Die Welttraumforscher - Wir arbeiten für die nächste Welt (1991 - 2012)

There's been a lot of Die Welttraumforscher action in 2021. First that tape compilation on A Colourful Storm (always a good sign) which appeared to document the project's early years, then I heard a song on 6Music (wild), and now these two four decade-spanning collections on Bureau B. And to think most wouldn't have even heard the name six months ago (and even more still can't pronounce it). The work of Swiss mastermind Christian Pfluger, Die Welttraumforscher (trans: the dreamworld explorers) might be considered a kind of low-rent Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, a multidisciplinary project made up of overarching concepts, illustrations, fillm, and of course, music. I don't know too much about the rest of the stuff, but the music is a real trip. If this is a dreamworld, it's a post-Kraftwerk one, imagined in the soft-light of soma. I suppose you'd call this synthpop in much the same way you might TRjj, a surrealist vision of alterna-pop unbound by conventional song structure with a healthy smattering of the eternal weltschmerz. I'm a little surprised Stroom aren't involved, so reminiscent is it of that awake-in-the-dream aesthetic they've brilliantly cultivated. Bureau B have likely broken these up into two separate releases as they're not expecting people to shell out big money on a double disc collection, but truly, if you want one of these records, you do really need both. These are indivisibly essential windows into the mind of a savant. In the WOE and adjacent circles, there's a lot of talk of 'world making'. No greater example of it than what Christian Pfluger's been squirreling away at now for forty years.