★Bureau B
Selbstportrait
LP version on 180 gram vinyl. This is the third solo album by German keyboardist Hans-Joachim Roedelius, originally released in 1979 on Sky Records. Alongside his ongoing work with Cluster and Harmonia, Roedelius amassed an almost incalculable number of musical notations during his time in the idyllic Weser Uplands. Fleeting sketches, spontaneous improvisations, implied miniatures, rough compositions -- Roedelius recorded virtually every idea he came up with outside the studio sessions on h…
Wenn Der Sujdwind Weht
Wenn Der Südwind Weht ("When The South Wind Is Blowing") is the seventh solo album by Hans-Joachim Roedelius, originally released on Sky Records in 1981 (also known under the title Selbstportrait IV). "Where on earth does Roedelius find such a beautiful array of notes?" wonders Asmus Tietchens in his sleeve notes for this reissue. Not an unreasonable question. Roedelius, a pioneer of ambient music, Krautrock and, arguably, synthesizer pop, member of such seminal bands as Cluster and Harmonia, …
Sowas Von Egal 2: German Synth Wave Underground 1981-1984
LP version. Two years have passed since Bureau B released the first Sowas Von Egal compilation (BB 310CD/LP, 2018). With the musical movement or genre known as NDW celebrating its 40th anniversary, what better time than now to launch an ambitious successor to the first sampler. The beating heart of this endeavor is once again invigorated by the synchronous passions of bespoke Hamburg label Bureau B and the label's Damaged Goods nights where they present rare, obscure synth and wave discs from th…
Auf Dem Schwarzen Kanal
Auf Dem Schwarzen Kanal is one of the most outstanding, most sought-after releases in Conrad Schnitzler's extensive catalog. It was the only Schnitzler record to appear on a major label and saw him flirting with the experimental new wave sound that was emerging in 1980, particularly on the title track. Nevertheless, it still managed to sound idiosyncratically unlike any other music around at the time. Recorded with Wolfgang Seidel at Peter Baumann's Paragon Studio in Berlin, the four tracks take…
Con
Bureau B present a reissue of Conrad Schnitzler's Con, originally released in 1978. Conrad Schnitzler: In the electric garden by Wolfgang Seidel, May 2020: "... Whilst on shore leave in Düsseldorf, Conrad Schnitzler heard about a professor at the School of Art (Kunstschule) who also accepted students into his class without high school diplomas. Conrad Schnitzler became one of them. The spirit of a fundamental new beginning bonded this generation of artists together, with Karlheinz Stockhausen an…
Con-struct
About the Con-Struct series: Conrad Schnitzler liked to embark on daily excursions through the sonic diversity of his synthesizers. Finding exceptional sounds with great regularity, he preserved them for use in combination with each other in subsequent live performances. He thus amassed a vast sound archive of his discoveries over time. When the m=minimal label in Berlin reissued two Conrad Schnitzler albums at the outset of the 2010s, label honcho Jens Strüver was granted access to this audio …
Synthesist (40th Anniversary Edition) 2CD
Bureau B present a 40th Anniversary Edition reissue of Harald Grosskopf's Synthesis, originally released on Sky Records in 1980. 40th Anniversary Edition features new interpretations by Steve Baltes, Thorsten Quaeschning, Paul Frick, Kreidler, Pyrolator, Love-Songs, Stefan Lewin, Camera, and Tellavision."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 recent…
Tape Archive Essence 1973-1978
LP version. During the legendary Forst years, Roedelius had a private workspace with a Farfisa organ, a Revox-A77 tape machine, an echo device and a synthesizer which he borrowed from the Cluster studio next door now and again. Here he experimented, practiced, allowed his imagination to flow, at any hour of the day or night, whenever he was not in the studio with Dieter Moebius and/or Michael Rother at work on new Cluster or Harmonia material. Roedelius always let the tape run, in order to analy…
Selbstportrait Wahre Liebe
LP version. The first part of Hans-Joachim Roedelius's Selbstportrait (Self-Portrait) series was originally released under the title Sanfte Musik on Sky Records in 1979. Now, some forty years later, a new instalment has arrived in the form of an album entitled Wahre Liebe. One of the initiators of the Berlin Zodiak Free Arts Lab in 1967, Roedelius went on to co-found Kluster/Cluster and Harmonia, unleashing a new and free form of music which, with the benefit of hindsight, can be considered a mi…
Banzai: Elektronische Musik aus Berlin 1985/87
LP version. "Rudolf Langer (formerly of Tyndall) and Peter Preuß teamed up to create Lapre as a vehicle for their adventures in sonic experimentation. They set about capturing their nocturnal rehearsal room sessions on tape, Langer on synthesizer and Preuß on guitar. With the exception of a solitary single and a few extremely limited cassette runs, Lapre released no further material during their active phase. It was not until 2018 that their works became accessible to a wider audience, when Bure…
CEL (Felix Kubin & Hubert Zemler) - LP
LP version. Some will know Felix Kubin as the Janus-faced poltergeist of retrofuture electronic dance music. To others, he is an award-winning radio dramatist, an arranger of complex orchestral and big band compositions. Contemporary experimental musicians see him as the personification of pop desire. For producers of pop and club music, meanwhile, he is a tree trunk, spanning the deep gorge between them and high culture. One thing they can all agree on: when Kubin shows up, concrete and plastic…
Stand By
LP version. Bureau B present a reissue of Heldon's seventh and final album of the 1970s Stand By, originally released in 1979. After the release of Stand By, Richard Pinhas focused on solo LPs before quitting music for around a decade. "It was the end of the tale," he explains. "We decided to split for many reasons. The main one was that one or two of the other musicians wanted to stop. They were session musicians, mainly. At one point they said they didn't have so much time to give. And it was …
6 - Interface
LP version. Bureau B present a reissue of Heldon's 6 - Interface, originally released in 1977. A brilliant moment occurs right at the end of Heldon's sixth album, Interface. The album's final song, its side-long title track, builds up slowly into a roaring tornado of fiercely mutating drum patterns, effervescent synth work, and guitar licks that wail into the atmosphere like an abandoned astronaut. Then, after nearly 19 minutes of highly futuristic avant-garde space rock, this ultramodern music …
Un Reve Sans Consequence Speciale
LP version. Bureau B present a reissue of Heldon's Un Rêve Sans Conséquence Spéciale, originally released in 1976. Heldon's Richard Pinhas has never been shy of pinpointing his influences while, at the same time, making music that is noticeably distinct from any of his designated sources. He has, for instance, made it clear that a significant font of inspiration was Robert Fripp's guitar style and melding of rock music with cutting-edge electronics (especially in collaboration with Brian Eno). I…
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…
Conditions of the Gas Giant
Bureau B present a reissue of Conrad Schnitzler's Conditions of the Gas Giant, originally released on cassette in 1988. The Berlin artist first released these recordings on a small American cassette label. Admirers of the seminal artist Conrad Schnitzler can be found all over the planet, including the USA, of course. Matt Howarth, illustrator and independent comic artist, is one of them. He has been following Schnitzler's music since the early 1970s whilst drawing offbeat science fiction stories…
Cheyenne
Bureau B present a reissue of Martin Rev's Cheyenne,
originally released in 1991. The sphere of Martin Rev's influence and
the relevance of his music may well be related to the fact that he was
one of the first artists who succeeded in grasping the abstraction of
electronic music, infusing it with a sense of immediacy built on raw
energy. Whilst the likes of La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and Kraftwerk
were busy digging in the electronic music garden, Martin Rev fo…
Clouds of Glory
Bureau B present a reissue of Martin Rev's Clouds of Glory, originally released in 1985. Martin Rev is best known as one half of the seminal duo Suicide (with Alan Vega). Listening to his solo albums, it becomes clear that Rev was responsible for the group's music. Clouds of Glory, his second solo effort, was released on the French label New Rose in 1985. Suicide mirrored the reductive and radical traits of the contemporaneous punk scene that was in the process of emerging, but their electronic,…
L\'Ethique
LP version. Bureau B present a reissue of Richard Pinhas's L'Ethique, originally released in 1982. Following the vaguely poppy shapes of 1980's album East West (BB 292CD/LP), his fifth album L'Ethique saw the ex-Heldon guitarist and synth wizard return to bigger and bolder band-like methods. After the release he disappeared from the limelight for nearly a decade and returned in the 1990s. Interviewed by the Electronics & Music Maker magazine in 1982, Pinhas spoke in buoyant terms about the futur…
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…