V.A. Sowas von Egal

With Sowas von Egal 3, the Hamburg-based Damaged Goods DJ team continues its compilation series on Bureau B, once again turning its attention to the underground scenes of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland in the early 1980s. The selected tracks originate from a period in which, alongside the commercial Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW), a number of innovative and often more abrasive bands and artists operated outside the mainstream. They combined influences from new wave, synthwave, post-punk, and the avant-garde with German lyrics – and occasionally other languages – releasing their music in very small editions on indie labels or entirely DIY. As a result, many of these records are now rare and highly sought after.

The tracks emerged in a cultural climate strongly shaped by the rupture brought about by punk. The rejection of the overproduced, bombastic rock music of the 1970s opened up new spaces for radically reduced and experimental approaches. What followed were diverse musical forms – whether labeled post-punk, avant-garde, synth-pop, new wave, or power pop. At the same time, the songs reflect a social atmosphere caught between uncertainty, protest culture, and a nihilistic “no future” attitude, shaped by fears of militarization, environmental destruction, and global conflict. These tensions gave rise to an aesthetic manifested in cool, dark sounds, minimalist and angular arrangements, and a clear DIY ethos.

Five years after the second installment, the search for hard-to-find artists and rights holders began again for Sowas von Egal 3. Thanks to the cohesion and supportive network within the scene, it has once more been possible to assemble a carefully curated and lovingly compiled selection.

As with the first two volumes, part three follows an approach closely aligned with the DJ repertoire of the Damaged Goods nights. The focus is on captivating, danceable, and catchy tracks. Songs that often reveal their full impact on first listen in a club setting. The aim is to make forgotten or hard-to-access pieces audible and available again.

The artwork is once again by Biljana Tomic, drawing on an industrial-apocalyptic sensibility and referencing the iconic facades of Horten department stores, evoking a visual aesthetic of the 1980s. The sound has once again been carefully remastered by Tom Morgenstern.

Sowas von Egal 3 seamlessly continues the series and presents itself as a lovingly curated snapshot of a highly productive yet often overlooked phase in German, Austrian, and Swiss pop history.
 

Hello again!

Two years have passed since we proudly released our first Sowas von egal compilation. We had a lot of fun putting it together and the feedback we received was so positive that we soon decided to follow up with a second instalment. With the musical movement or genre known as NDW celebrating its 40^th anniversary, what better time than now to launch an ambitious successor to the first sampler! The beating heart of this endeavour is once again invigorated by the synchronous passions of bespoke Hamburg label Bureau B and our Damaged Goods nights where we present rare, obscure synth & wave discs from the early 1980s which absolutely deserve to heard. It was clear from the outset that Sowas von egal 2 would need to scale similar heights of excellence as its predecessor, featuring carefully selected, sought-after, danceable tunes. We began by compiling a pool of potential tracks, a creative process of lively discussion in the spirit of “open-mindedness” which culminated in a list of priority targets. The research and detective work which followed was characterized by rich encounters with musicians, friends and acquaintances who displayed a deeply touching willingness to help us, enthusiastically offering advice, ideas and valuable contacts. 
We had to revise our target list several times over – some artists simply could not be found, a few had actually passed away. There were also some who were determined not to revisit their own musical history and asked us to leave out their songs.
Some tracks we have included are so rare that they do not even appear on Youtube. We are delighted to have picked up the rights to release them. It’s fair to say that Sowas von egal 2 includes more staple tracks from our party sets than part 1.
In contrast to the first volume, most of the acts here were only active in the early 1980s and have not released any records since then. The tape artists were particularly invested in the DIY ethic – as is often apparent in their sound aesthetics and the unbridled energy which has lost none of its intensity today. Their art was seldom – if ever – tempered by commercial considerations or sales strategies.
We returned to Biljana Tomic for the artwork. The photograph on the cover beautifully captures the paradoxical tensions which pervaded the atmosphere of the early Eighties: new beginnings, renewal, protest and self-empowerment on one side, frustration, hedonism, future anxiety and destructive rage on the other.
The DIY spirit ingrained in the music and attitude of the bands and artists gathered here is also brought into focus, whilst simultaneously establishing a connection to our home town. We see the last ruins and rubble of the City Hof in the centre of Hamburg, a Brutalist-style complex which was the subject of heated debates before it was finally demolished this year.
A special thank you goes to Franck Herges of “Was Soll Das? Schallplatten” who supported us with contacts and material, as did Jörg Steinmeyer from the Kernkrach label, to whom we are also grateful.
Last but not least, a mention for Tom Morgenstern who again (literally and figuratively) mastered the seemingly impossible task of crafting a homogenous record from so many diverse and disparate sources. May we offer our heartfelt thanks!
A year in the making: Sowas von egal 2 is a worthy successor to part 1!
We hope you enjoy listening.

Your Damaged Goods DJ team, April 2020

Hello there! 

Sowas von egal, the album before you, is the result of a collaboration between the bespoke Hamburg record label Bureau B and the Hamburg party series Damaged Goods. 
The divergent trajectories of a record company on the one hand and DJs on the other are happily aligned through a love and passion for seeking out, collecting, releasing and playing rare, remarkable music which simply needs to be heard.

For the three of us as DJs, we created Damaged Goods first and foremost as a danceable party where we could play music beyond the regular and repetitious repertoire of (dark) electro clichés. Our focus would be on seldom heard post punk and synth wave from, or in the style of, the 1980s. We’d slip in these unknown or long forgotten treasures between more familiar hits from the genre to inspire and excite our guests. Eighties culture is very much a reference point today in music, art and fashion, so why not play the originals – especially as there is still so much to be discovered from that period? 

Many of the old records we’d play in the club had only been pressed in small quantities, often sold exclusively at the respective bands’ gigs. More than 30 years later, it is almost impossible to get hold of these tracks – unless you pay over the odds on certain websites or track them down as inferior MP3s on this or that blog. To be fair, at least they have gone to the trouble of getting hold of the songs and transferring them to a digital format. This is why it was so important to us that our collaboration with Bureau B would be dedicated to selecting tracks for Sowas von egal which are not readily available (on vinyl) and have not been rereleased (or the reissues themselves are genuine rarities). It gives us great pleasure to announce that we succeeded, 100%!

The groundwork for this project was interesting in itself: sorting through and listening to songs, making lists, setting priorities. Then getting in touch with labels and trying to find the musicians of yesteryear. This wasn’t always so easy: some had disappeared from view, others had actually died. When we did find who we were looking for, the reaction was generally positive, although some were surprised that anybody was interested in their music today. At this point we would ike to express our deepest gratitude to mastering maestro Tom Morgenstern, who worked wonders with a jumble of disparate source material to achieve such sonic consistency. 

Fans of our parties will recognize more than a few of the tracks on Sowas von egal and we are really proud to have put together this collection. The project took around nine months to get everything in place and we hope you will have as much fun listening to it as we had researching, compiling and releasing it. 

Volker Kindt + Marco Flöß, Juni 2018