Kosmiche krautrock mainstay Harald Grosskopf operates at full wingspan on a new raft of astral-planing arps and motorik pulses laced with wistful extended melodies and atmospheric sleaze, together with a titular nod to Miles Davis’hinting at the album’s underlying theme: the productive friction between man and machine.
“For the uninitiated, Grosskopf’s career spans six decades of German music history. From early beat groups in Hildesheim, through Krautrock propulsion with Wallenstein, cosmic explorations alongside Ashra, and defining work with Klaus Schulze, he has consistently pushed rhythm into evolving technological contexts. His 1980 solo debut Synthesist, previously reissued on Bureau B, helped establish a sequencer-driven…
Tag Archive: Bureau B
Schemes progresses from Kreidler‘s run of albums during the 2010s and ’20s which explore spaces informed by dub, funk, and Fourth World fusion. The tracks here are heavily spacious and atmospheric, yet rhythmic and kinetic. There’s pronounced grooves, but they saunter rather than drive. On a few songs, like opener “Beads,” there’s synth patterns or basslines that seem like they could be intros to dance tracks, but the group decide to hover in that space rather than move forward with a beat. Other tracks have drumming which is detached and unhurried, with airy guitar and synth sequences floating above the rhythms. “Bellboy” is a particularly curious track with haunting voices and a general feeling of a mischievous spirit snooping around.
Under myriad monikers and as part of other bands since the late ‘80s, Düsseldorf-based musician Stefan Schwander has followed his nose for finest blends of Pan-African and Mid-Eastern rhythm threaded thru the lens of Ruhr region machine music minimalism.
His 9th LP proper as Harmonious Thelonious, Grumpy Pieces naturally continues his custom-built trade with no major alteration to the formula; just eight tracks of infectiously hypnotic swing, shuffle and parry for dancers who like to get right into it, either physically or in their own heads, where they’re the greatest dancer you’ve never seen (or is that just us?).
The pure pleasure of syncopated subtlety guides the groove, alliterating lop-sided loops…
Camouflage are one of the few German bands to have been making music successfully at home and abroad for the last couple of decades. “The Great Commandment” (1987) and “Love Is A Shield” (1989) were actually worldwide hits. After four albums, Camouflage felt it was time to experiment. This phase reached its zenith with the album Spice Crackers in 1995 – the most daring, most interesting work they ever released. Electropop tracks sit side by side with hypnotic, repetetive, spheric tracks. Now, 30 years later, “Spice Crackers” will finally be released on vinyl for the first time!
Heiko Maile, Camouflage founder member and producer of “Spice Crackers”, has this to say about working on the album: On our previous productions, we started out with just a few…
Convex was the only LP Conrad Schnitzler released in 1982, though he continued recording an untold amount of cassettes, as he did throughout his lengthy career. On this record, he utilized a sample-and-hold generator, which converted sounds into random sequences of tones. Using sequencers and generators rather than keyboard-based synthesizers, he created slowly unfolding pieces which were left up to chance. While the compositions often have an unhurried pace, they seem far from relaxed or tranquil, and it would be a misnomer to refer to them as ambient. They’re generally hypnotic and often quite busy, and even when they aren’t, they sound like an exploration of an alien planet. “Convex 2” contains high-pitched, semi-melodic pulsations over…
Control originally appeared in 1981 during an especially productive era in Conrad Schnitzler’s career. Inspired by his friend Peter Baumann (like Schnitzler, a former member of Tangerine Dream), he experimented with different sound generators, and attempted to incorporate traditional harmonic elements into his work. When the LP was originally issued, it simply consisted of two sidelong pieces, but subsequent reissues have divided the album into short tracks. Most of the pieces sound different from one another, with some being meandering drones, and others sounding much busier and more exciting. The most memorable ones demonstrate Schnitzler’s curious, playful side, with “Control 4” having sprite-like high-pitched melodic tones, and “Control 6” containing…
Karl Bartos, renowned as an essential member and songwriter of Kraftwerk during their most innovative years, is reissuing his solo album Communication on Hamburg’s Bureau B. First released in 2003, 13 years after leaving the legendary electronic group, the re-release arrives at a moment when its central theme, the transformation of culture through electronic media, feels more relevant than ever.
When Bartos departed Kraftwerk in 1990, he left behind a catalogue that had redefined electronic music: “The Model”, “The Robots”, “Numbers”, “Pocket Calculator” and many more bear his imprint as co-writer and melody-maker. 2021 Kraftwerk’s classic line-up was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for their innovative work…
Peter Baumann (formerly of Tangerine Dream) also played an important role in Consequenz III. As so often before, Baumann generously provided Schnitzler and Seidel with studio space at his Paragon Studio. The recordings for this album were the immediate continuation of “Con 3”. Seidel’s additional drums and percussion were still being set up, Schnitzler’s Korg MS 10 and the obligatory sequencer were still warm – and another recording session began straight away. There seemed to be enough time to finish an album. Baumann’s Paragon Studio was a veritable El Dorado. Although Schnitzler and Seidel used their own comparatively modest setups, here they had access to highly professional recording equipment and an acoustically ideal recording space.
Teaming up again with Swedish drummer Uno Bruniusson, CV Vision switched up the last production approach and opted for a return to previous studio methodologies. “I wanted to get a rougher sound on this record,” he says. “I dug out my two broken reel-to-reel tape machines, and patched them together, like Frankenstein. That’s what gels everything really – there’s different musical styles, but it’s the tape machine that brings it all together, sound-wise.”
Release the Beast does indeed fly off in several directions over the course of fourteen tracks, and gives us an insight into the full spectrum of the CV Vision musical universe. Fuzzed-out backbeats and psych progressions establish the opening tracks, as the sweet harmonies of ‘RTB’ and ‘The Rhythm’…
Early Recordings 1994-95 marks the first time that material from Kreidler‘s early cassette Riva and 12″ EP Sport have been compiled onto an album since they initially surfaced. On these releases, the newly formed Düsseldorf-based group established a very casual-sounding form of groove-based jamming, usually setting up strong but fluid rhythms and augmenting them with dubby echoes, shimmering keyboards, or other instrumental shadings. The Motorik style of earlier acts from the city like Neu! and La Düsseldorf clearly informs the band’s approach, but there’s other textures and influences that put the music more in the realm of the original wave of what journalists first referred to as post-rock during the ’90s. Though there are some studio-mixed overdubs, it…
Electronic pioneers Propaganda follow up their acclaimed 2024 comeback with Remix Encounters, a broad and brilliant remix album featuring Moby, Tangerine Dream, Rhys Fulber, Schiller, and more.
After the widely praised release of their self-titled comeback album in October 2024, Düsseldorf’s legendary art-synth auteurs return with Remix Encounters, a thrilling reimagining of their latest work.
Released on Bureau B, this remix collection reflects the enthusiasm Propaganda’s return after three decades of silence has ignited among contemporary artists, who approached the project with fresh energy and creative freedom.
Since breaking new ground with their seminal 1985 debut A Secret Wish and its pioneering…
After focusing on the rhythmic, proto-techno side of Krautrock with the second volume, the third installment of Bureau B’s Silberland series gathers ambient, new age, and progressive electronic selections from the vast catalog of the reissue-heavy German label. This covers a lot of ground, from eerie, washed-out soundscapes to driving tracks that feel propulsive enough, even without drums. The set starts with Cluster & Eno’s gently contemplative “Ho Renomo,” immediately followed by a tranquil, shimmering Roedelius piece that feels like a pleasant drift down a river. Vono’s “Hitze” inhabits a much different mood, resembling a voyage into a bat-filled cave, and Der Plan’s “Die Wüste” is a haunting gothic miniature. You’s “E-Night” paints a sky-like canvas…
In the shadow of the nuclear accident in Fukushima in 2011, Japanese musician Phew, artist Erika Kobayashi, and German electronic music pioneer Dieter Moebius (Cluster, Harmonia) came together for an extraordinary project. Together, they developed the concept album Radium Girls 2011, which they released in 2012 under the project name Project UNDARK-114 years after the discovery of radium by Marie and Pierre Curie.
The album is dedicated to the so-called Radium Girls, female factory workers in the United States during the 1920s who painted watch dials with radioactive luminous paint and suffered severe health consequences from radium poisoning. On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki…
Bureau B once again dive into the Sky archive, unearthing another overlooked masterpiece long due for rediscovery. Originally released in 1985, Voyage finds Dieter Schütz venturing beyond his Berlin School roots into a realm of lo-fi immediacy and New Age naivety. Every instrument is played by Schütz himself, except for the drums on “Above”, which are performed with syncopated zeal by Michael Fecker.
While its textured synthscapes and wistful melodies may echo the aesthetics of 2010s Vaporwave, Voyage captured a longing for another world, not through borrowed nostalgia, but through a contemporary vision of escape. Here, Schütz’s music is lush yet unpretentious, full of warmth, curiosity, and the gentle imperfections…
Peter Baumann left Tangerine Dream — the pioneering German electronic group founded by the late Edgar Froese — for good in 1977, after helping shape the emotive synth sound found on albums like Phaedra and the soundtrack to Sorcerer. Since Baumann’s departure, Tangerine Dream went on to release something like 75 more studio albums, not including their abundant soundtrack work and live material. Baumann, on the other hand, has produced only a handful of records, most of them from the late-‘70s.
Nightfall is his second solo album of this century, following 2016’s Machines of Desire. While that album explored the darker side of the silicon romance of his ‘70s output (Daft Punk learned a thing or three from Baumann’s 1979…
Das Kinn, Bureau B’s new signing, feels like a bold new discovery even if he’s in his mid-40s. Hamburg’s experimental imprint finds itself in the unusual position of being one of the most consistently interesting labels on the planet whilst also fielding a roster of artists of a certain vintage such as Karl Bartos, Peter Baumann, Faust and Martin Rev. Fresher blood about the place augurs well, but don’t expect sunshine and roses. Ruinenkampf serves as a millennial cri-de-coeur, expounding upon how broken everything is.
Das Kinn arrives to the slow, steady beep beep beep of ‘Jamais Vu’. It’s a ballad of solemnity, originally recorded by 80s Berlin tape underground outfit Teurer Denn Je, and it reverses in like an articulated bus, warning us to get out of the way.