Cosmic Krautrock
Opal
The Munich band Embryo was founded in 1969. "Opal" was her first album. Released on the OHR label in 1970. The band led by Christian Burchard (2018) combined numerous genres into one huge crossover project. Jazz rock, folk, blues, soul, contemporary music, and world music. Even if "Opal" doesn't sound as perfect as later recordings, the album is considered to be very influential. Embryo themselves describe their style as follows: Pop music is the appropriate level of communication for Embryo, ju…
Psychedelic Underground
LP version. 180 gram vinyl, gatefold sleeve. The debut album from the original Amon Düül commune collective, released in 1969, stands as one of the most radical and uncompromising documents of the entire German underground scene. This is not Amon Düül II - this is the larger, more chaotic collective that spawned the more structured offshoot, and Psychedelic Underground captures their approach in all its raw, untamed glory.
Recorded in a single marathon session, the album is less about tradition…
Saat
Recording in a good studio in 1972 with an accomplished engineer/musician such as Dieter Dierks (Ash Ra Tempel, Cosmic Jokers, Tangerine Dream, and yes, the Scorpions), certainly enabled Emtidi to expand their musical style on 'Saat.' The end result was a shimmering, lush cosmic folk trip, with multi-tracked and treated acoustic guitars plus electric piano, fragile angelic femme vocals, vibes, and mellotron, (punctuated by the occasional acid guitar solo). Yes, 'Saat' is an elevated cosmic folk …
Japan Live
LP version on 180 gram vinyl. After Curiosum (BB 038CD/LP, 1981), the last Cluster album to be released on Sky, Roedelius and Moebius turned their attention to solo work. It was not until the early 1990s that Cluster returned to the electronic music stage with Apropos Cluster (BB 171CD/LP, 1990) and One Hour (BB 172CD/LP, 1994). The duo also took to the road for live shows in Germany and Europe, followed by tours across the USA and Japan. Some of these concerts were recorded in digital quality a…
Cosmic Century
The third album from Wallenstein, originally released in 1973, stands as the band's definitive statement and one of the peak achievements of the entire Kosmische Musik movement. Led by keyboardist Jürgen Dollase and guitarist Bill Barone, the group had evolved from their earlier heavy progressive sound into something far more expansive and cosmic in scope.
Cosmic Century is exactly what its title promises - a journey through infinite space rendered in swirling synthesizers, celestial guitar work…
Hölderlins Traum
** The legendary debut album of the Krautrock-Folk outfit from 1972. Produced in the Dierks-Studios. What an amazing improvement in the sound of this 50-year-old recording. With the help of the original analog master tapes and state-of-the-art technical equipment, the sensitive melodies of the debut album appear in a light of romance and empathy. Remastered at Dierks Studios, where the recordings were also made ** Debut album by this legendary German folk outfit centered around the family core o…
Beziehungen
Super Tip! LP version. Re-release of the second album by Annexus Quam, originally released in 1972. Transferred from the original master tapes and carefully remastered by HaGü Schmitz and Dieter Wegner. The timing was right: Five years earlier would have been too early, five years later would have been too late. But Annexus Quam from Kamp-Lintfort near Düsseldorf came along with the right music at the right moment. The seven-piece band formed in 1967 as Ambition Of Music; they were what was then…
Osmose
LP version. Reissue of the 1970 krautrock classic. The timing was right: Five years earlier would have been too early, five years later would have been too late. But Annexus Quam from Kamp-Lintfort near Düsseldorf came along with the right music at the right moment. The seven-piece band formed in 1967 as Ambition Of Music; they were what was then called a "beat group." In 1970, working with a local trombone choir led to a dramatic change of direction. Trombone, clarinet, saxophone, scat-like voc…
Dreamlab
LP version. The second album from Berlin-based electronic group Mythos, originally released in 1975, represents a crucial bridge between the cosmic folk of their debut and the full-blown Berlin school sound that would dominate the second half of the decade. Mastermind Stephan Kaske guided the band into deeper electronic territories here, crafting sound cascades and sequencer patterns that align them with the visionary work of Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel on the same Ohr label.
Dreamlab unfo…
Mythos
Mythos was formed in 1969 on the initiative of Stephan Kaske (flute, keyboards, vocals, guitar), who found two comrades-in-arms in Harald Weisse (bass) and Thomas Hildebrand (drums). Various performances impressed label boss and talent scout Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser so much that the band was able to release their debut album on the Ohr label in 1972. This album was also re-recorded and remastered from the original analog tapes. Best sound!
Operation
The second album from Birth Control, originally released in 1971, captures the band at a crucial turning point - moving from their blues-rock foundations into far more adventurous progressive and experimental territory. Led by vocalist Bernd Noske, with Bruno Frenzel on guitars and keyboards, Reinhold Sobotta on drums, and Bernd Koschmidder on bass, the group delivered one of the most powerful statements in early German rock.
Operation showcases Birth Control's remarkable ability to blend heavy,…
Blitzkrieg
One of Germany's longer lasting bands had first started as Blitzkrieg (until they found out a British band used the name as well) and changed their name to Wallenstein and kept their former name for the album, gracing it with a war-themed gatefold cover. Produced by the unavoidable Dieter Dierks and released on the ultra collectible Pilz label in early 72, this debut album is stunning effort that transformed the 200 MPH speed notion into music. Keyboardist Jurgen Dollasse's very international gr…
Results, Not Answers
Bureau B present a reissue of Young Scientist's debut album Results, Not Answers,
originally released in 1979. When you think of the music to have
emerged from Seattle, grunge and Sub Pop are probably the first things
that come to mind. But Seattle was already home to a vibrant alternative
music scene back in the 1970s. One of the most prominent synthesizer
acts of the period was the trio Young Scientist. Influenced by the likes
of Cluster, Harmonia, and Tangerine Dream, they released thei…
The Faust Tapes
There’s something perversely fabulous about the thought of this warped masterwork wandering into 60,000 unsuspecting British homes in 1973. Faust’s second-and-a-half album hit the shops to celebrate their signing to the nascent Virgin Records, who were looking to take advantage of the zeitgeist for German music at that time. Undeterred by the fact the band’s unwillingness to engage with the commercial landscape had seen them dropped from Polydor, Branson and co cooked up a suitably spectacular m…
Momentaufnahme II
Momentaufnahme II extends Faust’s recent excavation of their 1971–1974 archive, presenting a second volume of unheard and under‑heard material from the Wümme years. Compiled from recordings that didn’t make it onto the mammoth 1971–1974 (50 Years of Faust) eight‑LP box, this collection functions not as an outtakes bin but as a parallel narrative: how Faust sounded when the tape kept rolling between “official” takes, and how their anarchic, avant‑rock mission permeated even the most fragmentary e…
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 …
Release the Beast
Release the Beast marks CV Vision’s sixth studio album and his most gleefully hybrid statement to date, a follow‑up to Im Tal der Stutzer that turns genre fusion into its main organising principle. Rooted in an adventurous krautrock spirit, Berlin‑based Denis Schulze (CV Vision) treats psych rock, Detroit techno, distorted synthesizers, black metal and library music not as separate territories but as colours on the same palette. The record unfolds as a wild, cross‑style trip where meandering gui…
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…
Nachtfalter
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 (1980) was released on the legendary Sky label. Once again a milestone recording, it showcased Schickert's hypnotic echo guitar which developed into one of the hallmarks of the krautrock sound. Schickert's new album Nachtfalter, translating as…