★Bureau B
Spat-Europa
LP version. Comes on 180 gram vinyl. While Asmus Tietchens planned to head off "into the future" ("In die Zukunft") with Biotop (1981), Spät-Europa witnesses his arrival. Released on Sky Records in 1982, the second album in the "Zeitzeichen" phase no…
Biotop
scenes from the lab of German electronic music composer Asmus Tietchens are just a few skewed demonstrations of his distant mastery of highbrow composition guised in synth-pop's veneer
Conrad & Sohn
"Conrad Schnitzler is undoubtedly one of the founding fathers of German electronica. And his son, Gregor Schnitzler, matched the father's extraordinary level of creative output. They appear to have settled any musical differences amicably. After all,…
Contempora
LP version. 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 Joseph Beuys, he founded Berlin's legendary Zodiak Free Arts Lab, a subcul…
Schwarz (Eruption)
Kluster was a short-lived project of three musicians/artists/performers: Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Konrad Schnitzler. They recorded two albums in 1970, unprecedented in their experimental radicalism. Chaotic, apocalyptic (noise) impr…
Palais Schaumburg
The influential German post-punk electronic pop band Palais Schaumburg has reunited in the classic line-up. Since its release in 1981, their debut album has remained in a league of its own: fleet-footed and peculiar, abstract and pop, amateurish an…
Con 3
This album saw Conrad Schnitzler head further in the direction of pop music. Like Consequenz, Con 3 (1981) is a collaborative effort with Wolfgang Seidel, alias Sequenza. Con 3 is a really odd mixture of numerous ingredients which Schnitzler was ca…
Consequenz
Commercial Schnitzler? How quickly, how prematurely are opinions and judgements bandied about when an artist suddenly changes the form of his work. Conrad Schnitzler fell under such a cloud when, after 1978, his songs, for a time at least, did not…
Produkt der Deutsch-Amerikanischen Freundschaft
Bureau B reissues the first Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft album, originally released in 1979. True D.A.F. connoisseurs will, of course, be aware of the early phase of the Düsseldorf-Wuppertal combo. But most fans of the subsequently world-famo…
Normalette Surprise
Der Plan sharpen their cracked pop craft. 'Normalette Surprise' fizzes with cheap synths, tape trickery and gleeful absurdity, the Düsseldorf collective turning DIY electronics into surreal, catchy miniatures. Essential NDW.
Uberfallig
180 gram LP version. Bureau B reissues Günter Schickert's album Überfällig, originally released in 1979 on Sky Records. "No sooner had electronic music broken through in Germany, principally aligned in the two schools of Düsseldorf and Berlin, tha…
Klopfzeichen
180 gram vinyl version. Imagine finding a message in a bottle, forty years after it was dispatched. That is what it feels like when you listen to Kluster's Klopfzeichen for the first time, mysterious, hard to decipher, a relic of a time long since…
Zwei-Osterei
LP version. Zwei Osterei is the second half of a recording session which took place on a single day in November 1970. Klopfzeichen is the first part. Yet the uncompromising Zwei Osterei surpasses the earlier Klopfzeichen album by some distance in ter…
Moebius + Tietchens
With Asmus Tietchens and Dieter Moebius, two artists counting among the greats of German avant-garde electronic music have come together. Both have been active for well over 30 years: Moebius (since 1970) as a member of Kluster/Cluster and Harmoni…
Freedom Of Speech
The second album of the Phantom Band is quite different to the predecessor. The line-up features the spoken word performer Sheldon Ancel on the microphone instead of bass player Rosko Gee. Whilst the debut album revealed many Caribbean or African …
Phantom Band
The first band of Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit after Can split up in 1979. The first line-up (1980) included top musicians such as Helmut Zerlett (e.g. Dunkelziffer, Unknown Cases), Rosko Gee (Traffic, Can), Dominik von Senger (e.g. Damo Suzuki Band…
