★Bureau B
Faust IV
Faust left Wümme's anarchic freedom for The Manor's professional constraints. Virgin wanted a hit. Faust IV was the answer: their most paradoxical album, accessible yet destabilizing, part studio work, part salvage. The sessions stretched, the budget vanished, the result endures—uneven, restless, compelling. Fifty years later: still mid-sentence, still profound, gloriously incomplete.
So Far
CD Digipack. Wümme, Lower Saxony. 1972. A converted schoolhouse. Inside: a tangle of cables, reel-to-reel machines, custom electronics soldered together by hands that refused manuals. This was not a professional recording studio. This was Faust's laboratory—and So Far was the experiment that proved you could rewire rock music's circuitry without killing the patient. Six months earlier, Faust had released their self-titled debut—a savage dismantling of what a rock album could be. Tape edits slice…
Inventions
Thumbing through the back pages of German electronic music, Bureau B uncovers another hidden gem from the Sky Records archive: 'Inventions', the 1983 collaboration between Adelbert von Deyen and Dieter Schütz. Fusing expansive kosmische textures with biting rock guitars, motorik rhythms, and the growl of '80s synth-pop, the duo conjure a sonic singularity which still sounds like the future today. Compact yet cosmic, 'Inventions' distils ambient drift and experimental edge into taut, three-minute…
Voyage
Bureau B once again dive into the Sky archive, unearthing another overlooked masterpiece long due for rediscovery. Originally released in 1985, 'Voyage' finds Dieter Schütz venturing beyond his Berlin School roots into a realm of lo-fi immediacy and New Age naivety. Every instrument is played by Schütz himself, except for the drums on "Above", which are performed with syncopated zeal by Michael Fecker. While its textured synthscapes and wistful melodies may echo the aesthetics of 2010s Vaporwave…
Ich Suche Dein Gesicht
Berlin-based project Silberstreif announces the release of their new album Ich suche dein Gesicht, available now on Bandcamp. With a name that translates to “silver lining,” Silberstreif crafts music that reflects both fragility and resilience, weaving together textures of ambient, electronic, and experimental sound.
Ich suche dein Gesicht (“I am searching for your face”) is more than an album: it is a sonic exploration of intimacy, distance, and the fleeting nature of human connection. Across…
Faust
Few debut albums arrive with the kind of self-contained logic and radical spirit found on Faust's self-titled 1971 statement. Released at the height of rock music's imperial phase, it marked the beginning of a project that would sidestep genre and expectation entirely, offering instead a fractured, exploratory take on what popular music could become. This Bureau B reissue offers a fresh opportunity to engage with one of the most curious and uncompromising records of its time. Faust emerged from …
II
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 differenc…
Allez-Teia (Heldon II)
Limited Anniversary Edition: hand numbered, White vinyl, 500 copies available! Released in 1975, this second full-length stands as perhaps the most uncompromising statement in the Heldon catalog - a work that refuses all concessions to accessibility while remaining utterly compelling from first pulse to final fade. Where the debut balanced Pinhas's most extreme impulses with moments of relative calm, Allez-Téia feels like an artist completely unleashing his vision without concern for consequence…
Third (It's Always Rock 'N' Roll)
** Limited Anniversary Edition: hand numbered, limited edition light Blue double vinyl, 500 copies available! hird album from the French spacerock electro combo masterminded by Richard Pinhas. Heldon’s darkest work lays another stone in their sonic mosaic: synths,drones, fuzz and trippy improvisations. Intense Heldon!! **
In the sprawling landscape of 1970s experimental music, few figures carved as singular a path as Richard Pinhas and his electronic storm trooper project Heldon. While their c…
Nightfall
"A defining force in the “Berlin School” of electronic music, both as a member of Tangerine Dream in what some see as their most essential era, and as a solo artist, Baumann has always bridged the cerebral and the cinematic. With ‘Nightfall’, he embarks on another sonic odyssey, crafting an atmospheric album steeped in mystery and evocative storytelling. Baumann’s artistic vision has long been shaped by his exploration of the human condition. From his pioneering work with Tangerine Dream to his …
Ambientale
Collector, seeker and storyteller Charles Bals brings his curatorial finesse to Hamburg's Bureau B with 'Ambientale', a journey into otherworldly sounds from the years 1983 - 2000. Drifting effortlessly between digital exoticism, mellow fusion, new age groove and library electronics, the pieces range from largely obscure to utterly un-google-able, and coalesce into a stunning soundtrack to tranquil seas, desert sand and starlit skies. Cinematic & enigmatic, 'Ambientale' is a stranger you've only…
Krautrock Eruption – An Introduction To German Electronic Music 1970-1980
Krautrock, what is it anyway? A genre, a derogative term, a song by Faust, … or: a welcome (and recurring) opportunity to talk about all of this. The music associated with the term in question has eagerly been canonized. From the enthusiastic and idiosyncratic ramblings of Julian Cope’s “Krautrocksampler” to encyclopaedic approaches like Alan and Stephen Freeman’s “Crack in the Cosmic Egg”, there are plenty of books to read and lists to discuss: Who’s in, who isn’t? The quarrels and disputes sur…
The Syntape Years 1981-1983
If you're already aware of Rüdiger Lorenz, chances are you washed ashore on 'Southland', his cult kosmische curio graciously reissued by the ever-benevolent Bureau B in the middle of the last decade. Either that, or you're one of the few hundred electronic music obsessives who encountered his work the first time round, giddily grabbing up the eighteen cassette, vinyl and CD releases the prolific part-timer delivered DIY style on his Syntape and Syncord imprints between 1981-1998. I say this beca…
Blickwinkel
Tip! CD version. After dipping into the archive to deliver a series of essential reissues, Bureau B continue to encourage the chaotic brilliance of Faust with an LP of brand-new music curated by originator Zappi Diermaier and a band of musical friends, including fellow founder Gunther Wüsthoff. Over the years Faust has become many things, each as separate as the fingers, but as together as the hand which makes up their eponymous fist. From 1971 to 1974 the Hamburg band blazed a bold sonic trail,…
Album II
The inspiration for 'Album l' and 'Album Il' began with a performance by Japanese musician Eiko Ishibashi at Cologne's Week-End Fest in 2019. For this appearance the renowned experimental musician and composer of the Oscar-winning film „Drive My Car" was joined on drums by Tatsuhisa Yamamoto and Joe Talia; both integral members of the top-level improvisational/ experimental scene in Tokyo. While in town for the festival, Ishibashi met up with the members of the Cologne-Berlin based group Von Spa…
Album I
The inspiration for 'Album l' and 'Album Il' began with a performance by Japanese musician Eiko Ishibashi at Cologne's Week-End Fest in 2019. For this appearance the renowned experimental musician and composer of the Oscar-winning film „Drive My Car" was joined on drums by Tatsuhisa Yamamoto and Joe Talia; both integral members of the top-level improvisational/ experimental scene in Tokyo. While in town for the festival, Ishibashi met up with the members of the Cologne-Berlin based group Von Spa…
Samtvogel
CD Edition. Released on the legendary label 'Brain', Günter Schickert's debut Samtvogel (1975) was one of the most significant guitar albums of the Krautrock era. Points of comparison from today's perspective are Syd Barrett or Pink Floyd's more adventurous early recordings. Schickert's follow-up Überfällig of 1980 was released on the equally legendary 'Sky' label. Once again a milestone recording, it showcased Schickert's hypnotic echo guitar which developed into one of the hallmarks of the Kra…
Blau
** 500 copies. Limited 50th Anniversary Edition: embossed, reverse board, hand numbered, limited edition red vinyl ** On the red album, Conrad 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. The structure, sound, and timbre of both LPs are so similar as to suggest that this was the case. Far more important than this historical pedantry is the fact that Sc…
Slow Motion
LP version. The 1960s weren't just about The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and hippies; they also ushered in new forms of art: happenings, Fluxus, Neo-Dada, video art, to name just a few. As borders blurred, pop influenced art and art influenced pop. Many protagonists of the time chose to ignore borders altogether. This chaotic, euphoric atmosphere of extreme innovation lasted well into the 1970s and continues to resonate today. All manner of trailblazers shaped the soundscape of the era. Conrad S…
Zuckerzeit
Limited Anniversary Edition: 180g vinyl, hand numbered, 1000 copies. In 1974, Cluster entered the sugar era. This doesn't mean that they had finally arrived in their promised land, but they had simply moved from Berlin to the country, to a small place called Forst on the river Weser. Many a thing had changed for band members Moebius and Roedelius since Cluster II: They had moved from boisterous Berlin to this calm rural village, they had founded the band Harmonia, had set up their own studio an…