Back catalogue: Coldwave/Synth

Review: Influential Hamburg band Palais Schaumburg's self-titled 1981 album takes some beating. It is one of German alternative music's most accomplished and critically acclaimed works, with hardcore prasie from those who know. Fusing rock, new wave and experimental across 10 timeless track, it mixes tight post punk rhythms with dubbed out vibes and avant-garde ideas. This deluxe reissue of Holger Hiller, Thomas Fehlmann, Ralf Hertwig and Timo Blunck's best record includes all tracks from the original album on a nice red slab of wax with a new insert

Review: Bureau B present the very latest full-length LP from art-synth auteurs Propaganda, aka. Ralf Dorper and Michael Mertens. Emerging almost two decades on from their last release, this record is nonetheless remarkable as it is their first and only self-titled record, suggesting a sense of culmination and timeliness - in Bureau B's words, Propaganda (the LP) explores "fresh sounds and styles, and (reflects) personal and societal changes since their last outing". The excesses and lacks of boom-bust capital exhaustion and planetary-systemic fatigue are heard in full sway here; both themes alloy themselves starkly against the understated EBM and dark synth influence that permeates the record, a sound otherwise distinctly connoted as 80s and retroistic. Through their crystal-clear productions - their techno-Arcadian visions in composition, and passionate lyrical musings on machinic desire by way of collaborators Thunder Bae and Hauschka - Propaganda synthesise a yet new subliminal message, one that charts a line out of the past and into the present.