★Bureau B
Les Nymphes
A Martin Rev album is always liable to spring a surprise. Think of the rough guitars which unexpectedly appeared on his 2003 release "To Live" instead of synthesizers. "Les Nymphes", which followed in 2008, saw Rev return to dream-laden melodic miniatures, but came from a resolutely more radical place than its predecessors.
John Peel BBC Sessions 97-99
*300 copies limited edition* Without a doubt, To Rococo Rot are an exception within the German music landscape. From 1995 until they broke up in 2014, the group around Robert Lippok, Ronald Lippok and Stefan Schneider researched a unique sound between electronic music, ambient, post-melancholy and the further development of a new, free music like krautrock. Pitchfork described their sound as "unmistakably digital, yet 100% human". With releases on labels such as Kitty-Yo, City Slang and Mute Re…
Eins Und Zwei Und Drei Und Vier 2 - Deutsche Experimentelle Pop-Musik 1978-87
For their second foray into the fringes of German pop, Bureau B delve deeper than before, raiding cassette culture, 7" obscurities and overlooked album cuts to further frame this free-thinking strain of sonic expression. Starting the count from punk’s year zero, this set sees a newly liberated generation get weird and wild with anything they could lay their hands on, delivering demented, detuned and disorienting tracks brimming with DIY spirit.
Con-Struct
The German pioneer of electronic music Conrad Schnitzler (1937-2011) amassed a vast archive of sounds for use in combination with each other in live performances. In 2011 the idea came up of con-structing new compositions, not remixes, from this material. The Con-Struct series was born. This release features con-structions by Baal & Mortimer who writes about it in the linernotes: It was exciting to break open existing material, peeling something out of the past and thus transgressing it and open…
Mr. Mercator / Herrlichkeit (Ken Charlton) / Tiefland
Dieter Moebius (Cluster, Harmonia) and Asmus Tietchens share an outtake of their album Moebius & Tietchens with us for this Record Store Day exclusive 12". Joe Watson (Stereolab) aka Junior Electronics recorded a new song and reworked the Moebius & Tietchens song "Herrlichkeit" by adding vocal overdubs.
Balcony Sunset / Sonnenaufgang 4:46 Uhr
The first collaboration between Ulrich Schnauss & Mark Peters, “Underrated Silence” has been one of Bureau B’s most successful releases so far. Ulrich Schnauss (famous for his three solo albums as well as for his remix work) teamed up with Mark Peters (bass player, guitarist and singer of the British band Engineers) to create a bacchanalian instrumental combination of ambient, electronica and shoegaze sounds. “Balcony Sunset” is a track from this session that was not released on the album.
Kurt …
Reverse
*2023 stock* "Save for a brief hiatus in the ’80s when he became disillusioned with music, guitarist Richard Pinhas has spent the last five decades making records, both solo and with many groups including ’70s French space-rock innovators Heldon. Lately he’s been more productive, and collaborative, than ever: Reverse is his 14th release this decade, and like most of the others it features a fine supporting cast of accomplished players.
That cast began with Oren Ambarchi, a partner with Pinhas on…
Neuland /2
*2023 stock*The former Der Plan man and NDW legend offers more sleek experiments in mesmerizing Techno minimalism on the 2nd 'Neuland' session. A-side 'Minato Mirai' is a beautifully fluid Teutonic techno groove with a rolling, elliptical bassline and tranced-out melody while the scuttling, insectoid hi-hats balance the slickness with a bit of much needed grit. Meanwhile 'Vostok' is like a less subtle version of The Field's sophisticated Trance arrangements, stirring up some ecstatic, almost exp…
Momenti Felici
*2023 stock* This LP by German synth music pioneer Hans-Joachim Roedelius features almost no synthesizers at all. When they do appear (most prominently on "Über den Wolken"), they're a background instrument, supporting his piano. At other times, Roedelius duets with saxophonist Alexander Czjzek. But the primary instrument is his grand piano, and the pieces aren't the droning marathons of 1970s German "kosmische" music, they're three- and four-minute vignettes (some tracks are in the six-minute r…
Total Digital
Having completed his military service as a naval radio operator, Gunther Wüsthoff was in the midst of his German and fine art studies when he encountered Rudolf Sosna and Jean-Hervé Peron. It was May 1969 and each of them had a guitar so they decided to make music together. Polydor International headhunter Uwe Nettelbeck tracked them down on February 23 1971, prompting them to form the legendary krautrock band Faust with three other Hamburg musicians a few days later. Wüsthoff stayed with the ba…
Liederbuch
LP version. When the Welttraumforscher (world dream explorer) started their journey on July 14, 1981, it was not foreseeable that it would last so long. For over 40 years now, Christian Pfluger from Zurich has been working with drawings, texts and songs on the idiosyncratic and fascinating universe of the imaginary trio. This has resulted in numerous cassettes, LP and CD releases. Most recently, a two-part retrospective was released in the spring of 2021 on Hamburg's Bureau B (, giving an insigh…
Solo Works. Kollektion 07
Dieter Moebius is one of the most important protagonists of avant-garde electronic music in Germany. Alongside his bands Kluster/Cluster and Harmonia, he participated in numerous collaborations (with the likes of Brian Eno and Mani Neumeier/Guru Guru). Seven years after Moebius passed away in July 2015, Asmus Tietchens, one of his musical companions, compiled this collection for Bureau B – he concentrated on his solo works "as they offer the clearest insight into his personality and inventive po…
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…
Con '84
LP version. Composer and conceptual artist Conrad Schnitzler (1937-2011) was one of the most influential figures of the electronic avant-garde in Germany. In 1967/68, the Joseph Beuys student founded the Zodiak Free Arts Lab, which became a playground for Berlin subculture. In addition to many other musical stations, bustling Schnitzler was a member of the kraut-electronic formations Tangerine Dream and Kluster. Numerous solo releases complete his extensive oeuvre. One of them is Con 84, probabl…
Consequenz II
LP version. Composer and conceptual artist Conrad Schnitzler (1937-2011) was one of the most influential figures of the electronic avant-garde in Germany. In 1967/68, the Joseph Beuys student founded the Zodiak Free Arts Lab, which became a playground for Berlin subculture. In addition to numerous solo releases Schnitzler was also involved in various band formations not least Tangerine Dream and Kluster. Representing another of his musical landmarks are the Consequenz releases. Consequenz II eme…
Punkt
After the overwhelming success of last years 1971-74 box set release, containing the first four studio albums and for the first time ever this lost ‘last’ album recording, ‘Punkt’ gets a deserved and necessary stand alone release to the relief of fans and collectors and the undoubted future gratification of those yet to experience the magic in these recordings. 'While working on the “lost” album which the band recorded in Munich, it became clear that I was listening to the last ever made recordi…
Silberland Vol 1: the Psychedelic Side of Kosmische Musik
Fellow humans, Bureau B invite you on an expedition to Silberland, a singular span of spacetime created by Germany’s sonic futurists of the seventies and eighties. Embracing the early electronics and tape experiments of the sixties’ avant-garde, these artists aimed to boldly go, eschewing small steps for giant leaps into a nebulous and novel sound.
1. Die Partei – Strahlsund2. Rolf Trostel – Two Faces (bureau b edit)3. Michael Bundt – Full Steam Ahead (bureau b edit)4. Moebius – Etwas (bureau b …
MEZ 31'00 (Experimenteller Elektronik-Underground DDR 1989)
*In process of stocking* Dieter Zobel aka Didier Leboz: serial tinkler, inventor, freestyle freak Tension. Performance. Resistance - our Zonic Spezial documenting underground cassette culture in the latter years of the GDR caused quite a stir when it first appeared in 2006. A collaborative effort with the legendary ZickZack label and Verbrecher publishing house, “Spannung. Leistung. Widerstand. Magnetbanduntergrund DDR 1979-1990” (to give the work its full title) caused many listeners, especiall…
Acht Gesänge Der Schwarzen Hunde
*In process of stocking* 'When in 2006 our Zonic Spezial "Voltage. Power. Resistance. Magnetic Tape Underground GDR 1979-1990" was published in cooperation with Verbrecher Verlag and the legendary label ZickZack, there was some amazement. Especially when the enclosed CDs were listened to from a Western perspective. Part of this weird Kassettentäter-Ost potpourri of swirling post-punk variety, which Bert Papenfuß, Bo Kondren, Bernd Jestram and Ronald Lippok compiled with well-founded interpretive…
Cluster & Eno
The first of two milestones in ambient music recorded by Germany's legendary electronic pioneers Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius together with Britains music eccentric Brian Eno.