Electronic / All styles

'Listening': Qluster distil their art to its essence. Soft analogue tones and slow, deliberate motion invite deep attention, chamber electronics of great tenderness from Roedelius and Onnen Bock.

'Questions', a companion in Qluster's quiet dialogue. Roedelius and Onnen Bock spin delicate, unhurried keyboard music, more felt than composed. Intimate, spacious and gently searching ambient kosmische.

Roedelius and Onnen Bock as Qluster: 'answers' in the form of hushed, exploratory electronics. Analogue keyboards drift through patient, chamber-like pieces, the Cluster spirit reborn, meditative and warm.

Kurt Dahlke's debut as Pyrolator. 'Inland' collides sequencers, tape and early synths in short, sharp electronic sketches: playful, political and DIY to the core. The inventive nerve-centre of Ata Tak and the NDW.

'Abroad': Pyrolator's imaginary world tour on synthesizer and tape. Kurt Dahlke maps invented territories in bright, restless electronics, witty, inventive and unmistakably Ata Tak. German new wave at its most curious.

Baumann's brightest solo record. 'Trans Harmonic Nights' sets crisp sequencer motifs against warm melody: the Berlin-school grammar sharpened into concise, luminous electronic pop. Tangerine Dream's pop instinct, distilled.

The Tangerine Dream man's debut solo statement. 'Romance 76' splits between pulsing electronic sequences and orchestral romanticism: lush, melodic and forward-looking. A landmark of the Berlin school stepping toward song.

Tangerine Dream's keyboardist in solo flight. 'Nightfall' glides on elegant sequencer patterns and widescreen synth melody: the Berlin-school aesthetic at its most polished and songful. Cosmic music with a pop pulse.

An unlikely trio: Cluster's Moebius, Guru Guru's Mani Neumeier and Die Krupps' Jürgen Engler. 'Another Other Place' grinds electronics, percussion and industrial edge into taut, exploratory grooves, three generations of German sound in dialogue.

Cosmic bass explorer Michael Bundt goes fully electronic. 'Electri City' rides propulsive sequences and interstellar synth sweep: Berlin-school motion with a rock heart, a lost gem of German space music returned.

Rev's earliest experiments unearthed: cassette recordings, 1973-85. Skeletal drum-machine pulse, raw keyboard drones and proto-Suicide menace, the primordial ooze of minimal electronics, captured as it first formed.

The first solo record from Suicide's synth architect. Rev strips everything to skeletal drum-machine pulse and cheap-keyboard melody, at once brutal and strangely tender. A foundational document of minimal synth.

Martin Rev turns to reverie. 'Les Nymphes' drifts through delicate, looping electronic tone-poems: melodic, meditative and unadorned. The Suicide co-founder in intimate, luminous solo flight.

Rev at his most beatless and beatific. 'Clouds of Glory' floats on cheap-keyboard hymns and shimmering repetition: devotional, lo-fi and strangely sublime. The gentlest, most transporting corner of the Suicide man's solo world.

Suicide's synth architect goes solo and lyrical. 'Cheyenne' trades menace for melody: bright, looping keyboard motifs and toy-box rhythm, naïve and radiant. Minimal electronics with an unexpectedly tender heart.

'Electronic music from Berlin, 1985-87.' Lapre's private-press sequencer explorations glide through classic Berlin-school terrain: pulsing arpeggios, cosmic pads and patient build. A cult synth artefact rescued from obscurity.

From the Liaisons Dangereuses nucleus: Krishna Goineau's sleek, sensual electronic body-pop. Taut sequencer grooves and cool vocals blur EBM, synth-pop and dancefloor tension. Düsseldorf's underground at its most seductive.

The ex-Kraftwerk composer opens his notebook. 'Off the Record' reworks decades of unused sketches into pristine electro-pop: hooks honed to a gleam, machine-precise yet warmly melodic. Düsseldorf craftsmanship, quietly personal.

The former Kraftwerk man's sharpest solo statement, turning the man-machine aesthetic on media overload: crisp electro-pop hooks, cool precise synthesis, melodic and ironic. The Düsseldorf pop tradition intact.

A Dutch composer's private synthesizer odyssey, 1977. Andriessen conjures a 'trance symphony' on Minimoog and Rhodes: luminous, minimal and quietly euphoric, drawing on Berlin and Düsseldorf electronics rather than the concert hall.

Finland's cosmic showman in early form. 'Sähkömies' pairs cheap analogue gear with sci-fi imagination: lo-fi electro, wonky disco and space-jazz leanings, all delivered with Jimi Tenor's singular deadpan charm. Homemade futurism.

Before Camouflage: teenage demo tapes, 1984-86, from synth-pop craftsman Heiko Maile. Bedroom sequencers and bright melodic hooks capture a gifted talent forming, a charming, revealing document of German synth-pop in the making.

A cornerstone of German cosmic music. Ashra and Klaus Schulze drummer Harald Grosskopf steps out solo, wedding propulsive live drums to shimmering sequencer bliss. 'Synthesist' is euphoric Berlin-school pop: melodic, driving, timeless.

A quiet meeting of minds. Roedelius and Schneider let delicate electronic and acoustic textures unfold over 'hours' of patient, meditative music: serene, spacious and gently kosmische throughout.

'Open doors'. Roedelius invites the listener into gentle, exploratory keyboard pieces, half-composed and half-dreamed. Warm, unhurried and melodically generous, the Cluster co-founder in intimate, searching mood.

'Happy moments', and it sounds it. Roedelius spins fragile, looping keyboard miniatures of great warmth and melodic grace, the gentler, sunlit side of the Cluster and Harmonia mastermind. Quietly radiant kosmische ambience.

French minimal-wave shadows from the cassette years, 1980-83. Fondation's cold drum machines, brittle synths and noir atmosphere distil an entire underground era: austere, romantic and hypnotic. A coldwave excavation.

Felix Kubin and percussionist Hubert Zemler as CEL: analogue synths meet live drums in taut, kinetic instrumentals. Playful and precise, kosmische energy channelled through a restless modern sensibility. Hamburg futurism, dancing.

'Ophio' pulses with widescreen, motorik grandeur. Die Wilde Jagd carry the krautrock and kosmische lineage into the present: hypnotic repetition, choral swells and cinematic build, drama drawn out over long, patient arcs.

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.

Der Plan's riotous debut, a founding shot of Neue Deutsche Welle. 'Geri Reig' is anarchic, homemade electronic pop: dime-store keyboards, Dada humour and pure Ata Tak irreverence. NDW at its most inventive and unhinged.

The Ata Tak pranksters score a film. Der Plan's soundtrack to 'Die letzte Rache' is gleeful, cracked electronic pop: toy synths, absurd humour and genuine invention. The mischievous engine room of German new wave.

Solo home electronics from Liquid Liquid's percussionist. Between 1984 and 1988 Dennis Young taped melodic, marimba-tinged synth miniatures, bright, rhythmic and disarmingly personal. A private cache of downtown-NY DIY.

Schnitzler decelerates: long, hovering electronic tones and slow-turning sequences that reward patience. 'Slow Motion' is among the more meditative corners of his vast output, cold, spacious and quietly mesmerising.

The second volume of Schnitzler's cinema for the mind's eye. Sequencer motifs and alien textures sketch scene after scene of electronic drama: the restless imagination of a true pioneer, drawn from his boundless tape archive.

Imaginary soundtracks from the Kluster co-founder. 'Filmmusik 1' collects vivid electronic scenes, sinister, playful and cosmic by turns, music for films that never existed, from one of Germany's boldest sonic minds.

More from the inexhaustible archive of Berlin's electronic anarchist. Schnitzler stacks pulsing sequences and caustic tone-colours into restless, self-contained machines of sound: uncompromising, hypnotic and utterly his own.

Previously unreleased tapes from the Kluster co-founder and restless electronic pioneer. Cold, pulsing sequencer patterns and alien tone-colours map an imaginary planet: raw, hypnotic and unmistakably Schnitzler, from his vast archive.

A summit of German sonic royalty: producer Conny Plank, Guru Guru drummer Mani Neumeier and Cluster's Moebius. 'Zero Set' is muscular, percussive electronic funk, dubwise, propulsive and years ahead. A krautrock supergroup in the studio.

One take, one hour, no overdubs. Moebius and Roedelius let a single improvisation unfurl in real time, gently evolving electronic tides, meditative and unforced. Late-period Cluster at its most patient and hypnotic.