HARALD GROSSKOPF - Forced Exposure

$16.50 IN STOCK

"You don't really need to say much about this man: co-founder of Wallenstein, drummer on at least two of the most wonderful Krautrock albums (namely Mother Universe and Cosmic Century), member of the legendary Kosmische Kuriere, records with Ash Ra Temple and Klaus Schulze. Finally, Harald Grosskopf switched from drums to sequencers and created something breathtaking. I listened to his solo debut Synthesist (BB 158CD, 1980) to death, and few days began without 'So weit, so gut.' It was a record that did everything right, that salvaged whatever could be salvaged from Kraut, adding the melancholy with which one suddenly looked back on everything that could still be naively believed and played in the '70s. Then in 1985 came the follow-up Oceanheart (BB 157CD), no less great, albeit already noticeably more minimalist. Manuel Göttsching could be sensed in the distance if you surrendered to the track 'Eve on the Hill' and followed it into the depths. Time passed, the music stayed with me. I lost sight of Harald Grosskopf, even though he did produce an album from time to time. And now: Strom. The evocation of electricity, the virtuosity of the circuit that skillfully intertwines man and machine, an antidote to the triumphal march of desolate musical digitality. If you listen carefully, you will immediately recognize the engineer behind the soundscapes. Right from the opener 'Bureau 39,' everything you would expect from Grosskopf is immediately there: the push toward hypnosis, a subdued pulse, catchy, circling bass lines, layering Moog kaleidoscopes. Sometimes the sounds coarsen, the depths distort into grinding noises (as in 'Blow'), into mechanical gurgling, i.e. into what remains when the path comes to an end, when the music reaches beyond the human. The mid-tempo track with the programmatic title 'After the Future,' grotesquely twisting the word 'Ònever,' points the way there. Time and again, however, the beat pauses, leaving space for the soundscapes -- and then, at the latest, the electronica of the early '80s springs back to life. The two complementary pieces 'Gleich Strom' and 'Spaeter Strom' would also fit in wonderfully on Synthesist. On the other hand, the closing track 'Stromklang' remains resolutely committed to the sinister, even gloomy groove that was previously unknown from this artist and with which he has finally returned to me after far too long. Stylo Kraut indeed." --Philipp Theisohn

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version. "You don't really need to say much about this man: co-founder of Wallenstein, drummer on at least two of the most wonderful Krautrock albums (namely Mother Universe and Cosmic Century), member of the legendary Kosmische Kuriere, records with Ash Ra Temple and Klaus Schulze. Finally, Harald Grosskopf switched from drums to sequencers and created something breathtaking. I listened to his solo debut Synthesist (BB 158CD, 1980) to death, and few days began without 'So weit, so gut.' It was a record that did everything right, that salvaged whatever could be salvaged from Kraut, adding the melancholy with which one suddenly looked back on everything that could still be naively believed and played in the '70s. Then in 1985 came the follow-up Oceanheart (BB 157CD), no less great, albeit already noticeably more minimalist. Manuel Göttsching could be sensed in the distance if you surrendered to the track 'Eve on the Hill' and followed it into the depths. Time passed, the music stayed with me. I lost sight of Harald Grosskopf, even though he did produce an album from time to time. And now: Strom. The evocation of electricity, the virtuosity of the circuit that skillfully intertwines man and machine, an antidote to the triumphal march of desolate musical digitality. If you listen carefully, you will immediately recognize the engineer behind the soundscapes. Right from the opener 'Bureau 39,' everything you would expect from Grosskopf is immediately there: the push toward hypnosis, a subdued pulse, catchy, circling bass lines, layering Moog kaleidoscopes. Sometimes the sounds coarsen, the depths distort into grinding noises (as in 'Blow'), into mechanical gurgling, i.e. into what remains when the path comes to an end, when the music reaches beyond the human. The mid-tempo track with the programmatic title 'After the Future,' grotesquely twisting the word 'Ònever,' points the way there. Time and again, however, the beat pauses, leaving space for the soundscapes -- and then, at the latest, the electronica of the early '80s springs back to life. The two complementary pieces 'Gleich Strom' and 'Spaeter Strom' would also fit in wonderfully on Synthesist. On the other hand, the closing track 'Stromklang' remains resolutely committed to the sinister, even gloomy groove that was previously unknown from this artist and with which he has finally returned to me after far too long. Stylo Kraut indeed." --Philipp Theisohn

$28.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Color vinyl. "You don't really need to say much about this man: co-founder of Wallenstein, drummer on at least two of the most wonderful Krautrock albums (namely Mother Universe and Cosmic Century), member of the legendary Kosmische Kuriere, records with Ash Ra Temple and Klaus Schulze. Finally, Harald Grosskopf switched from drums to sequencers and created something breathtaking. I listened to his solo debut Synthesist (BB 158CD, 1980) to death, and few days began without 'So weit, so gut.' It was a record that did everything right, that salvaged whatever could be salvaged from Kraut, adding the melancholy with which one suddenly looked back on everything that could still be naively believed and played in the '70s. Then in 1985 came the follow-up Oceanheart (BB 157CD), no less great, albeit already noticeably more minimalist. Manuel Göttsching could be sensed in the distance if you surrendered to the track 'Eve on the Hill' and followed it into the depths. Time passed, the music stayed with me. I lost sight of Harald Grosskopf, even though he did produce an album from time to time. And now: Strom. The evocation of electricity, the virtuosity of the circuit that skillfully intertwines man and machine, an antidote to the triumphal march of desolate musical digitality. If you listen carefully, you will immediately recognize the engineer behind the soundscapes. Right from the opener 'Bureau 39,' everything you would expect from Grosskopf is immediately there: the push toward hypnosis, a subdued pulse, catchy, circling bass lines, layering Moog kaleidoscopes. Sometimes the sounds coarsen, the depths distort into grinding noises (as in 'Blow'), into mechanical gurgling, i.e. into what remains when the path comes to an end, when the music reaches beyond the human. The mid-tempo track with the programmatic title 'After the Future,' grotesquely twisting the word 'Ònever,' points the way there. Time and again, however, the beat pauses, leaving space for the soundscapes -- and then, at the latest, the electronica of the early '80s springs back to life. The two complementary pieces 'Gleich Strom' and 'Spaeter Strom' would also fit in wonderfully on Synthesist. On the other hand, the closing track 'Stromklang' remains resolutely committed to the sinister, even gloomy groove that was previously unknown from this artist and with which he has finally returned to me after far too long. Stylo Kraut indeed." --Philipp Theisohn

$20.00 IN STOCK

"In 1984, four years after the release of my first solo album Synthesist on Sky Records, I wanted to produce a new solo album. At the time I was operating on the fifth floor of a former backyard factory on Graefe-Str. in Berlin Kreuzberg with my Neue Deutsche Welle Band Lilli Berlin. We'd turned the space into a small music and rehearsal studio where we set up a Tascam 8-track tape recorder, a 12- channel MM mixer that roared like hell, a Mini-Moog and a Roland Jupiter-6 synthesizer. This is where the basic recordings for Oceanheart were made. Essentially sequences and chords, which I then added piano, drums, Indian tablas and solo voices to in Christoph Franke's (Tangerine Dream) studio in Berlin Spandau. It was then mastered on a Betamax video recorder -- at that time the non-plus-ultra of modern stereo recording technique. Oceanheart was released on Sky Records in 1985. At the beginning of 2022 Gunther Buskies, owner of Bureau B label, had the inspired idea to expand the planned re-release of Oceanheart with a remix album and to call it Oceanheart Revisited. Around the same time, I met Tobias Stock through my friend Chris Mick. Tobias, a qualified electronics engineer and musician, had put together a complex, top-class analog studio over 20 years of meticulous and passionate collecting -- bringing each of the numerous component parts back into the best technical state with his own hands. There are only few studios of this kind and quality in the world and it was here, in his 'On TAPE' Studio, we created the analogue mixes of Oceanheart Revisited on a NAGRA 2-channel tape machine. I really enjoyed working on Oceanheart Revisited and I'd like to share this experiment with you." --Harald Grosskopf, January 2023

$35.00 IN STOCK

Double LP version. "In 1984, four years after the release of my first solo album Synthesist on Sky Records, I wanted to produce a new solo album. At the time I was operating on the fifth floor of a former backyard factory on Graefe-Str. in Berlin Kreuzberg with my Neue Deutsche Welle Band Lilli Berlin. We'd turned the space into a small music and rehearsal studio where we set up a Tascam 8-track tape recorder, a 12- channel MM mixer that roared like hell, a Mini-Moog and a Roland Jupiter-6 synthesizer. This is where the basic recordings for Oceanheart were made. Essentially sequences and chords, which I then added piano, drums, Indian tablas and solo voices to in Christoph Franke's (Tangerine Dream) studio in Berlin Spandau. It was then mastered on a Betamax video recorder -- at that time the non-plus-ultra of modern stereo recording technique. Oceanheart was released on Sky Records in 1985. At the beginning of 2022 Gunther Buskies, owner of Bureau B label, had the inspired idea to expand the planned re-release of Oceanheart with a remix album and to call it Oceanheart Revisited. Around the same time, I met Tobias Stock through my friend Chris Mick. Tobias, a qualified electronics engineer and musician, had put together a complex, top-class analog studio over 20 years of meticulous and passionate collecting -- bringing each of the numerous component parts back into the best technical state with his own hands. There are only few studios of this kind and quality in the world and it was here, in his 'On TAPE' Studio, we created the analogue mixes of Oceanheart Revisited on a NAGRA 2-channel tape machine. I really enjoyed working on Oceanheart Revisited and I'd like to share this experiment with you." --Harald Grosskopf, January 2023

$20.00 NOT IN STOCK

Bureau B present a 40th Anniversary Edition reissue of Harald Grosskopf's Synthesis, originally released on Sky Records in 1980. 40th Anniversary Edition features new interpretations by Steve Baltes, Thorsten Quaeschning, Paul Frick, Kreidler, Pyrolator, Love-Songs, Stefan Lewin, Camera, and Tellavision.

"Harald Grosskopf was in his early twenties when LSD "blew [his] reality away", as he recalls. Born in Hildesheim in 1949, he had previously drummed in fairly conventional rock bands, most recently for Wallenstein. Their label boss Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser was fond of facilitating jam sessions for musicians on his Ohr und Pilz label, often supplying his 'cosmic couriers' with LSD (unbeknown to them, on occasion). In one such session, the drug inspired something of an epiphany in Grosskopf: 'There I was playing the drums when, in the midst of my euphoria, I realized that I had been imitating other drummers. Suddenly a voice spoke to me: stop trying to sound like Billy Cobham or Ginger Baker. From that moment on I felt liberated, free to drum without having to shine in a particular role.' Having discovered his own musical identity, Harald Grosskopf understood that a standard rock combo was not the ideal conduit through which to express it . . . Grosskopf consequently left Wallenstein. 'I fell into a hole at first, wondering what I was going to do. So I sold my prized drum kit and used the money to buy a guitar, amp and echo device.' A few days later, the doorbell rang. It was Manuel Göttsching, on his way back to Berlin from a tour of France. They knew each other from Berlin's electronic scene and recording sessions for the likes of Ash Ra Tempel. Göttsching invited Grosskopf to sign up for his new project Ashra and the rest is history: Ashra (Grosskopf, Göttsching, Lutz Ulbrich alias Lüül) released a series of successful albums in the years that followed. It was not until the summer of 1979, however, that he finally felt ready to release a solo album. Synthesist comprises eight instrumentals, recorded largely by Grosskopf on his own. His melodies, carried along by synthesizers and drums, were reminiscent of works by Berlin electronic friends such as Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, as well as those 'cosmic' sessions of the early 1970s -- yet each melody retains a unique timbre. Synthesist is thus regarded as a classic by electronic music enthusiasts all over the world, evoking a thrilling musical era of the past with equal capacity to excite today." --Christoph Dallach

$17.00 IN STOCK

"Tired of the rock format and excited by the freedoms promised by electronic music, Harald Grosskopf quit Wallenstein, a conventional rock band, in the mid-'70s to turn his attention to electronica. Grosskopf thus became the first drummer to specialize in the electronic music field. He played drums on Klaus Schulze's Body Love album and on YOU's Electric Day. When Manuel Göttsching from Ash Ra Tempel asked him if he would consider enrolling as the regular drummer in the group now rechristened Ashra, he did not need to think about it for long. Grosskopf changed course again in the '80s, this time in pursuit of commercial success: he played in the NDW (Neue Deutsche Welle) group Lilli Berlin and backed Joachim Witt on his best-selling Silberblick LP, which featured the hit 'Goldener Reiter.' Sky, the record company, were more than a little disappointed with the performance of Grosskopf's first solo effort Synthesist, so there was no great sense of urgency as far as its successor was concerned. 'They even halved my advance!' Grosskopf recalls. Oceanheart was released some six years after Synthesist. 'The album title reflects my love of transcendental meditation, of course it might be taken for watery esoterics.' (A similar vibe was evident in the cover art, hence fresh artwork has been created for the reissue). Musical equipment for the production was limited by the label's ongoing thrift program. The first Oceanheart recordings took place 'under the roof' in the Lilli Berlin Studio, Kreuzberg. They were completed at the Spandauer Studio by former Tangerine Dream member Christoph Franke. 'We mixed everything down and recorded the drums there.' Harald Grosskopf again played everything himself, except for the tablas. In keeping with its predecessor, Oceanheart was no best-seller, but, like Synthesist, it attained cult status, rediscovered in recent years through the internet by a younger generation. Harald Grosskopf himself needed time to appreciate the work: 'I only really discovered the musical quality of Oceanheart years later. I finally realized that I had created something quite special.'" --Christoph Dallach

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version on 180 gram vinyl. "Tired of the rock format and excited by the freedoms promised by electronic music, Harald Grosskopf quit Wallenstein, a conventional rock band, in the mid-'70s to turn his attention to electronica. Grosskopf thus became the first drummer to specialize in the electronic music field. He played drums on Klaus Schulze's Body Love album and on YOU's Electric Day. When Manuel Göttsching from Ash Ra Tempel asked him if he would consider enrolling as the regular drummer in the group now rechristened Ashra, he did not need to think about it for long. Grosskopf changed course again in the '80s, this time in pursuit of commercial success: he played in the NDW (Neue Deutsche Welle) group Lilli Berlin and backed Joachim Witt on his best-selling Silberblick LP, which featured the hit 'Goldener Reiter.' Sky, the record company, were more than a little disappointed with the performance of Grosskopf's first solo effort Synthesist, so there was no great sense of urgency as far as its successor was concerned. 'They even halved my advance!' Grosskopf recalls. Oceanheart was released some six years after Synthesist. 'The album title reflects my love of transcendental meditation, of course it might be taken for watery esoterics.' (A similar vibe was evident in the cover art, hence fresh artwork has been created for the reissue). Musical equipment for the production was limited by the label's ongoing thrift program. The first Oceanheart recordings took place 'under the roof' in the Lilli Berlin Studio, Kreuzberg. They were completed at the Spandauer Studio by former Tangerine Dream member Christoph Franke. 'We mixed everything down and recorded the drums there.' Harald Grosskopf again played everything himself, except for the tablas. In keeping with its predecessor, Oceanheart was no best-seller, but, like Synthesist, it attained cult status, rediscovered in recent years through the internet by a younger generation. Harald Grosskopf himself needed time to appreciate the work: 'I only really discovered the musical quality of Oceanheart years later. I finally realized that I had created something quite special.'" --Christoph Dallach

$17.00 IN STOCK

"Harald Grosskopf was in his early twenties when LSD 'blew [his] reality away,' as he recalls. Born in Hildesheim in 1949, he had previously drummed in fairly conventional rock bands, most recently for Wallenstein. Their label-boss Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser was fond of facilitating jam sessions for musicians on his Ohr und Pilz label, often supplying his 'cosmic couriers' with LSD (unbeknown to them, on occasion). In one such session, the drug inspired something of an epiphany in Grosskopf: 'There I was playing the drums when, in the midst of my euphoria, I realized that I had been imitating other drummers. Suddenly a voice spoke to me: stop trying to sound like Billy Cobham or Ginger Baker. From that moment on I felt liberated, free to drum without having to shine in a particular role.' Having discovered his own musical identity, Harald Grosskopf understood that a standard rock combo was not the ideal conduit through which to express it. Grosskopf: 'I was completely in thrall to electronic music and the total freedom that it offered. This was the music I wanted to create. I knew it would be a success, the energy levels were so high.' Grosskopf consequently left Wallenstein. 'I fell into a hole at first, wondering what I was going to do. So I sold my prized drum kit and used the money to buy a guitar, amp and echo device.' A few days later, the doorbell rang. It was Manuel Göttsching, on his way back to Berlin from a tour of France. They knew each other from Berlin's electronic scene and recording sessions for the likes of Ash Ra Tempel. Göttsching invited Grosskopf to sign up for his new project Ashra and the rest is history: Ashra (Grosskopf, Gottsching, Lutz Ulbrich alias Luul) released a series of successful albums in the years that followed. It was not until the summer of 1979, however, that he finally felt ready to release a solo album. Synthesist comprises eight instrumentals, recorded largely by Grosskopf on his own. His melodies, carried along by synthesizers and drums, were reminiscent of works by Berlin electronic friends such as Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, as well as those 'cosmic' sessions of the early 1970s -- yet each melody retains a unique timbre. Synthesist is thus regarded as a classic by electronic music enthusiasts all over the world, evoking a thrilling musical era of the past with equal capacity to excite today." --Christoph Dallach

$26.00 IN STOCK

2024 restock; LP version. "Harald Grosskopf was in his early twenties when LSD 'blew [his] reality away,' as he recalls. Born in Hildesheim in 1949, he had previously drummed in fairly conventional rock bands, most recently for Wallenstein. Their label-boss Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser was fond of facilitating jam sessions for musicians on his Ohr und Pilz label, often supplying his 'cosmic couriers' with LSD (unbeknown to them, on occasion). In one such session, the drug inspired something of an epiphany in Grosskopf: 'There I was playing the drums when, in the midst of my euphoria, I realized that I had been imitating other drummers. Suddenly a voice spoke to me: stop trying to sound like Billy Cobham or Ginger Baker. From that moment on I felt liberated, free to drum without having to shine in a particular role.' Having discovered his own musical identity, Harald Grosskopf understood that a standard rock combo was not the ideal conduit through which to express it. Grosskopf: 'I was completely in thrall to electronic music and the total freedom that it offered. This was the music I wanted to create. I knew it would be a success, the energy levels were so high.' Grosskopf consequently left Wallenstein. 'I fell into a hole at first, wondering what I was going to do. So I sold my prized drum kit and used the money to buy a guitar, amp and echo device.' A few days later, the doorbell rang. It was Manuel Göttsching, on his way back to Berlin from a tour of France. They knew each other from Berlin's electronic scene and recording sessions for the likes of Ash Ra Tempel. Göttsching invited Grosskopf to sign up for his new project Ashra and the rest is history: Ashra (Grosskopf, Gottsching, Lutz Ulbrich alias Luul) released a series of successful albums in the years that followed. It was not until the summer of 1979, however, that he finally felt ready to release a solo album. Synthesist comprises eight instrumentals, recorded largely by Grosskopf on his own. His melodies, carried along by synthesizers and drums, were reminiscent of works by Berlin electronic friends such as Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, as well as those 'cosmic' sessions of the early 1970s -- yet each melody retains a unique timbre. Synthesist is thus regarded as a classic by electronic music enthusiasts all over the world, evoking a thrilling musical era of the past with equal capacity to excite today." --Christoph Dallach