pyrolator: pyrolator's wunderland

Bureau B reissues Pyrolator's Wunderland, originally released on Ata Tak in 1984. Quote 1: "I have always strived for the opposite of whatever is hip at the time." (Pyrolator in June 2013) Quote 2: "Wunderland is so beautiful -- the first time I heard this record, I cried." (Andreas Dorau). New York City, 1983. Andreas Dorau has a gig at Danceteria and Pyrolator accompanies him as sound engineer. Back then, it really looked as if Ata Tak could make a go of it in the USA. "We had a New York office," Pyrolator recalls. Not bad at all -- possibly the first and only German independent label to set up shop. "Sadly, it was short-lived." A shame indeed, but the costs were too high. Still, Pyrolator was able to take advantage of the label's sporadic expansion to stay a while longer in the city that, famously, never sleeps. And he made the most of it. Right place, right time. "I was searching for new rhythms." It was in 1983 that rap, electro and hip-hop emerged from New York to take over the world -- styles and approaches to music and sound which were not so alien to the Ata Tak crew. But: look back at the Pyrolator quote before this text. The opposite of what happens to be hip, wouldn't that mean steering clear of electronic beats? Which, of course, is what Pyrolator did on Wunderland. Instead of checking the hottest sounds in record shops, he copied out bossa novas, cha-chas and mambos in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and scoured stores and second-hand dealerships for sheet music. After these forays, he returned to his Lower East Side apartment and sat down at the piano to compose melodies and modify his newly-acquired rhythms. The foundations of Wunderland were laid. Pyrolator recorded birds and other animals, used hollow wood as a marimba and now, with his modified Latin rhythms, had the conditio sine qua non for Wunderland. Modern technology (Emulator 1, serial number 13!) and hollow tree trunks, and melodies on a par with Ennio Morricone or Burt Bacharach. Includes five bonus tracks.