rolf trostel: two faces

Bureau B present a reissue of Rolf Trostel's second album Two Faces, originally released in 1982. While Inselmusik, released the previous year, was intended as a basis for live performance, Trostel composed and produced the five instrumental tracks on Two Faces exclusively for this album. The music is clearly a product of the Berlin School, yet it is more sophisticated and varied than its predecessor. Some new additions to Trostel's instrument collection are audible. While on its predecessor the still novel strains of the PPG Wave Computer 360 A and its associated sequencer were augmented only by a Roland CR-78 CompuRhythm drum machine, resulting in a fairly puristic sound, the sonic pallet on Two Faces is enhanced by the Minimoog solo synthesizer and a string synth. The CR-78 is considered the first programmable drum machine and can be heard clearly, for example, on Phil Collins's hit "In the Air Tonight" or during the intro of the album version of Blondie's "Heart of Glass". But on Two Faces Trostel uses its potentially assertive sounds relatively modestly and often in the background - surely so as not to steal the show from the wavetable sounds. As with Inselmusik, Two Faces uses numerous synth runs that harness the possibilities of PPG 350 Computer Sequencer, which are layered to complement each other and often also define the chord progressions and song structure. The digital PPG sequencer offered some innovative features for this: The musician could invert the notes of a sequence with the press of a button or use the keyboard to transpose the sequence either at the end of each note or each loop. Of course, in addition to the PPG 360 Wave Computer A, it could also be used to control analog synthesizers. Synchronizing with tape machines was also not a problem. In comparison to Inselmusik, Rolf Trostel himself felt that Two Faces was more versatile and aggressive and "away from the idea of meditation, but without entirely abandoning contemplative structures." The first edition of this self-produced long player amounted to 2000 copies, which Trostel distributed himself.