Roedelius: "Herold"

Hans-Joachim Roedelius is a real living legend: a seventies pioneer and Eno collaborator who survived the second world war and became a recording studio alchemist. Waking up one night with a vision of Krautrock and determined to begin cementing it, the West German pioneer holed up in his studio with his kit and a ReVox A77. He’d then capture everything that flashed through his head, listen, rewind and wipe over his single cartridge to try and record something better (Magnetophon reels weren’t cheap in those days). Roedelius transformed this grueling reclusiveness into the three Selbstportrait albums, playing instrumental pop across the changing of the decade and nimbly predating Kraftwerk. Now Hamburg imprint Bureau B want to salute the Michael Corleone of Krautrock, and have reissued Selbstportrait over three new LPs, each 180g of vinyl. It’s the perfect way to pay tribute to an icon, and also the perfect way to handily cash in on the library/tape revival.

On hearing the new Selbstportrait I (1979), it’s clear Bureau B haven’t pissed on Roedelius’ wishes: he recorded everything in fuzzy mono, and this incarnation boasts the same hissing warble as the original did thirty years ago. The shaky organ click track still feels vaguely like a demo for “Enola Gay,” and the way the lead theremin dips and rises says “this is analogue electronic pop that wouldn’t go a miss on Ghostbox”. To describe the tune itself is still pretty impossible—in many ways, the shrill ambience sounds as genre-crossing today as it did when Jimmy Carter was president—but if you can picture a public information film about a day in the life of Gary Numan, you know where Hans-Joachim is coming from. His pipe effects and persistent keyboard drum track show he’d have to rough up before discovering electro (he didn’t), but it’s still nice hearing a piece of the past that could easily make one of today’s mixtapes. You can’t say that about all of history, can you. You can’t dig up a Roman coin and still spend it.