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Ursula Bogner’s story is like the housewife version of Kraftwerk; born 1948, raised in Dortmund, got a degree in pharmacy in Berlin, worked for pharmaceutical firm Schering where she had a successful career as well as marriage and raising children.

But in parallel to all this, since her early 20s, Bogner had a very keen interest in electronic music and was a fan of Herbert Eimart and his ‘Studio für elekronische Musik’ in Cologne. She also had energy to be a keen artist, a fan of Wilhem Reich’s theories of ‘orgonomy’ (even visiting him in the U.S.) and many other new age concepts.

All this heady mix went into her music. There’s no particular style that you can attribute to the 16 tracks on this CD which is the first time it’s been heard by the general public. All but 3 tracks are taken from the original reel-to-reel tapes (the others being ‘reconstructed’ by Jen Jelinek; the guy behind this project after meeting Ursula’s son Sebastian on a flight to Vilnius.

Fans of the Synth Britannia documentary on BBC4, might spot a range of influences from the aforementioned Kraftwerk, Eno’s knob twiddling period and 80s synth pop but on a cool minimalistic tip. That said, the album starts a la a Jonny Trunk type “find” that could have been on a kids TV programme, with ‘Begleitung fur Tuba’ (think Gerard Hoffnung meets The Clangers) and the plinkity plonk space ship of ‘Metazoon’.

There’s no vocals on these tracks but you’ll find tight compositions that are quite short and intense like ‘Momentaufnahme’ is a quasi-Madtone radio wave thing, ‘Modes’ is the sputnik version whilst ‘2 Ton’ is closer to early Joy Division/a cold minimal ‘Warm Leatherette’.

Other favourites are the echo water chamber of ‘Speichen’ and dripping tap of ‘Sxpansion’ (for the prog synth extended version, try Edgar Froese Aqua and the synth-pop tech dance of ‘Punkte’.

I’ve no information on what instruments were used to make these tracks but ‘Pulsation’ also sounds ahead of its time and there last couple of tracks are more leftfield experimental.

What Ursula would have made of this we’ll never know (she unfortunately passed away in 1994), but if nothing else, finding ‘Begleitung fur Tuba’ and ‘Punkte’ was worth the effort put into this project in itself. Definitely an excellent addition to your electronic catalogue; file under ‘unusual’.

And the latest is that a new Ursula Bogner 7” vinyl single called ‘Pluto hat einen Mond’ (Pluto has a moon) is coming out before Christmas comprising four exclusive and previously unreleased tracks.

Reviewed: Ursula Bogner - Recordings 1969-1988 (Faitiche) Cat. No. faitiche 01cd Release date: 24th October 2008
Tracklisting:
1 Begleitung Für Tuba (2:26)
2 Inversion (1:59)
3 Proto (1:34)
4 Metazoon (3:35)
5 Momentaufnahme (1:14)
6 2 Ton (3:01)
7 Speichen (1:58)
8 Modes (1:57)
9 Atmosphäre 1 (0:51)
10 Punkte (3:01)
11 Expansion (2:17)
12 Für Ulrich (1:49)
13 Pulsation (1:44)
14 Testlauf (1:31)
15 Soloresonanzen (5:13)

Credits
Artwork By - Jens Reitemeyer
Mastered By - Kassian Troyer
Notes: Mastered by Kassian Troyer, scape mastering. Graphikdesign by Jens Reitemeyer /formenpark.

Links:
www.faitiche.de
BBC4 Synth Britannia Trailer www.bbc.co.uk
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Radiophonic_Workshop