Kreidler to Release Early Recordings 1994-95 on Bureau B, Digging Deep into their Düsseldorf and Berlin archives
October 17 album and "Anti—Car" digital release on September 10 document the band‘s beginnings, with threads that can be followed all the way through to their current work
Hamburg, Germany, August 25, 2025 — Bureau B announces the forthcoming release of Kreidler's Early Recordings 1994-95, to be issued on Bureau B (CD/LP/digital) on October 17th, with "Anti—Car" seeing a digital release on September 10. Kreidler recorded "Anti—Car" in Summer 1995 with Matthias Arfmann in his studio in Hamburg-St. Pauli. These new releases document the band‘s beginnings, with threads that can be followed all the way through to their current work.
While the title of "Anti—Car" might refer to its stop—and—go—motorik, its heady exploration of the room and the krauty space in-between the instruments owes equal parts to punk, dub and club: "decisive and shimmering (...) a no-nonsense, clear, funky vision of radical openness" (Seda Mimaroğlu).
Digging into the vaults
During the recording of their upcoming album – scheduled for release in May 2026 on Bureau B – Kreidler found also time to dig deep into the vaults of their Düsseldorf and Berlin archives. 30 years ago, the band's eponymous mini-album was released on Cologne-based label Finlayson; and for RIVA, their first release was 31 years ago (on cassette tape). Both were released in limited physical formats and are long since unavailable.
Kreidler was formed from the encounter between Deux Baleines Blanches (Thomas Klein, Andreas Reihse and Stefan Schneider) and DJ Sport (Detlef Weinrich) and eventually morphed into a fluid form that was able to equally accommodate the various strengths and interests of its members. This ability has remained intact up to the present lineup of Thomas Klein, Alex Paulick and Andreas Reihse.
In the summer of 1994, Kreidler recorded RIVA on Stefan‘s 4-track tape recorder in their rehearsal room, a converted former bakery. They completed overdubs and mixing at Friedrich Sitterle‘s Frosch-Studio. The tape was self-released, and then A Contresens, a Paris-based label, picked it up. Months later, at a show in Cologne, the label managers of Finlayson offered Kreidler a release. The band had already sent the RIVA cassette to Matthias Arfmann (of Kastrierte Philosophen fame) to see if he was interested in producing their upcoming album — and he was. So off to Hamburg Kreidler went.
Despite several obstacles, the recording and mixing were successfully completed, and Finlayson released the untitled mini-album to great critical and popular acclaim. Oliver Tepel wrote in 1995 in Spex magazine: “On the basis of calm grooves from andante to moderato —comparable to the dissolution of object and background in analytical cubism — the contours of the instruments disappear in favour of mysteriously meandering waves of sound,” and Jörg Heiser: “This has arrived in a whooshing root tone, in the very center (and not in any next room).”
A frayed intensity and skeletal radiance
There’s a frayed intensity to both albums, a clarity, a skeletal radiance. 1994, RIVA, the beginning: circuitous somehow, a spatial presence in the restraint, strangely physical in its beauty. Mounting with Das Wilde Heinefeld, with voice and bass clarinet by Fritz Sitterle. Finally, Angst, voice by Julia Friedrich; a song written by Fehlfarben. Produced for an unreleased Monarchie und Alltag cover version album, conceived by Joerg “Zappo” Zboralski as a follow-up to his Brücke Kaufen album (covering the Rough Trade compilation Wanna Buy A Bridge?). The journey ends in a heated but once again taut textual space, familiar ground for Kreidler, after various gigs with spoken word artists.
Is 1995 groovier? It is definitely not beige; it is decisive and shimmering. One wonders how all the obstacles and a drummer-in-pain could result in such a no-nonsense, clear, funky vision of radical openness. Recorded, mixed and co-produced with Souldier Niceprice at Knochenhaus Tonraum Hamburg. Nothing is flat or predictable here, and the album closes with a track that feels like a ride (in a car? Or on a bike, late at night, sitting on the rack, holding on to a potential?) — a journey, beginning anew.
While so many acts need to excuse past sins, Kreidler’s work has always sprung from a place of artistic independence; testing non-didactic possibilities of conversation within music, text, art, and interventions within political conditions, with a trans-disciplinary and inclusive ethic, highly contextual and collective: ideas formed socially — after day jobs, in casual settings, art school parties, late-night talks, notes on beer coasters — then refined through hands-on studio work. These elements seem also crucial to understanding the scene in Düsseldorf where these recordings emerged.
Revisiting earlier work can serve different purposes. Such artefacts are either capsules, holding memories, people, names, stories, emotions and ruins; invaluable as traces of a period, of a mood, a genre, as archival material. Or they might be alive—timeless pieces, made available in new formats for wider audiences to enjoy. Luckily, with Kreidler, we don’t have to choose.
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.
