V.A. - Magnetizdat DDR Magnetbanduntergrund Ost / East German Tape Underground 1979-1990

In the last decade of the German Democratic Republic, punk and its experimental branches of post-punk, new wave, electronic music and avant-garde rock, and pop, found listeners and perpetrators there just as they did in the non-socialist economic areas. The ideal medium for this music on both sides of the Cold War confrontation line was something which could be produced and distributed independently: the cassette tape – that signature of the 1980s which has experienced a comeback in recent years. However, in the GDR, this form of music circulation was due to different circumstances than in the West: while for bands and musicians in London, Manchester or West Berlin it was a DIY euphoria sometimes based on ideological reasons, as well as being economically justifiable, in East Berlin, Karl-Marx-Stadt (today’s Chemnitz) or Leipzig, there were no other means available to the subculture. What’s more, in the real-socialist dictatorship the very first copied tape already put one on illegal terrain, since everything including production and distribution was subject to strict state authorization, which also affected printed matter and live performances.

However, every state set of rules has basic rules that it can be ignored. This also applies to the GDR, to a greater extent since the late 1970s, when a scene developed around the painter, graphic artist, sculptor, and jazz musician A.R. Penck in Dresden, in Karl-Marx-Stadt with the artists’ group Clara Mosch, or in the sociotope of the East Berlin working-class district Prenzlauer Berg, which worked experimentally with language, multimedia, and performance. There was a unique reciprocity in these scenes. Poets like Bert Papenfuß, Stefan Döring, and Leonhard Lorek performed with bands that in turn discovered baroque and experimental poetry. Super 8 filmmakers and visual artists took up the microphone. Out of this network what is aptly described as the “Magnetbanduntergrund” developed: an underground cassette tape scene, a magnetizdat, derived from samizdat (self-publishing) and tamizdat (foreign publishing) in the Soviet counterculture. Punk was the great catalyst, and listening to John Peel’s programs was compulsory for people who otherwise had a rather distanced attitude towards anything compulsory.

The protagonists of this scene had long since ideologically as well as aesthetically said goodbye to the state and its guidelines. Disillusioned and often seeking a way to escape to the West, these border-crossers defined themselves as something ranging from un-political to outright anti-political. They pursued self-fulfillment strategies by means of elaborate niche existences. In side rooms and spaces of retreat, they searched desperately for ways of creative self-assertion and communication with a frenzy for sound, linguistic wit, and a passion for handicrafts. Driven by omnipresent boredom, but equipped with a great deal of time and freedom from economic constraints and possibilities, they worked without a final product in mind. It was only the mid-eighties partial opening of state media and cultural venues, stemming from the onset of the system’s agony, that changed the terms for action. Suddenly the illegal cassettes were getting radio air-time and performances were taking place in the Palace of the Republic, a GDR temple that both housed its parliament and functioned as a place of entertainment. In the end, even LPs by the tolerated “other bands” appeared on the state label AMIGA. The GDR’s cultural policy had made up this label in order to avoid having to use terms such as “punk,” which were frowned upon from an aesthetic and ideological point of view.

However, the majority of the musicians and bands on the compilation Magnetizdat DDR were never officially released in the GDR, not even towards the end. This does not mean that they led mere rehearsal room existences. The foundation of several cassette editions—including early offenders like the East Berlin label Assorted Nuts releases of the bands Aufruhr zur Liebe and Ornament & Verbrechen - speak against the fact that they were determined to make themselves a rarity. The label Kröten Kassetten, also based in the GDR capital and formed for releases by Das Freie Orchester and its players, managed to release nearly thirty titles and cultivated a considerable international exchange. In Karl-Marx-Stadt Frank Bretschneider's klangFarBe label released recordings by bands like AG. Geige. Trash Tape Rekords, which operated between Rostock and Dresden, was the first label that took its releases far beyond its own environment and increased distribution. Unofficial artist magazines like “schaden,” “A Drei,” and “Liane” included cassette inserts. The magazine “Verwendung” even managed the coup of releasing the first independent vinyl in the GDR, with a single by Ornament & Verbrechen’s side project The Local Moon. Mario Persch, musician and lyricist of the band Der Expander des Fortschritts, even founded a tape label, ZoneTon, in order to confidently present the special sound of the GDR zone beyond the German reunification.

The stylistic spectrum of the underground tape scene ranged from unorthodox punk with a no-wave tendency, lo-fi experimental rock, idiosyncratic pop designs, darkwave, Neue Sorbische Kunst, industrial, art noise, and anticipatory post-rock, to improvised music and performance soundtracks and compositions inspired by the avant-garde.

One can speak of pioneering works that had an impact. The path of some of those involved led to internationally successful acts such as Rammstein, Tarwater, and To Rococo Rot, and the label Raster-Noton label. Nevertheless, the “Zonic” special edition Spannung. Leistung. Widerstand. Magnetbanduntergrund DDR 1979-1990 (Verbrecher Verlag/ZickZack) wasn’t released until 2006 and offered a double CD compiled by Bernd Jestram, Bo Kondren, Ronald Lippok, and Bert Papenfuß. Magnetizdat DDR, the book and this triple LP, follows up on that combination of book and compilation, which has long been sold out. The selection balances between a self-imposed research task and subjective taste… with the obligatory stubbornness! The fact that Magnetizdat DDR is published in cooperation with an initiative from the far west of Europe, the Portuguese database Unearthing The Music, is a beautiful irony of history, which is otherwise not a comedy.

— Alexander Pehlemann, Ronald Galenza & Robert Mießner. Leipzig & Berlin, January 2023