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Yesterday + Today, A Music Of Time
"Vincent Wrenn works with a microtonal system of seven octaves and each octave being divided into 360 notes, with Saturn being the lowest and the sun being the highest octave. That may sound also pretty esoteric, but the six pieces here are excellent studies in what seems to be sine wave like sounds. Each of these pieces appears to have very few variations and when played very loud may burst an eardrum, or destroy your relationship with your neighbour. I would think these pieces are best enjoyed…
Exploratorium
Swedish experimental outfit White Stains created five highly influential albums. Band members Carl Abrahamsson and Thomas Tibert later on went on to form the equally influential act Cotton Ferox. Their improvisational approach and dark musical atmospheres created a following which remains to this day, and which even led to a one-off reunion gig in Gothenburg in 2013 together with long time collaborator Genesis P-Orridge (Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV). The album Exploratorium is a compilation of…
Defragmental
Cotton Ferox key members Carl Abrahamsson and Thomas Tibert have composed, performed and produced groundbreaking music since the late 1980s. After their time in White Stains and several solo projects, Cotton Ferox have been their main mothership. Always producing cutting edge stuff, they have also always made an issue out of collaborating with other interesting artists. In both White Stains and Cotton Ferox, they’ve worked together with industrial pioneer/legend Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. Some ex…
Solo Etudes I
"We begin with the flickering, fire-like erraticism of the first track. Despite bearing the title of “Snow”, I’m drawn to imagine the very opposite: an intense heat that billows and dwindles across the stereo frame, suddenly erupting from left to right as if devouring an oil slick, promptly receding through oxygen exhaustion. To what extent are these fizzing, crackling chords – presumably electronics, but ultimately too distorted to accurately identify – under Hahn’s control? To what extent does…
No Time Left for Sadness
Despite having worked together in innumerable settings, including the longstanding Survival Unit III, with drummer Michael Zerang, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee have never released a CD of duets. In an extra intimate studio setting in upstate New York, where both players reside, No Time Left for Sadness demonstrates their incredible musical understanding. Recalling some of McPhee's landmark records with Marseilles musicians in terms of telepathy and trust, it's a…
Vario 34 3: Free Improvised Music
Since its first iteration in 1979, Vario has appeared in some fifty different versions, with a great variety of musicians, also actors, dancers, and filmmakers. It's the brainchild of Günter Christmann, a powerhouse of improvised music in Germany whose influence is out of scale with his acclaim. Since his emergence on the scene in the early 1970s, including appearances on classic FMP outings such as Rüdiger Carl Inc.'s King Alcohol (CVSD 032CD) and the eponymous Peter Kowald Quintet LP (CF 015LP…
A Poem In Cycles & Bell & Other Music For Tape Recorder
You would never believe this record to be a relic from a past of electronic music that happened before anybody even spoke about rock music. In 1957 this compilation of electronic and orchestral compositions by the three masterminds Otto Luening, Vladimir Ussachevsky and William Bergsma saw the light of the stars for the first time and has become a cult piece among lovers of electronic space music since then, despite the fact that only the first side features the so called tape compositions of Lu…
Fragen
Kluster - Cluster - and now Qluster - an extraordinary shedding of skin of one of the most important german electronic groups. Hans-joachim roedelius was there from the beginning (kluster from 1969 on with conrad schnitzler and dieter moebius; cluster from 1971 on with dieter moebius; qluster with onnen bock since 2010). Little need be said about roedelius, whose collaborations with conrad schnitzler, cluster and harmonia earned him a worldwide reputation as a pioneer of electronic music. Onnen …
Echtzeit
LP version. Includes CD. The third incarnation of the legendary krautrock project Kluster/Cluster expands its audience with the contemplative, mature, and intelligent electronic music of Echtzeit. Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Onnen Bock, and Armin Metz are Qluster, founded under the name of Kluster in 1969 by Roedelius, Dieter Moebius, and Conrad Schnitzler.
Kluster were responsible for two milestones of electronic music.
Schnitzler quit the band two years later, leaving Roedelius and Moebius
to c…
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…
Wah-Wah Whispers
Ever since he released his music in the early '80s, Michel Banabila has been hard to pinpoint to a specific genre or style. His musical output includes jazz, experimental cut-up electronics, world music (especially influenced by the Fourth World music as developed by Jon Hassell), New Age, eclectic pop tunes, music for dance or other stage projects, and soundtracks for TV productions. Wah-Wah Whispers focuses on Banabila's more recent output. It is a collection of works showcasing many facets of…
Sammlung: Elektronische Kassettenmusik, Dusseldorf 1982-1989
LP version. Post-war apartments dominated the views of Düsseldorf in the early 1980s - cement slabs, the "art bunker" known as the Kunsthalle, and the elevated railway called "The Millipede". Yet reconstruction was in full swing - bank buildings on the "Kö" received postmodern interiors, the old town became stylishly retro-rustic, and advertising agencies displaced industrial companies. Music took all of this on. Punk was finished, but its pathos drifted through pubs and shared flats. At the sam…
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 …
Weites Land (LP)
LP version. Bureau B present a reissue of Hans Joachim Roedelius and Alexander Czjzek's Weites Land, originally released 1987. Vienna, the early 1980s. Krautrock, electronic, and ambient pioneer Hans Joachim Roedelius, co-founder Cluster and Harmonia and saxophone free spirit Alexander Czjzek meet for the first time. Their longstanding collaboration found its climax in the fantastic album Weites Land, which was released in 1987 for the first time, but has been out of print for many decades and b…
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…
Strange Music
LP version. Bureau B reissues the first collaborative release by Dieter Moebius and Gerd Beerbohm, originally released by Sky Records in 1982. In the latter half of the 1970s, alongside their Cluster collaboration, Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius embarked almost simultaneously on individual musical journeys. Roedelius focused primarily on solo projects, while Moebius preferred to engage with other musicians on equal terms. Strange Music -- as unimaginative as the title may first appear…
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…
Geri Reig
Geri Reig is Der Plan's debut album (originally released in 1980), but not their first release. An EP, recorded with the aid of an Electric Memo dictation preceded Geri Reig. But the band is not very keen on reissuing this early work. Why did they call themselves "Der Plan," actually? "A concept which has something to do with the capacity of people to think and shape their future" as Plan member Moritz Reichelt, alias Moritz R®, once explained. Der Plan at that time comprised Moritz Reichel…
Magnetband: Experimenteller Elektronik-Underground DDR 1984-1989
LP version. Inspired by punk and post punk, vibrant scenes dedicated to independent self-actualization by means of self-distributed cassettes - the cheapest and fastest medium - were developing on each side of the Cold War's confrontational line. Albeit, under quite different circumstances. While there was a DIY euphoria in the West, which would also have had ideological motives, subcultures in the East simply had no other means. Even the first act of replication meant moving into illegal territ…
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…