Milestone reissue! In 1982 Cassiber (phonetically: ‘a message smuggled out of prison’) crashed like a locomotive into the Deutsche Neue Welle. Founded by Heiner Goebbels, Alfred Harth, Christoph Anders and Chris Cutler, Cassiber managed to fuse materials and attitudes drawn from experimental rock, fringe jazz, punk, pop, plunderphonics, improvisation, close structure and musique concrete with an energetic and complex form of studio (and then concert) composition that was unique in its combination of diverse experimental approaches to form with a risky, emotional and expressive mode of execution. Through a deep connection between instrumentation, form and topicality, their musical evolution tracked and anticipated the political and technological changes of their time. Thus, in the course of their 10 years of intermittent touring and 4 records they evolved significantly through the high stakes energy of the earlier releases into their later, more complex and composed, studio works (by which time they had become a trio: Goebbels, Anders, Cutler) when they also had early access to the first generation of polyphonic samplers. Highly radical, their music opened up song form by abandoning, extending or crashing sideways into it – building structure from a combination of noise, libido, high musicality and – unique for the time - a great deal of cultural debris. This box collects it all (the majority of it out-of-print for some time now) alongside a lot of unreleased material – and full concert DVD. The 4 historic releases have been carefully re-mastered by Bob Drake and there are, in addition two extra CDs, one that collects the Cassix, Duck and Cover and Ground Zero projects (also re-mastered) and one of unreleased studio and live material, and a DVD (about 2 hours) of live and studio footage - including a mini documentary made during the recording of A Face We All Know. It comes in the usual sturdy box with a fat booklet of documents, interviews, information, photographs, pictures, itineraries and miscellaneous memorabilia. Limited to an edition of 1000 copies

Cassiber were a groundbreaking, devastating band, making music which captured world reality at the end of this century. The group brought together the Frankfurt musicians Heiner Goebbels and Christophe Anders with UK drummer Chris Cutler, and they became the natural heirs to one of the great lines of European rock music. This started off in Canterbury with Soft Machine and Caravan, expanded to include Henry Cow and Faust, achieved mature modernism with This Heat, and culminated in the late 80's and early 90's with Cassiber's startlingly aggressive post modernism. Like This Heat, Cassiber was basically a trio, and this helped them develop an epic style which was also economical. The main principal was live improvisation, and their records have a bone crushing immediacy and spontaneity. Canterbury influences are put through a mangle with sampled mayhem, free jazz, industrial noise, declaimed vocals, newsreel clips, all reaching an extraordinary peak in the album "A Face We All Know", a portrayal of the collapse of East Germany.