Roedelius & Czjzek - Weites Land (2021)

Vienna, the early 1980s. Krautrock, electronic and ambient pioneer Hans Joachim Roedelius, co-founder Cluster and Harmonia and saxophone free spirit Alexander Czjzek meet for the first time. Their longstanding collaboration found its climax in the fantastic album "Weites Land", which was released in 1987 for the first time, but has been out of print for many decades and became a sought-after rarity. Bureau B is pleased to make this organic jazz masterpiece finally available again! The two artists responsible for Weites Land cast their minds back to the period leading up to the album. Czjzek: Joachim and I - he was still something of an electronic purist when we first met - took turns visiting each other's home studios as we began to acquaint ourselves with our respective musical approaches. I took my saxophones and improvised over Joachim's tapes. Whenever I signalled to him that he could start recording "now", he'd invariably already done so - and those spontaneous first takes were perfect, just as they were! Joachim amassed a wealth of material featuring my saxophone improvisations and mixed them with his own sounds, creating a wonderfully harmonious symbiosis of our different musical worlds. The beauty of it was how they converged without either of us needing to divert from his own path. The first collaborations appeared on Joachim's 1982 work Wasser im Wind, with our own joint release - Weites Land - following in 1987. Roedelius: Two creative minds, one of them Alexander's, allowing musical visions free rein in congenial expression. Perhaps they are so empathetic, so persuasive, because I have, in some way, shown that it is possible to traverse this territory with such relish, although my musical career has always involved no end of collaborations in different genres and environments. It is no coincidence that my music is said to have a salubrious quality, causing cats to purr when a Roedelius disc is played. Migranes have even been forever banished when confronted with my music.