Krautrock Tension and Ambient Haze: Two New Compilations from Bureau B

One new collection draws from Wolfgang Seidel’s counter-history of the German underground, Krautrock Eruption. The other, Ambientale, is compiled by Charles Bals and explores ambient obscurities and digital mirages.

Two new compilations from Bureau B trace very different lines through the electronic underground. Krautrock: Bureau B Edition, released alongside Wolfgang Seidel’s book Krautrock Eruption, turns its ear back toward postwar West Germany. Ambientale, compiled by Charles Bals, floats forward, gathering ambient and electronic fragments from the fringe years of 1983 to 2000. One is dense with cultural tension. The other slips just past the edge of the frame. Each shows how Bureau B keeps shifting the frame rather than freezing it.

The Krautrock set pulls from a fifty-album discography featured in Seidel’s book. Seidel, co-founder of Ton Steine Scherben and one-time member of Conrad Schnitzler’s Eruption, positions the movement as a form of cultural refusal. According to the press materials, the book moves through squats, protests, and early gigs by Cluster, Tangerine Dream, and Ash Ra Tempel. It also traces lines of influence from jazz and minimalism to the synthesizer’s rise. Less about myth. More about intent.

The compilation reflects that. It opens with the clipped austerity of Schnitzler’s Ballet Statique and runs through volatile cuts by Faust and Riechmann. Moebius & Plank’s Rastakraut Pasta arrives in a Bureau B edit—still murky, still dub-soaked. Cluster, Roedelius, Pyrolator, and Günter Schickert round out a set that resists resolution. Don’t expect a primer. These are artifacts picked for friction, not familiarity.

That’s Bureau B’s lane. Over the past decade they’ve treated the post-’68 underground not as nostalgia but as a living archive. Their reissues don’t smooth anything out. They work more like field notes—smudged, partial, and still in motion.

Ambientale, by contrast, moves laterally. Bals, known for Club Meduse, America Dream Reserve, and Black Rain, assembles tracks recorded between 1983 and 2000. Some brush New Age, some lean jazz, others dip into the more synthetic ends of library music. Akira Mitake and Luigi Ceccarelli are recognizable. Others barely exist beyond this tracklist. Release notes suggest that one piece may have been made for a Venezuelan garbage company promo. Bals sequences like a memory unfolding. Not linear, but charged. Rainforest static. Hollow synths. Horns caught in the drift.

Both compilations avoid explanation. They offer fragments, mood, evidence. Krautrock Edition burns with historical heat. Ambientale glows cold, distant, and strange. Neither gives you the whole story. They open up space instead.

Krautrock Eruption – An Introduction To German Electronic Music 1970-1980

A1 Conrad Schnitzler – Ballet Statique

A2 Faust – I’ve Heard That One Before/Watch Your Step 
A3 Eno Moebius Roedelius – Foreign Affairs
A4 Harald Grosskopf – Emphasis
A5 Cluster – 21:32 (bureau b edit)
A6 Moebius & Plank – Rastakraut Pasta

B1 Roedelius – Glaubersalz

B2 Pyrolator – Minimal Tape 3/7.2
B3 Riechmann – Himmelblau (bureau b edit)
B4 Kluster – Kluster 2 (Electric Music) (bureau b edit) 
B5 Günter Schickert – Apricot Brandy II (bureau b edit) 
B6 Asmus Tietchens – Falter-Lamento

Ambientale (Compiled by Charles Bals)

Artist – Tracklisting
A1 Luigi Ceccarelli – Vientiane

A2 銀色の波 (Gin no nami) – Whispers Of Chikurin 
A3 Akira Mitake – Yasha
A4 Akira Mitake – Modernism
A5 Individual Sensitivity – Greece Ambientale
A6 Steve Shehan – Evening In The Sahara 
A7 Private Joke – Peaceful Traffic

B1 Adriano Maria Vitali – Velvet Blue Circles
 
B2 Masami Tsuchiya – Nevermind
B3 Akira Mitake – Spectrum
B4 Gil Mellé – Mindscape
B5 Gruppo Sound – African Interlude II 
B6 Ferris Wheel – Shipping Out

Bureau B has vinyl copies of Krautrock Explosion on Bandcamp. For Ambientale, hit up Bureau B’s site. The book Krautrock Explosion can be ordered via Forced Exposure.