The Flower Kings are a Swedish progressive rock band formed in 1994 by guitarist and singer-songwriter Roine Stolt. The group began as Stolt's touring band to support his third solo album The Flower King. They continued performing after the tour and have gone on to become one of the most prolific studio recording units in progressive rock, having released over twenty hours of music spread across fifteen studio albums. Their music is similar to early symphonic progressive rock groups such as Yes, marked by sharp dynamic changes, polyrhythms, heavy bass, vocal harmonies, abstract and occasionally nonsensical lyrics, and extended song lengths.
Joe Chiccarelli is an American record producer, mixer and engineer, who is a native of Boston, Massachusetts, and has been active since the 1980s. He has produced albums by Stan Ridgway, Morrissey, Oingo Boingo, Spoon, The Shins, Sandra Bernhard, My Morning Jacket, Counting Crows, Augie March, Manchester Orchestra, Minus the Bear, Boy & Bear, Kurt Elling, Saints of Valory, and Big Talk. Other artists include Elton John, Rufus Wainwright, U2, Alanis Morissette, Beck, Etta James, Jamie Cullum, Al Stewart, Tori Amos, The Strokes, The Killers, Cage The Elephant, Cafe Tacuba, Pink Martini, The Shelters, Christina Perri, Third Eye Blind,All American Rejects, Vanessa Carlton, Rachael Yamagata, Michael Buble', Glenn Frey and Jason Mraz.
Neu! were a West German krautrock band formed in Düsseldorf in 1971 by Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother following their departure from Kraftwerk. The group's albums were produced by Conny Plank, who has been regarded as the group's "hidden member". They released three albums in their initial incarnation—Neu! (1972), Neu! 2 (1973), and Neu! 75 (1975)—before disbanding in 1975. They briefly reunited in the mid-1980s.
Cluster & Eno is a collaborative album by German electronic music group Cluster and English ambient musician Brian Eno. The style of this album is a collection of gentle melodies: a mixture of Eno's ambient sensibilities and Cluster's avant-garde style.
Cluster were a German musical duo consisting of Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, formed in 1971 and associated with West Germany's krautrock and kosmische music scenes. Born from the earlier Berlin-based group Kluster, they relocated in 1971 into the countryside village of Forst, Lower Saxony, where they built a studio and collaborated with musicians such as Conny Plank, Brian Eno, and Michael Rother; with the latter, they formed the influential side-project Harmonia. After first disbanding in 1981, Cluster reunited several times: from 1989 to 1997, and from 2007 to 2010.
Michael Rother is a German experimental musician, best known for being a founding member of the influential bands Neu! and Harmonia, and an early member of the band Kraftwerk.
Staalplaat is an independent record label that is located in Amsterdam with a separate store in Berlin. Founded in 1982, the company's mission was to create a sound forum for sound artists, who write and perform new and experimental music.
Studio Tan is the 24th album by American musician Frank Zappa, first released in September 1978 on his own DiscReet Records label. It reached #147 on the Billboard 200 albums chart in the United States.
Andreas "Andi" Deris is a German singer, best known as one of the three co-lead vocalists of the power metal band Helloween, and co-founder and former lead singer of the metal band Pink Cream 69.
Dieter Moebius was a Swiss-born German electronic musician and composer, best known as a member of the influential krautrock bands Cluster and Harmonia.
Home for Christmas is the thirtieth solo studio album by American singer-songwriter Dolly Parton. It was released on September 11, 1990, by Columbia Records. The album was produced by Gary Smith, with Parton serving as executive producer. It is Parton's second Christmas album, following 1984's Once Upon a Christmas with Kenny Rogers. Unlike Once Upon a Christmas, which featured a number of original songs, Home for Christmas is made up of ten Christmas standards. The album's release was accompanied by an ABC television special, Dolly Parton: Christmas at Home. The album was certified Gold by the RIAA in 1994.
Klaus Dinger was a German musician and songwriter most famous for his contributions to the seminal krautrock band Neu!. He was also the guitarist and chief songwriter of new wave group La Düsseldorf and briefly the percussionist of Kraftwerk.
Deluxe is the second album from the West German krautrock group Harmonia, consisting of Neu! guitarist Michael Rother and the Cluster duo of Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius. It was recorded in June 1975 in Harmonia's studio in Forst, Germany. It was first released on the Brain Records label in 1975.
Durch die Wüste is the first full-length solo album by German keyboardist Hans-Joachim Roedelius, best known for his work with Cluster, Harmonia, and Aquarello. The title is German for "Through the Desert."
Sky Records was a Hamburg, Germany-based independent record label specializing in krautrock/Kosmische Musik and electronic music. Some of their releases could be classified as progressive rock or art rock, experimental music, industrial, ambient, or new age. No new releases appeared after 1998.
Asmus Tietchens, who also records under the monikers Hematic Sunsets and Club of Rome, is a German composer of avant-garde music. Tietchens became interested in experimental music and musique concrète as a child, and began recording sound experiments in 1965 with electronic musical instruments, synthesizers and tape loops. In the 1970s he met producer Okko Bekker, and the two formed a decades-long partnership. Peter Baumann heard a recording of Tietchens' music and offered to produce an album; the result was Nachtstücke, Tietchens' 1980 offering on Egg Records. His early recordings feature more accessible synthesized music, but beginning with Formen Letzer Hausmusik, his 1984 release for Nurse With Wound's label United Dairies, he began moving toward more abstract sound collages. He has taught acoustics in Hamburg since 1990.
Esperanza is the eighth studio album by the German solo artist Michael Rother. It was released on 11 March 1996. Excepting 1993's compilation album Radio, the studio album was Rother's first since 1987 and his sole full release of material in the 1990s.
Bureau B is an independent record label, music publisher and booking agency from Hamburg, Germany, founded in 2005 by Gunther Buskies as a sister label to Tapete Records. The label releases varieties of electronic, free-spirited music, with the spectrum ranging from pop to avant-garde. The label has amassed an extensive catalogue of reissues and new productions, including classics from the genre of electronic music in the 1970s and early 1980s popularly classified as Krautrock, alongside new recordings by such formative artists as Faust, Kreidler, Roedelius, Tietchens, Moebius.
Biotop is the second album by German electronic musician Asmus Tietchens, released in 1981 on Sky Records. Tietchens recorded the album at Audiplex Studios with producer and mentor Okko Bekker, who is credited as Rokko Ekbek. Departing from the musical style of the musician's debut album Nachtstucke (1980), Biotop contains sixteen short electronic pop tracks that are characterised by their immediate nature but unusual synth lines, tones and melodies. Bekker compared the music to radio time signals. Indeed, the liner notes state the album was performed by Das Zeitzeichenorchester, which translates to The Time-Signal Orchestra, although in reality this is an alias for Tietchens, the album's only performer.
Dreaming is the tenth studio album by the German solo artist Michael Rother. It was released in September 2020. Aside from some soundtrack material during the 2010s, Dreaming is Michael Rother's first solo effort since Remember was released in 2004. The album was constructed from leftover musical sketches and vocal samples of Sophie Joiner from the sessions for Remember .
