★Bureau B
Gelb
Limited anniversary edition. Embossed, reverse board, hand numbered on limited-edition yellow vinyl. 500 copies available. 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, 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-Joach…
Samtvogel
** Black Vinyl **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 th…
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…
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…
Ein Bündel Fäulnis In Der Grube
With "Ein Bündel Fäulnis in der Grube", 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.
Zero Set
In 1983, Dieter Moebius (Cluster) and legendary producer Conny Plank teamed up for the third time, resulting in the Zero Set project, originally released on Sky Records. On this occasion, they were backed up by one of the best drummers on the German rock scene: Mani Neumeier of Guru Guru. 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 expl…
Tonspuren
This is the first solo album by Dieter Moebius, recorded at Conny Plank's studio and originally released in 1983 on Sky Records. 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, while 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 …
Oceanheart
"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 Sum Of Our Wounds (Cassette Recordings 1973-85)
Red Vinyl, edition of 500. 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 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.
Geltungsbereich Universum
LP version. All the herbs have been smoked. Datashock deliver a new album: Geltungsbereich Universum. Their second for Bureau B and the eighth in a career as an internationally active collective of musicians which has spanned two decades (so far). Space is the place, as the moonstruck sparrows sing from the rooftops, or is the Earth the most beautiful place in the universe? Some say yes, others no. Datashock say nothing at all."Twenty years and counting, and yet here they are, as shoulder-shrugg…
Attack Time
With Attack Time’ by sound tinkerer Zeus B. Held, Bureau B is re-releasing one of the most exciting records of the original experimental Kraut-pop period. After various stints, including prog band Birth Control and underground dance tipple Gina X Performance, he also put out a string of solo releases. ’Attack Time’, originally released on Aladin in 1981, gave Zeus B. Held the opportunity to experiment sonically outside the mainstream and subversively undermine the hegemonic MTV sound of the earl…
To Live
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, incl…
Allez-Teia (Heldon II)
*2023 stock* Bureau B present a reissue of Heldon's second album Allez-Teia, originally released on Disjuncta in 1975. Before making his own music in the early '70s, Richard Pinhas was a King Crimson fan. The British group has buzzed in Pinhas's mind for decades, but their greatest impact came early. When he first saw them play, Pinhas was struck by music played during intermission. "When I saw (King Crimson guitarist) Robert Fripp and Brian Eno perform in Paris later, I realized that the interm…
Offene Türen
*2023 stock* "...Offene Türen shows a more avant-garde side. The pieces in their brevity are often sketchy, acting as sound miniatures. The instrumentation is minimal with origins in the Selbstportrait series, with sound effects backing the Farfisa organ. There are also songs like 'Allemande,' which sounds a bit like a burlesque folk dance, or 'Abenteuerliche Begegnung' and 'Besucher im Traum' which resemble in their romantic mood more typical Roedelius music." - Jochen Rindfrey
Silberland Vol 2 - The Driving Side Of Kosmische Musik 1974-1984
Welcome to Silberland – where the streets are paved with strobes. Home to neon lights, straight lines and open roads, this futurist fantasy was ï¬rst 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 hu…
Gegenwelt
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 pion…
Im Tal der Stutzer
You might've caught CV Vision in Berlin, either on stage or behind the mixer at some of his favourite clubs like Arkaoda, Heiners or O Tannenbaum. He could be accompanied by synths, or drum kit, or even full band – channelling his love of Bo Hansson and Claude Larson, or Soft Machine and Picchio dal Pozzo. Always heavy on the backbeat, the songs awash with heady synths and expansive psych inversions. Taking inspiration from deep in the mediaeval mists of times long past, CV Vision comes riding o…
Cas-Con II
As part of our series "Experimental Electronic Underground GDR", we are very pleased to be able to make a very special recording available again. 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. Jörg Thomasius recorded the performance and released the recording in 1987 on his own underground cassette label Krötenkassetten. The elaborately restored original recording…
Arles
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 …
Echo Neuklang (Neo-Kraut-Sounds 1981 – 2023)
Christoph Dallach, Andreas Dorau and Daniel Jahn present Echo Neuklang, a compilation which explores the question of how Krautrock has influenced generation after generation of musicians since its inception. A contentious genre at the best of times, the music within its spectrum is essentially intangible. The common thread running through it is a compulsion to seek out the new. Beginning in the year 1981 and extending as far as 2023, the music in this collection demonstrates how the idea of what…