Bureau B
Walter Dahn (of Die Hornissen) and Tom Dokoupil (of The Wirtschaftswunder) met up for a single weekend back in ’81 and this 36 minute album was the kinetic fruit it bore. It’s a forgotten classic if you relish your post-punk Germanics as much as I do, and being quietly obsessed by anything Wirtschaftswunder related…well… resistance was futile.
It sounds retro, but in a good way, a rediscovered zest skipping a hot plate,
sans cliché, like some
Deutscher disco ba-zazz of danceablity at odds with the sombre chiselled relief of the cover. Teaming with Casio teeth and hi-nrgy sharks, monkeying around with your noggin in arpic grooves and nippy beat ups. That dry snap to the beats reminds me fleetingly of
Erasure, but way more creative in the mixology, flashing the chaos like a angst-less
Clock DVA pipe-cleanering your ears with nifty splashes of sample and differing percussives. Romancing a footslide friendly BPM in rosy
DAFism with laser beams and dino roars. A hopscotch of synth lines on casperettes of floating pillow panther. It all breezes past you in bite-sized seven inch perfection.
The boneyard of tumble beats that is “Evil Dreams” accented in accordion and garbled
fantômes. “All Saints”‘ simple key refrain and cymbal sibilance
pin-pricked in muted howitzer and frying fat. “Tag An Der Grenze” (“Day On The Border”) is my favourite: it seems almost threatening, with its
Nitzer Ebb tightening of elastic smeared in Italian and slippery sax, crashing the tempo beautifully at halftime in machine-gunned pepper and barking winces of dog. The beautiful “Strahlsund” following it with lyrical key-lines garnished with a miscellany of easy riders and retractive shivers. Without a doubt,
La Freiheit des Geistes skates with confidence, infectiously spreading from each track to the next. Hats off to
Bureau B for dragging it out of the archives and back into the light.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
Walter Dahn (of Die Hornissen) and Tom Dokoupil (of The Wirtschaftswunder) met up for a single weekend back in ’81 and this 36 minute album was the kinetic fruit it bore. It’s a forgotten classic if you relish your post-punk Germanics as much as I do, and being quietly obsessed by anything Wirtschaftswunder related…well… resistance was futile.
