The Bureau B label reissues the first album by Hannover, Germany duo 39 Clocks, originally released in 1981 by No Fun Records. Many a wild tale has enriched the history of 39 Clocks. For example, the time they went on stage with vacuum cleaners and circular saws instead of guitars, the LSD inside their heads having erased all memory of how to play their songs. Or the time when they were expelled from the Documenta, because Joseph Beuys was aggravated by their music. Then there was the angry member of the audience who attacked one of the band members with a knife on stage. Not forgetting the concert in a cavernous aircraft hangar where the amps were turned up so loud that by the end of the show, not a single spectator was left. Sounds music magazine duly confirmed it the Concert of the Month." The great thing is that every one of these stories is true. Christian Henjes (aka C.H. 39) and Jürgen Gleue (aka J.G. 39) as 39 Clocks were one of the most provocative bands Germany has ever produced; pop scholar Diedrich Diederichsen described them as the best German band of the 80s. The Clocks took shape in 1979, turning their backs on punk and inventing "Psycho Beat," the self-styled counterpoint to the burgeoning German new wave scene, the NDW. Their music can be seen as a futuristic, definitively urban, German form of U.S. 60s garage punk, with a referential nod to New Yorks Suicide and The Velvet Underground -- sparse and gritty garage chord progressions, hypnotic rhythms (invariably emanating from the beatbox) and deadpan English lyrics delivered with the heaviest of German accents. The 39 Clocks pushed back the borders of experimentation with their barely-tolerable live improvisation and atonal meanderings, lower than lo-fi, with a tinny beatbox that tested the resilience of their listeners to the full. Despite some shaky success, geographical and mental shifts brought about their eventual split in 1983. This CD reissue contains a previously-unreleased bonus track and a 12-page booklet illustrated with a wealth of rare photos featuring liner notes by ZickZack record label founder Alfred Hilsberg." -Bureau B
After nearly a decade of false starts, multiple game plans veering off the rails, and a handful of shattered hopes and/or dreams, the odyssey is finally complete—the new Fusetron site is here.
This is the first phase of a multipart rollout that will span the next few months: the currently browsable stock includes miscellaneous new releases from the past 8+ months (we have a lot of catching up to do), plus approximately a third of our backstock. Note that we’ve reduced/slashed prices on many titles and will continue to do so in order to make room for new stock. We’ll also be expanding / tweaking / improving / debugging the site itself (for example, we still have work to do on the automated international postage system, not to mention the inevitable inventory discrepancies that come with transferring an ancient and massive database to a new system).
Over the next few months, as we take inventory, clean house, and delve into our storage, we will be uploading thousands of additional items, gradually, on a near-daily basis. This will include the majority of the LPs, as well as many titles, in all formats, once thought long-gone. Many currently “sold out” items are likely to resurface.
Finally, once our general backstock is up (probably in the next two or three months) we’ll begin making our extensive stockpile of rarities available online for the first time: tons of random out-of-print titles, "deadstock," warehouse finds, secondhand collectibles, etc., accumulated over the past few decades.
Frequent/returning customers will be getting early access to these items. Details to follow on how this will work (a priority mailing list? a 'frequent flyer'-like program?), but it will not be based on dollars spent. We want to reward those who consistently support us, especially in the discogs marketplace era (to those who show up trying to poach five copies of a one-off rarity, and nothing else, ever… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).
So—we suggest you take some time to dig through the site—even we’ve been surprised by what’s been turning up, and there’s much more to come.
