, sold-out at source Die Tödliche Doris was born out of West Berlin’s lively post-punk community in the early ‘80s. Along with Einstürzende Neubauten, Malaria, Sprung Aus Den Wolken and Frieder Butzmann, Die Tödliche Doris ranks amongst the Geniale Dilletanten – which roughly translates as “ingenious dilettantes” – who sought to democratize cultural productions beyond the grip of both Western capitalism and GDR socialism. The Geniale Dilletanten became synonymous with a f…

"Brotzmann Box" is a beautiful box set containing 3 albums by German free jazz master Peter Brötzmann. The first volume of the album is "Full Blast" (JW 1) with Brötzmann (alto and soprano sax, tárogató) playing in a super Swiss-German trio with Marino Pliakas (electric bass), a member of Swiss Steamboat, and Michael Wertmuller (drums), one of the best musiciand of the Berlin music scene and member of the group Alboth. Together these three musicians create a truly unique musical cosmos that lies…

Fabio Perletta and Asmus Tietchens’ hermetic micro-cosmos of Deflections unfolds by exploring instability and physical decay of sound. Built upon liminal forms and atonal passages, the six near-silent pieces of the work traverse empty space by means of elementary sonic emissions and drifting nano-structures. Among sound collisions and evanescent masses, the almost immaterial yet corporeal nature of Deflections, embodies sound in its most subliminal and contradictory form. Fabio Perletta cr…

Since they first emerged on FMP in 1971, a series of recordings - often referred to as the Berlin Trilogy, have represented an axis point in the history of Jazz.  Made earlier the same year by Peter Brötzmann, Fred Van Hove, Han Bennink, and Albert Mangelsdorff - Elements, Couscouss de la Mauresque, and The End quickly became legendary for their towering artistry and worth, but their larger contextual concern - with how they came to be, was an answer to a quite multilayered war being waged in th…

*limited repress* Luxurious, highly collectible 10LP+4CD box set, including an art-print book with previously unreleased GAS artwork. Wolfgang Voigt is a man of many means and monikers, having engendered a unique take on electronic expressionism across multiple media - from riotous early '90s acid to cyber-folkloristic techno or the abstract drama of his current Rückverzauberung project, Voigt is a pioneering vision to be found on vinyl, canvas or flickering screens. Ranking among the most …

Peter Brötzmann: tenor saxophone; Fred Van Hove: piano; Han Bennink: drums, voice; Albert Mangelsdorff: trombone. Recorded during the Free Music Market, August 27 and 28, 1971, in Berlin. Designed by Peter Brötzmann. Part of the legendary "Berlin Trilogy" originally released by FMP in 1971 (FMP 0050). 180-gram vinyl. One-time pressing of 500. First standalone reissue."The great thing about this trilogy/set is how naturally everything flows. . . . each subdividing of the group, each solo excursio…

Peter Brötzmann: tenor saxophone; Fred Van Hove: piano; Han Bennink: drums, voice; Albert Mangelsdorff: trombone. Recorded during the Free Music Market, August 27 and 28, 1971, in Berlin. Designed by Peter Brötzmann. Part of the legendary "Berlin Trilogy" originally released by FMP in 1971 (FMP 0040). 180-gram vinyl. One-time pressing of 500. First standalone reissue."Brötzmann's regular trio was joined by the trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff, one of the most respected German jazz musicians,…

Peter Brötzmann: tenor saxophone; Fred Van Hove: piano; Han Bennink: drums, voice; Albert Mangelsdorff: trombone. Recorded during the Free Music Market, August 27 and 28, 1971, in Berlin. Designed by Peter Brötzmann. Part of the legendary "Berlin Trilogy" originally released by FMP in 1971 (FMP 0030). 180-gram vinyl. One-time pressing of 500. First standalone reissue."What reveals itself in the über energetics on display here is the ability of one quartet to take so much for granted and ye…

"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…

The second volume of Schnitzler's cinema for the mind's eye. Sequencer motifs and alien textures sketch scene after scene of electronic drama: the restless imagination of a true pioneer, drawn from his boundless tape archive.

Baumann's brightest solo record. 'Trans Harmonic Nights' sets crisp sequencer motifs against warm melody: the Berlin-school grammar sharpened into concise, luminous electronic pop. Tangerine Dream's pop instinct, distilled.

LP version. Includes CD. "In October 2014 an idea suddenly came to mind. Although I had spent much of my life performing, recording and producing music, my attention over the immediately preceding years had been focused on the philosophy and psychology of human nature. It was a rewarding exploration, but I missed being more creative -- suddenly I felt the urge to play music again. I built a recording studio in my basement and began writing material for the first time in a long while. In November…

5” CD in full colour digipak carton sleeve and printed inner sleeve. CD is off-set printed in half-metallized format, all designed by Asmus Tietchens. Production: Okko Bekker. On “Soirée fantastique”, two pieces – unfocussed in every aspect – featuring blurring conmtours, spooled out harmonies and barely recognizable melodies frame an extreme minimal, almost static piece in the centre. A piece of harsh, sharp-edges transparency. If this were not the music of a phantastic nightlyx gathering…

Whoah. Here’s one you’re not likely to have heard/seen evidence of; Mr. P.C. C.P.’s treatment of German Painter Günter Maas’ sole LP release, privately-pressed in 1969. “Klangbilder” contains four extended pieces, ranging from Oskar Sala-esque sheets of detuned electronic sound - composed on the then state-of-the-art Siemens synthesizer utilizing an experimental photo-electric coupler which converted his paintings into control-voltage !!! - to dark Musique Concréte pieces utilizing evil-sounding…

Collects together the re-mastered Duck and Cover (Tom Cora, Chris Cutler, Fred Frith, Heiner Goebbels, Alfred (23) Harth, Dagmar Krauze, Gerorge Lewis) and Cassix (Chris Cutler, Franco Fabbri, Umberto Fiori, Heiner Goebbels, Pino Martini) recordings, and the Cassiber/Otomo Yoshidide collaboration on one CD, the newly assembled live and out-take The Way it Was, plus a DVD of two concerts, one from the Frankfurt Jazz festival, the other from Brasil, with short documentary, made in the GDR, o…

Beauty and the Beast, the second LP by Cassiber, was released in 1984 simultaneously on the British label Recommended and the German Riskant with a small difference in contents -- the ReR Megacorp CD reissue includes all tracks from both LP versions. This album represents a giant leap from the group's 1982 debut, Man or Monkey. Yet, the same technique was used: No songs were written in advance. Drummer Chris Cutler had written lyrics to be used when considered suitable by singer Christoph A…

Cassiber's second album moves one step ahead in the refinement of the group's music. From Man or Monkey, the trio (Christoph Anders, Chris Cutler, and Heiner Goebbels; Alfred 23 Harth had bid farewell) retained clashes of noise, a taste for cheap synthesizers, and Anders' declamatory style. But this time the music is much more organized and arranged. Songs are short and focus on atmospheres and the alienating settings of Cutler's words. More political than before, they take their cue from t…

Man or Monkey was Cassiber's first album. It was released in 1982 on the German label Riskant as a set of two 45 rpm LPs -- a format that turned it into a pricy collector's item. For this first effort, Christoph Anders, Chris Cutler, Heiner Goebbels, and Alfred 23 Harth entered the studio with only a handful of the drummer's lyrics and a few melodic ideas. They improvised, letting structures and arrangements develop by themselves, so to speak, and singer Anders threw in a text when he fel…

'A Face We All Know' breaks new ground altogether. This is a single work with texts by Chris Cutler, Rainald Geotz and Thomas Pynchon and documents the last days of a political nightmare. Start here with Cassiber.