★Bureau B
Ass
LP version. Includes CD. Three guitarists, three generations, one album. Günter Schickert, Jochen Arbeit, and Dirk Dresselhaus are all renowned Berlin guitarists. They epitomize three generations of experimental musicians; Schickert personifies the krautrock of the 1970s, Arbeit 1980s post-punk, and Dresselhaus the neo-electronica of the late 1990s and 2000s. Their artistic approaches may differ according to their diverse musical backgrounds, yet what they have in common is a fundamental in…
j US t
Faust for all. The Krautrock legends lay down the musical foundations for everyone else to make something of their own. "j US t" -- pronounced "Just Us" -- is the new album from legendary Hamburg band, Faust. Founding members Jean-Hervé Peron and Zappi Diermaier have laid down 12 musical foundations, inviting the whole world to use them as a base on which to build their own music. The tracks presented by Peron and Diermaier are clearly, intrinsically typical of Faust in their own right, ye…
Gruen
Conrad Schnitzler's green album (aka Grün), originally released in 1981 on Edition Block. "Schnitzler's tracks in the 1970s were lengthy and shared a musical pattern which varied only minimally. Hence the green album has just one track on each side and any changes in melodic structure are subtle in nature. Both pieces are very much typical of Schnitzler in style, but less so tonally. An analog rhythm machine ploughs almost brutally through the astoundingly delicate electronic veil of 'Der…
Gelb
LP version on 180 gram vinyl. Conrad Schnitzler's yellow album (aka Gelb), originally released in 1981 on Edition Block. "The chronology of Schnitzler's solo releases in the 1970s -- and even more so in the '80s -- resembles a book with seven seals. Schnitzler regularly issued his music on analogue cassette or LP, often on his own as 'private releases', without any help from a label or professional distributor. The yellow album, for example, was issued on vinyl in 1981 by René Block in Ber…
Synthesist
Repressed; LP version. "Harald Grosskopf was in his early twenties when LSD 'blew [his] reality away,' as he recalls. Born in Hildesheim in 1949, he had previously drummed in fairly conventional rock bands, most recently for Wallenstein. Their label-boss Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser was fond of facilitating jam sessions for musicians on his Ohr und Pilz label, often supplying his 'cosmic couriers' with LSD (unbeknown to them, on occasion). In one such session, the drug inspired something of an epiph…
Die letzte Rache
Der Plan (Moritz R, Frank Fenstermacher, Pyrolator) were instrumental in ushering in the German New Wave (NDW) and are considered free spirits of synthesizer pop: electronic music created with minimal means, sometimes experimental, playful or even bordering on dilettantism, but always with a sense of humour.
Retrospectively, it makes perfect sense that Der Plan created a soundtrack. For one thing, visuals were almost as important to Der Plan as their music. And if every self-respecting pop b…
Nachtstucke
LP version. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl. Nachtstücke owed its publication to former Tangerine Dream member Peter Baumann, who was asked by the French label Barclay/EGG to produce three albums focusing specifically on German electronic music. He was working with Hans-Joachim Roedelius at the time, who had been given a few Tietchens tracks on cassette. When Baumann heard Roedelius play them in the studio during a break in proceedings, they sparked his interest and he met up with Tietchens some time …
Der Funfte Himmel
LP version. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl. Between 1981 and 1983 Asmus Tietchens released four albums on the Sky Records label, fusing rhythmic set pieces and off-kilter sounds into gaudy escapades of saccharine artificiality. The "pseudo-pop" epithet reflected their frequently ironic air. All four records have been reissued by Bureau B in their original form. What remained may be found on this collection. Der fünfte Himmel ("The Fifth Sky") retrieves those pieces which were denied a place on the or…
Silber
A collection from Conrad Schnitzler's archive, recorded between 1974 and 1975, originally released on LP only in 2009. Contains the complete original material (three more tracks than the 2009 release) on CD for the first time (with original running order). Just when you think you have grasped Conrad Schnitzler's master plan, every time you kid yourself into predicting what you are about to hear, the next record comes along to prove you wrong. Motorik is writ large throughout. Even the less rhyth…
Gold
Bureau B presents a song collection from Conrad Schnitzler's archive, recorded between 1976 and 1978, originally released by the small German label Marginal Talent in 2003. In the comprehensive canon of Schnitzler releases, the music on the Gold album stands out a mile in every respect. Judged on the sound alone, there is little to suggest that the material was recorded as long ago as the 1976 to 1978 period. There is more at play here than two tape recorders, analog synthesizers and sequencers.…
Kinder in der wildnis
The fact that this album appeared at all in 1983 owes less to Günter Schickert and more to Steven and Alan Freeman, who sought him out for their Krautrock encyclopedia The Crack in the Cosmic Egg. On learning that Schickert had heaps of recordings in his archive, the Freeman brothers proposed compiling an album. Schickert agreed and handed over material which the English YHR label had released in cassette form. Kinder in der Wildnis is a more heterogeneous album than either of its predecessors, …
Congratulacion
LP version on 180 gram vinyl." Conrad Schnitzler is as unpredictable as he is true to himself. If this sounds paradoxical, he reconfirmed the assertion in 1987 with an album which posed many questions and offered few answers -- his music more extraordinary than ever. The indefatigable Schnitzler still leaves anyone listening to Congratulacion today rather baffled. Those well-acquainted with his music might search in vain for familiar landmarks. Instead, new and unexpected features can be heard, …
Pyrolator's Traumland
LP version, on 180 gram vinyl. Bureau B reissues Pyrolator's Wunderland, originally released on Ata Tak in 1984. Quote 1: "I have always strived for the opposite of whatever is hip at the time." (Pyrolator in June 2013) Quote 2: "Wunderland is so beautiful -- the first time I heard this record, I cried." (Andreas Dorau). New York City, 1983. Andreas Dorau has a gig at Danceteria and Pyrolator accompanies him as sound engineer. Back then, it really looked as if Ata Tak could make a go of it in th…
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 not only continued in the style of its predecessor, it managed to refine it a little more precisely. Spät-Europa also conveys a banefully distorted pseudo-pop soundscape of disjointed rhythms and oblique melodies, defined by nervous pulses, cool alacri…
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, how else could they have 'shared' an LP released by Conrad Schnitzler himself? One half of Conrad & Sohn features music by Conrad Schnitzler, the other, his son Gregor. Two mini-albums on one disc, so to speak. An ideal opportunity to compare them. …
Contempora
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 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-Joachim Roedelius) and also released countless solo albums. "Contempora" is a sort of collection of sketches, refl…
Schwarz (Eruption)
LP version. Comes on 180 gram vinyl and includes download card for the album. The official Konrad Schnitzler discography lists Eruption, released in 1971, under the title Schwarz, as the first Schnitzler album. In actual fact, Eruption is the third and final LP by the group Kluster, following Klopfzeichen (BB 110CD/LP) and Zwei Osterei (BB 111CD/LP). The line-up printed on the labels leaves no room for doubt. Unlike the two previous albums, Eruption was not issued by the Schwann Verlag, but by t…
Produkt der Deutsch-Amerikanischen Freundschaft
180 gram LP version. 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-famous duo may well be taken aback when confronted with their debut album: forceful synth bass sounds, snappy rhythms, Gabi Delgado and leather all conspicuously absent. In their place, pure instrumental, unstructured noise-rock,…
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, than Günter Schickert also began his first musical experiments. Although GAM, the group he founded in 1973, did not then release a record, he did issue his first solo effort, Samtvogel, a year later -- an album which was eagerly snapped up and re-rele…
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 passed. The handwriting is archaic, barely legible, the complex contents only falling into place when examined through the light of historical context. Klopfzeichen is an incredibly important release for the time in which it appeared (1971), an …