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Search Result for Label BUREAU B
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LP
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BB 098LP
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LP version. Just two years separate Pyrolator's 1979 debut Inland and the 1981 album Ausland. Nevertheless, they could hardly be more different from one another. If Inland reflects the industrial decay and politically-explosive atmosphere of 1977 and the years thereafter in the Federal Republic of Germany, then Ausland is a buoyant, playful and yet groundbreaking pop album. There had been some significant developments since 1979. The Ata Tak label, which Pyrolator had co-founded, had hit a rich vein of form with the debut album by Der Plan (Pyrolator was also a band member), Andreas Dorau's hit single "Fred Vom Jupiter" and Holger Hiller's debut single. Pyrolator made his first trip to the USA, travelling the land from east to west over a period of three months. This all paved the way for the production of Ausland and pointed the way ahead for the Ata Tak label as well. On the West coast, Pyrolator met up with the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS), a collective in the process of exploring the frontiers between noise and industrial on the one hand and easy listening on the other. It was the influence of such free spirits which opened up the Ata Tak world and that of Pyrolator to "Schlager" and its American equivalent, easy listening. This mix of electronic elements and supposedly left-field pop music of times past runs through the Ata-Tak oeuvre and, with the benefit of hindsight, can be identified as the label's trademark. A further difference to Inland is that a long list of musicians participated in the Ausland recordings. In the USA, Pyrolator played together with designer Chris Lunch and his brother as support act for the likes of DNA and X. This moved Pyrolator to decide that he would not produce his next album alone, but with other musicians and technicians. With the help of the genius Werner Lambertz, inventor of "Brontologik," a forerunner of midi systems, and Ata Tak and Der Plan cohort Frank Fenstermacher, Pyrolator recorded the backing tracks on which other musicians would subsequently play their overdubs. The critics were in agreement when Ausland was released. From the progressive Sounds to the rather more traditional Musikexpress, all the way to the British New Musical Express (NME), the album met with universal praise. NME heralded Pyrolator as a "great pioneer" and quite right, too. He is still a pioneer today. Vinyl contains 6 bonus tracks, mastered from the original tapes.
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LP
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BB 097LP
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LP version. Pyrolator's Inland (originally released in 1979) provides musical commentary on the late '70s in West Germany, with its undercurrent of paranoia and violence. Inland is one of the most radical, modern and unconciliatory albums of its, or any other, time. The cover for Inland illustrates this atmosphere: tones of grey and brown instead of '70s bliss. The political situation in West Germany is at its most volatile. The war between the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) and the State escalated two years before. The spirit of departure which characterized the early years of government by Willy Brandt and the socialist-liberal coalition, dissolved in the so-called "years of lead." Taking part in a demonstration against occupational bans could lead to the very same, and the chances of falling into a terrorist manhunt or staring a gun in the face were not so slim, particularly for young people. Pyrolator's aim was to make a protest album, one detached from all convention. A total absence of common musical structure and an unfiltered rush of sound recordings create a nightmarish, claustrophobic atmosphere. Pyrolator used a Korg MS20, SQ10 sequencer, B20R home organ, a Davolisint synthesizer, a Logan string orchestra and a dual-channel tape machine. Inland is both a rejection of the new form of protest song, the throaty, despairing scream of punk rock, and a rejection of the traditional form of protest song as nurtured far into the 1980s by the bards of the green, alternative milieu. Furthermore, there is another side to Inland: a desire for something new, a passion for experimentation, seeking to extend one's own horizon and that of others. This desire runs through all of Pyrolator's work, from his Inland debut to his 2011 release Neuland (BB 084CD). Thus Inland remains, in spite of its protests and rejections, a positive album. For inherent in every "no" is a "yes" to something else. Maybe something better.
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CD
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BB 101CD
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Bureau B reissues the first Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft album, originally released in 1979. True D.A.F. connoisseurs will, of course, be aware of the early phase of the Düsseldorf-Wuppertal combo. But most fans of the subsequently world-famous duo may well be taken aback when confronted with their debut album: forceful synth bass sounds, snappy rhythms, Gabi Delgado and leather all conspicuously absent. In their place, pure instrumental, unstructured noise-rock, played by long-haired and moustachioed types. A band can barely have undergone a more extreme metamorphosis. Gabi Delgado joined the band (hitherto comprising Robert Görl, Kurt Dahlke/Pyrolator, Wolfgang Spelmans and Michael Kemner), before the band discarded the name of YOU and christened themselves Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft. And he was also on board for the first recording sessions at Studio 56 in Mühlheim. Disappointed with the results ("too close to Schlager," the band thought) and "less than happy" with Delgado's vocals and lyrics (as Pyrolator, responsible for electronics, noted), the group dispensed with Delgado's services. Yet the creative will was undiminished: "We really wanted to make a record. All the Düsseldorf bands -- Male, Mittagspause -- already had an album out, everyone except us," and with the singer now gone, an instrumental album was the only option. In the wake of the studio debacle, the decision was made to take the recording into their own hands. A tape machine and two microphones were set up in Wolfgang Spelmans' living room and ten days of unbounded improvisation ensued. And thus it was completed, Produkt der Deutsch-Amerikanischen Freundschaft: 22 tracks, ranging from 19 seconds to three minutes in length. The influence of Can is clearly audible. Considering the fact that other prominent noise-rock bands such as Chrome, Flipper or even Sonic Youth recorded similar music at a much later date, this "product of Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft" should certainly be recognized as a pioneering work. Possibly even the first noise-rock album the world had seen or heard. Was the world ready for such brutal, nihilistic sounds in the late 1970s? The world of record companies was not. Unable to find a label, D.A.F. proved to be not only pioneers of noise, but also pioneers of DIY. They found help from the local bank, with Pyrolator putting up his car for credit amounting to 3000 Marks. A logical step, as he was already running a cassette label called Warning Records (later becoming Ata Tak). Produkt Der Deutsch-Amerikanischen Freundschaft was the first LP on the label and was given the catalog number WR 01/LP/1979. Sales were so good that Pyrolator was able to pay back his loan quickly. Housed in a digipak with liner notes, rare photos and memorabilia.
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LP+CD
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BB 099LP
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LP version plus CD. Junior Electronics is the solo work of musician and sound engineer Joe Watson. Joe has played keyboards with Stereolab since 2004 and engineered their last three albums. He has also worked with The High Llamas, Monade, Mary Hampton, John Cunningham and others. He runs the studio flipflop in his hometown of Brighton, UK. Musostics is the second album by Junior Electronics and is a collection of musical mesostics. The typographic layout of the lyrics and song titles is a structuring principle. The computer is used as a tape machine, i.e. large scale splicing of songs is possible but editing individual rhythmic events is not. All instruments are analog as is all mixing and processing. With contributions from Mary Hampton and Isidore Guild (vocals), Grant Allardyce (drums), Alan Hay (lyrics) and Emilie Essel (artwork and critical listening).
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BB 099CD
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Junior Electronics is the solo work of musician and sound engineer Joe Watson. Joe has played keyboards with Stereolab since 2004 and engineered their last three albums. He has also worked with The High Llamas, Monade, Mary Hampton, John Cunningham and others. He runs the studio flipflop in his hometown of Brighton, UK. Musostics is the second album by Junior Electronics and is a collection of musical mesostics. The typographic layout of the lyrics and song titles is a structuring principle. The computer is used as a tape machine, i.e. large scale splicing of songs is possible but editing individual rhythmic events is not. All instruments are analog as is all mixing and processing. With contributions from Mary Hampton and Isidore Guild (vocals), Grant Allardyce (drums), Alan Hay (lyrics) and Emilie Essel (artwork and critical listening).
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12"
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BB 106EP
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Bureau B celebrates 2012's Record Store Day, April 21, 2012 with a series of exclusive 12" vinyl releases. Ulrich Schnauss & Mark Peters' Underrated Silence (BB 094CD/LP) has been one of Bureau B's most successful releases, and "Balcony Sunset" is a track that was not released on the album. Kurt "Pyrolator" Dahlke is the co-founder of the Ata Tak record label and has been a member of bands such as D.A.F. and Fehlfarben. His tracks are outtakes from the sessions for his album Neuland (BB 084CD/LP).
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12"
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BB 108EP
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Bureau B celebrates 2012's Record Store Day, April 21, 2012 with a series of exclusive 12" vinyl releases. Krautrock protagonist Faust's track is a previously-unreleased outtake from their most recent recording session. Like A Stuntman play eccentric, weird, harmonic, glitchy electro Kraut-pop and for this release, the Hamburg and Frankfurt-based quartet recorded two brand-new songs which prove their uniqueness once again.
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12"
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BB 107EP
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Bureau B celebrates 2012's Record Store Day, April 21, 2012 with a series of exclusive 12" vinyl releases. Kreidler's contribution consists of two previously-unreleased tracks, recorded during the sessions for Tank (BB 070CD/LP): "Team" takes us to the countryside and has a surprisingly positive aura; "Big Eden" drops us back into the Jetztzeit, even hinting at echoes of Manchester rave and '80s indie Brit-pop. Tarwater present three previously-unreleased tracks which the band recorded during their Inside The Ships (BB 085CD/LP) sessions.
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CD
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BB 095CD
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Retrospectively, one could impute Hanover of the late 1970s and early 1980s with the glamorous tristesse normally associated with places like Manchester. But it was probably just dull and nothing more. It was here that the band 39 Clocks came into existence, earning the greatest compliment one could possibly pay them: they were a foreign body. Everything about this band must have unnerved their contemporaries: The 39 Clocks did not sing in German. This, at a moment when, for the first time since the end of the Second World War, it was possible to hang a "cool" tag on the German language. Think Neue Deutsche Welle (German New Wave). Commercial suicide. And the Clocks looked like no one else: grainy black and white photographs reveal two thin men dressed in factory issue black. Wearing sunglasses, they are only dimly recognizable. Elusive and impossible to categorize: a little bit weird. Fittingly, they discarded their names and classified themselves as machines: J.G.39 and C.H.39. A sense of the unreal pervaded their music: sizzling, trippy, repetitive. Allusions to late 1960s psychedelia, to Can, are on the money. Subnarcotic is the second 39 Clocks album. It still has the capacity to unsettle, it still sounds strange. The conscious (or perhaps unconscious) refusal to flex their muscles, to feel the groove, would be echoed by many lo-fi bands a decade later, but few would match their radical modus operandi. The 39 Clocks brought together what did not belong together: noise and fragility, '60s garage punk and synthesizers. Manic, chaotic and yet: pop music. In England they would have been welcomed with open arms by the likes of Rough Trade or Factory. In Germany, however, reactions were extremely different. Mastered from the original tapes; better sound quality than the original. Includes a previously-unreleased bonus track.
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CD
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BB 078CD
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Breathtakingly beautiful piano fantasies from the year 1985 -- released for the very first time! In 1985, Hans-Joachim Roedelius was still perceived by the music community as an electronic artist. Yet ever since acquiring his Bösendorfer grand piano in 1983, his interest had grown in the most royal of instruments: the piano. While staying with Brian Eno in 1985 (they had collaborated earlier in the '70s), Roedelius composed a wealth of new material on his friend's two grand pianos (or, as Roedelius would say: the music flew to him). He organized a series of concerts to introduce his new musical direction, with the Bloomsbury Theatre in London amongst the venues. Guests included Brian Eno and The Edge, with Roedelius taking the belated opportunity to use the artwork to thank them accordingly for their support. For Roedelius, this London concert remains one of the highlights of his career: "At the Bloomsbury Theatre I encountered a Steinway grand piano of exceptional quality. I was thus given the perfect opportunity to put my ideas of simple piano rendition into practice. For me, the aural explorer, it was a gift from heaven," he describes of the instrument. The audience responded enthusiastically. "People were kneeling down before me in gratitude and happiness," Roedelius recalls. And anyone who listens to the recordings will understand why. Roedelius plays his way through 21 delicate, drifting piano fantasies, sometimes meandering dreamfully, often progressing towards gorgeous, deeply moving melodies. Asmus Tietchens musings on Roedelius' 1991 opus Piano Piano are just as valid here: "His music is quiet and focused, but to call it contemplative or even meditative would also be wide of the mark: not all music which draws us out of ourselves is accompanied by spiritual pomp." (Fortunately, there is no audible trace of the audience at any point of the recording.) Which leaves us with the question: why did we have to wait 25 years for this treasure to see the light of day? Roedelius explains: "I always knew that this concert would have to be made available some day, I was just waiting for the right moment, for the right partners who would do it justice."
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