Bureau B Reissues Concept Album Radium Girls - Featuring Phew, Erika Kobayashi, and Dieter Mobius
Back in 2011, in the shadow of the nuclear accident in Fukushima, the three artists came together to create an album dedicated to the 'Radium Girls'. Reissue comes on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Hamburg, Germany, June 13, 2025 — In the shadow of the nuclear accident in Fukushima in 2011, Japanese musician Phew, artist Erika Kobayashi, and German electronic music pioneer Dieter Moebius (Cluster, Harmonia) came together for an extraordinary project. Together, they developed the concept album Radium Girls 2011, which they released in 2012 under the project name Project UNDARK — 114 years after the discovery of radium by Marie and Pierre Curie.
The album is dedicated to the so-called Radium Girls, female factory workers in the United States during the 1920s who painted watch dials with radioactive luminous paint and suffered severe health consequences from radium poisoning. On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the label Bureau B is reissuing Radium Girls — for the first time also on vinyl.
Project UNDARK is:
"The radium, glowing in the dark, also called 'fairy’s light' by Marie Curie.
114 years after Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium in Paris, France, we are now here in Tokyo, Japan, in 2012. Phew and Erika Kobayashi dedicate this project to the Radium Girls and everyone who has been affected by this 'light.'
— Phew & Erika Kobayashi, 2012
"First, there was music. Moebius suggested making an album together and sent me a CD-R. Initially, it was supposed to be a Moebius & Phew production. I think this was in late 2010, but I‘m not sure. Then, in 2011, the earthquake and nuclear accident in Japan happened. When I had tea with Erika Kobayashi, she told me about the Radium Girls, and that’s when I came up with the idea of making a concept album. Erika and I then wrote the lyrics for Moebius’ tracks. The song order is the same as on the first CD-R he sent me. The music tracks were recorded at Moebius Studios, while the vocals were recorded and mixed in Japan.“
— Phew, 2025
About The Radium Girls
The Radium Girls were female factory workers who unknowingly suffered radiation poisoning while painting watch dials with glow-in-the-dark paint at the United States Radium Factory in Orange, New Jersey, around 1917. A group of five affected women later took their employer to court, setting a legal precedent that granted workers the right to sue companies for illnesses caused by hazardous working conditions.
Between 1917 and 1926, the U.S. Radium Corporation—previously named the Radium Luminous Material Corporation—specialized in extracting and re ning radium from carnotite ore to manufacture glow-in-the dark paint, marketed as "Undark.“ As a supplier for the military, the company produced radioluminescent watches and other instruments. The New Jersey factory employed over a hundred workers, primarily women, to apply the radium-based paint, unaware of the serious health dangers associated with it.
In total, around 4,000 workers across the United States and Canada were hired to paint watch dials with radium. Many later suffered from severe health problems due to radiation exposure, though the exact number of fatalities remains uncertain.
Tracklisting
A1 Radium Girls
A2 Evelyn
A3 Tracy
A4 Marie
A5 Helena
A6 Anna
B1 Manhattan Project
B2 Little Boy and Fat Man
B3 Katherine
B4 Argonne National Laboratory
B5 EBR-1
B6 Radium226
For more information on this and other Bureau B releases, please visit https://www.bureau-b.com/releases.
About Bureau B
Bureau B is platform for exciting varieties of electronic, free-spirited music. The spectrum ranges from pop to avant-garde, and the label has amassed an impressive catalogue of reissues and new productions in recent years, including classics from the genre of electronic music in the 1970s and early 1980s popularly classified as Krautrock (Cluster, Roedelius, Moebius, Plank, Schnitzler), alongside new recordings by such formative artists as Faust, Kreidler, Roedelius, Tietchens, Moebius, to name just a few. Bureau B is based in Hamburg, Germany.
