Various Artists
Sowas Von Egal ( German Synth Wave Underground 1980-85 )
Label: Bureau B
Genre: 80s Wave / Rock / Pop / Punk
Availability
- LP €26.99 Out of Stock
The divergent trajectories of a record company on the one hand and DJs on the other are happily aligned through a love and passion for seeking out, collecting, releasing and playing rare, remarkable music which simply needs to be heard.
For the three of us as DJs, we created Damaged Goods first and foremost as a danceable party where we could play music beyond the regular and repetitious repertoire of (dark) electro clichés. Our focus would be on seldom heard post-punk and synth wave from, or in the style of, the 1980s. We’d slip in these unknown or long forgotten treasures between more familiar hits from the genre to inspire and excite our guests.
Eighties culture is very much a reference point today in music, art and fashion, so why not play the originals – especially as there is still so much to be discovered from that period?
Many of the old records we’d play in the club had only been pressed in small quantities, often sold exclusively at the respective bands’ gigs. More than 30 years later, it is almost impossible to get hold of these tracks – unless you pay over the odds on certain websites or track them down as inferior MP3s on this or that blog. To be fair, at least they have gone to the trouble of getting hold of the songs and transferring them to a digital format. This is why it was so important to us that our collaboration with Bureau B would be dedicated to selecting tracks for “Sowas von egal” which are not readily available (on vinyl) and have not been rereleased (or the reissues themselves are genuine rarities). It gives us great pleasure to announce that we succeeded, 100%!
The groundwork for this project was interesting in itself: sorting through and listening to songs, making lists, setting priorities. Then getting in touch with labels and trying to find the musicians of yesteryear. This wasn’t always so easy: some had disappeared from view, others had actually died. When we did find who we were looking for, the reaction was generally positive, although some were surprised that anybody was interested in their music today. At this point we would ike to express our deepest gratitude to mastering maestro Tom Morgenstern, who worked wonders with a jumble of disparate source material to achieve such sonic consistency.
Fans of our parties will recognize more than a few of the tracks on “Sowas von egal” and we are really proud to have put together this collection. The project took around nine months to get everything in place and we hope you will have as much fun listening to it as we had researched, compiling and releasing it.
Volker Kindt + Marco Flöß,