★Bureau B
Inselmusik
LP version. Bureau B reissue Rolf Trostel's Inselmusik (1981). Rolf Trostel is a protagonist of the so-called Berliner Schule, or Berlin School (Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze). On his first album Inselmusik, he explores the sonic possibilities of the recently introduced PPG wavetable synthesizer. The music is based on live performances from the late 1970s by Trostel and Krautrock guitarist Günter Schickert. Formally speaking, Inselmusik is a demonstration of the PPG Wave Computer 360, a synthes…
Two Faces
LP version. Bureau B present a reissue of Rolf Trostel's second album Two Faces, originally released in 1982. While Inselmusik(BB 230CD/LP), released the previous year, was intended as a basis for live performance, Trostel composed and produced the five instrumental tracks on Two Faces exclusively for this album. The music is clearly a product of the Berlin School, yet it is more sophisticated and varied than its predecessor. Some new additions to Trostel's instrument collection are audible. Whi…
Sternzeit
LP version. Bureau B present a reissue of Adelbert Von Deyen's debut album Sternzeit, originally released in 1978. Adelbert Von Deyen is a protagonist of the so-called Berlin School (Berliner Schule) of electronic music. On his debut album, he takes his time to develop sound structures, often drifting, floating blissfully into tonal interference. The listener also requires time and patience, but will be rewarded with a Zen-like state of contemplation. Adelbert Von Deyen's musical backstory follo…
Electri City
LP version. Bureau B present a reissue of Michael Bundt's Electri City, originally released in 1980. Having played his way through the 1970s in various rock combos (Medusa, Nine Days' Wonder), Michael Bundt embarked on a solo career in the latter part of the decade, releasing three albums which saw him explore the vast potential of electronic music. Delightfully varied and typical of his willingness to experiment, his music orbits around krautrock, Berlin School electronica, space-futurism and s…
Hingus
LP version. Bureau B presents a reissue of Sven Grünberg's Hingus, originally released in 1981. Sven Grünberg is a famous musician for film and theatre in Estonia - an old hand in the field of electronic ambient music. In 1974, whilst still a music student, he and Härmo Härm founded Mess, a progressive rock band. Grünberg was the first musician in Estonia to use a synthesizer. The ambient electronica of Hingus (Breath), recorded between 1978 and 1980, was spiced up with prog rock and a nod to th…
Der Prophet
LP version. Bureau B reissue Rolf Trostel's Der Prophet (1982). Electronic pop was the musical goal of the Berlin School musician Rolf Trostel on Der Prophet, which was released in the same year as its predecessor Two Faces. Der Prophet is the culmination of this phase of Trostel's oeuvre, which was tightly coupled to the PPG Wave Computer. As on his previous releases, the sonic peculiarities and clanking sounds of wavetable synthesis are emphasized. Yet here they are obviously more interlinked …
Filmmusik 1
LP version. Bureau B present Filmmusik 1, a selection from Conrad Schnitzler's archive. In Conrad Schnitzler's sprawling archive, there are two tapes marked Filmmusik 1975 A and Filmmusik 1980 B. It is hard to say which videos this music belongs to, particularly as the pieces have been left untitled. Perhaps there isn't really any film material at all. The dates are of no great help either, since the tapes feature the same tracks, albeit in varying degrees of quality. Filmmusik 1 presents an ini…
Con-struct
LP version. Includes CD. Conrad Schnitzler (1937-2011), composer and concept artist, was 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 (with Klaus Schulze and Edgar Froese) and Kluster (with Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius) and also released countless solo albums. Schneider TM (Dirk Dresselhaus) has been invo…
Romance 76
From 1971 to 1977, Peter Baumann was a member of the legendary Berlin band Tangerine Dream. The group were pioneers of the so called Berliner Schule (Berlin School) which had such a profound impact on electronic music. He produced a number of momentous albums at his Paragon Studio (by the likes of Conrad Schnitzler, Cluster, Hans-Joachim Roedelius) and also enjoyed success as a solo artist. His first two solo works are now being reissued with extensive liner notes and rare photographs. The influ…
Elektronische Mythen (Lp=
Jürgen Karg began his music career in the 1960s as a bassist for German jazz legend Wolfgang Dauner. It was not until the 1970s that he switched his attention to electronic music, launching himself wholeheartedly into exploring the genre and building up an extensive collection of synthesizers over a five-year period. His efforts culminated in the 1977 Elektronische Mythen LP, a mighty opus of experimental music that reveals new aspects every time it is played. This is its first reissue. The tech…
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…
Wave: Electronic Music 1984-1988
LP version. Dennis Young is best known as the percussionist of the New York band Liquid Liquid, who are themselves known for their 1983 track "Cavern," sampled the same year by Grandmaster Flash for "White Lines." In parallel to his work with Liquid Liquid, Young produced his own solo work, including three cassettes released between 1985 and 1988 that form his tribute to the pioneers of electronic music. Wave: Electronic Music 1984-1988 contains the best pieces from these cassettes, as selected …
Wie Das Wispern Des Windes...Like The Whispering Of The Wind
180 gram LP version. Bureau B reissues the eleventh solo album by German keyboardist Hans-Joachim Roedelius, originally released in 1986 on the small Norwegian label Cicada. If we can agree on 1969 as the year of Cluster's inception, then Roedelius needed a good 17 years to discover the aural qualities and musical beauty of the grand piano for his own compositions. More precisely, he must have become aware of the grand piano during the recording sessions for Jardin Au Fou (1979) andLustwandel (1…
Material
LP version. On their second album Material, originally released on Sky Records in 1981, Moebius & Plank ventured far, far away from the double coordinates of the Harmonia world and pop music cosmos. Amazingly, they did not find themselves floating in space, but made an exemplary landing, avoiding getting caught between a rock and a hard place. Material saw them generate a form of genre-busting electronic music, more radical than anything one might have expected to come out of Germany, not even f…
Rastakraut Pasta
1st release from the duo of Dieter Moebius & Conny Plank, originally released on Sky Records in 1980. As the title suggests, this album is heavily influenced by dug & reggae & those rhythms are incorporated into the ambient space-rock one would expect from these German pioneers of Kosmische musik.
1971-1981
Nine-CD box version. Cluster's influence on the development of electronic music cannot be overstated. The original trio of Conrad Schnitzler, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, and Dieter Moebius released two seminal albums as Kluster before Roedelius and Moebius replaced the "K" with a "C" and continued as a duo. They produced eight albums in their most innovative period between 1971 and 1981, two of them together with Brian Eno. Cluster anticipated much of what would later emerge in such varied style…
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…
Tape Archive 1973-1978
MILESTONE! Bureau B releases a limited 3LP box set to celebrate Hans-Joachim Roedelius' 80th birthday. 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, and 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 Rot…
Gruen
LP version on 180 gram vinyl. 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 del…
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…