Berlin school Krautrock

Anyone heard "Electric Day" by You from 1979? Reissued on Bureau-B this year. It's hard to search, so apologies if it's been mentioned already. Anyway, Harald Grosskopf played on this around the time he did "Synthesist". Lots of swirling spacy electronics, some proggy drums, acid guitar. Really excellent stuff! Aquarius Records made it an Album of the Week recently and they describe it pretty well on their site http://www.aquariusrecords.org.

Electric Day is great (would have never heard about it were it not for this reissue)!

Time Code, the second reissue from '83, was worth a listen too, but didn't grab me to the same extent (more like Zero Set or Transfer Station Blue, but w/ less 'live' instrumentation than either of those)...

i need to stay away from this thread

back to work!

Oh wow, Electric Day is blowing my mind right now.

Yeah I picked that up several months ago and it's pretty aws.

Also got a Michael Roether album around the same time, which I listened to a bunch but still find unmemorable.

was also surprised at how good Electric Day is -- usually not into that kind of flowing fusiony jazz-electronic but they were kinda on it, Grosskopf was just great at making live drums & sequencers sound natural together

Electric Day's first track is *so strong*, the rest of the album just passes me by. But wow, that first track, an all-timer.

Great You photos in the press kit downloadable from the Bureau B website.

Let's talk about Baffo Banfi. Used to see this name and think it was a band but it's an Italian fellow who was very much a protege of Klaus Schulze, so often gets dismissed as KS clone - I say often but nobody talks about him so maybe not!

First album is kind of primitive, mostly home recorded, the long track on the second side isn't very good but the rest of it's not bad - the first track is really like Klaus Schulze! Second album he seemed to be trying to get away from the KS comparisons with bland shorter tracks on side one and then promptly bollocksed it up by sounding more like KS than ever on the second side - another sidelong track, and, wow, it's fucking great and has the advantage over KS of not being 28 minutes long for no apparent reason. Third album was apparently a stinker, haven't heard it. The end.

Achim Reichel is doing a "greatest hits" tour this year. I'm not sure whether I should go. Probably not

AR did some shows playing early stuff last year, I think? Reports were fairly positive IIRC, perhaps generous given the unlikelihood. He ain't Berlin school, though ;-)

If anybody's interested in new(ish) bands doing this style, check out Camera's first two albums, Radiate! (punctuation in original) and Remember I Was Carbon Dioxide. On their later releases they got a little too into writing songs, but the first two albums were great, punky Neu! worship. They used to play unannounced shows in the subways and stuff, apparently.

I saw improptu Camera performances in the Berlin subway twice back in '12. I uploaded a video of them playing and getting stopped by the cops to YT back then, may still be up.

Yes, they were awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9oDHm7C2kU

The Rudiger Lorenz releases are great, there's a box set reissue on VOD and I think some have been reissued separarely, surprised he hasn't been mentioned here already.

I watched part of Stalker last night, by Andrei Tarkovsky. Released in the USSR in 1979, the soundtrack is total Berlin School. If you like the sound of Eraserhead, The Conversation, or any of the TD-scored movies like Sorceror, I strongly recommend Stalker, and the Stalker soundtrack by Eduard Artemyev/

Another Klaus Schulze production and a good one is "Cycles" by Wolfgang Bock, from 1979. Sequencers, mellotrons, drums, sounds a bit like Klaus Schulze, without the tracks all being 30 minutes long. Nice cover too.

https://img.discogs.com/WjEXxd-hvPIKlZcvMI8Qqaze31A=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1240184-1374247398-4354.jpeg.jpg

Totally grooving to You's "Electric Day" album today:

Electric Day's first track is *so strong*, the rest of the album just passes me by. But wow, that first track, an all-timer.

The title track *is* astounding, and impossible not to move around when listening to, but the rest of the album is great, taking you on a cosmic journey, and the reissue bonus tracks are intriguing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFEN4v-NFAY

search: Bizarre Ko.Ko.Ko's 00 Time (1984) — slightly abrasive sequencer-driven stuff with space guitar/mellotron/dark ambient/twiddly subotnickesque interludes (and the occasional meow). it's a good example (along with Zanov's In Course of Time) of ye olde '70s progressive electronick surviving well into the '80s without drawing upon typical '80s stylistic trends or production values

also search Cultural Noise's Aphorisms Insane (1980) even though it's a little more conventional. Bizarre.Ko.Ko.Ko were Cultural Noise minus one member. I can't find much info about them online aside from the fact that they were from Austria

(that youtube video includes both albums: the Cultural Noise one starts at the beginning and the Bizarre Ko.Ko.Ko one starts at around 40:40)

Oh, fortuitous revive. I've recently discovered three early 80s electronic albums by Reinhard Lakomy: Das geheime Leben (1982), Der Traum von Asgard (1983), Zeiten (1985). These are definitely Berlin school but East Berlin as Lakomy was a sort of DDR state-sanctioned Jack-of-all-trades musician/composer who seems to have played in every genre going but was apparently best known for children's music. Anyway, it seems he was friendly with Edgar Froese and was somehow involved in Tangerine Dream's concerts in East Berlin in 1980 and bought TD's giant moog (which had once belonged to Mick Jagger!) off them. Also, it's said Froese wanted him to join TD but Reinhard didn't want to leave East Berlin.

So these three albums are very early 80s Tangerine Dream, with occasional hints of Jean-Michel Jarre and Vangelis. I had assumed these albums would be like sonic Trabants but they are technically pretty sophisticated, some clunky drum machines on the first album aside, with some great synth sounds (apparently mostly East German or Soviet synths). Third album is mostly digital (I think?). All three are good albums.

I love the Lakomy I've heard, which is just Das Geheime Leben tbh. Discovered him through this great compilation and stumbled upon a copy of DGL shortly after. Lovely stuff. I used "Das Unendliche Rätsel" in a kraut-themed mix recently.