Here available on DOUBLE-LP is a mind blowing collection featuring some of Germany’s sonic futurists of the ’70s and ’80s. Embracing the early electronics and tape experiments of the ’60s avant-garde, these artists aimed to boldly go, eschewing small steps for giant leaps, into a nebulous and novel sound.

“Silberland‘s namesake is derived from a track off Wolfgang Riechmann’s album Wunderbar, released in 1978 via Sky Records. Bureau B’s compilation of “psychedelic kosmische” music doesn’t contain the nearly eight-minute-long track, but “Weltweit” makes the cut, the stormy lead-in before the calmer “Silberland” on Riechmann’s only solo release. Riechmann’s time as a musician dates back to 1969 where he met Michael Rother (Neu!, Harmonia) and Wolfgang Flühr (Kraftwerk), recording two albums as a member of Streetmark. Three weeks before his debut solo album went on sale, Riechmann was stabbed in a random act of violence and later died as a result.

It’s unlikely that Bureau B would create a release series to echo Riechmann’s vision alone. It’s more reasonable to think the label saw Riechmann’s small output and tragic story as reflective of a unique and often overlooked strain of kosmische, one which they help identify and portray on this initial release in the series.

A near vocal-less affair, the 20-track double-album combines threads of both the Berlin and Düsseldorf schools, with most recordings laid down between the late ‘70s through the ‘80s — Riechmann’s “Weltweit” being one of the earliest recorded (Faust’s previously unreleased “Vorsatz” is an outlier, recorded in 1972). Each track contains constantly refining repetitious rhythms, often from a sequencer, with snaking, silvery synths and guitars overtop, each run through a series of effects that alternate between hijacking and complementing melodic impulses.

Surveying their extensive reissue and archival work, which dates back nearly fifteen years, Bureau B pulls from well known artists (Moebius, Conrad Schnitzler, Faust, Cluster,) along with those slightly lesser-known (Tyndall, Phantom Band). Per curation, the label selects more vibrant tracks from projects whose output was very much in this “psychedelic kosmische” vein, Moebius & Plank’s “News” sticks out as one, and also a few tracks that go against the grain of the original releases from which they’re plucked.

The latter helps provide insight into the needle the label successfully threads on the compilation. “Pulsar” a track from the fusion group Phantom Band formed by Can members Jaki Liebezeit and Rosko Gee, was originally released as the penultimate track on their self-titled debut. An album full of steamy, nearly-AOR tracks, the track comes off as a band landing and releasing the valves after flying high for two sides. On Silberland, it’s another variation on a theme of generative, repetitious rhythms that create a long-horizon space with roaming electronics. In contrast to most tracks on Silberland, this has the live, absolutely precise drumming of Jaki. That same organic feel of musicians steeped in an analog approach flirting with the new possibilities of digital means is the constant throughout. The psychedelia of these tracks lies in the merging those worlds while retaining the distinctive warm nature of analog. | i forsythe”
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Label: Bureau B
Barcode: 4015698915112