Beroshima oldies

After the Autotune post I thought a bit about Mueller and realised that most of the people probably know Beroshima only from the recent Cocoon release.
He goes back a long way. He started at the early '90s, released almost exclusively through his own labels and paved his own personal way against shifting hypes and styles by sticking to his obvious love (=compulsion), early '90s german rave techno just before it mutated a bit and went on to be called 'trance'. Of course, the Beroshima version of 'trance' has nothing to do with meta-hippie travelers and Buddhism and everything to do with 8-bit soundtracks for race games, Italo on speed, pop culture and Japan techno. I guess that explains the Berlin-Tokyo axis, the ever-growing connections between Mueller and various Japanese DJs/producers (like Takkyu Ishino, Kagami and more), as well as Frank Mueller's fascination with the Japanese culture. Fat synths, strong melodies, racing BPMs, getting blind by flashing strobos, even manic disco guitar samples, this is for me the Mueller style. 'Watch The Moving Bodies' as the robo poet says.
Many of Berlin's old school have one way or another contributed to the Mueller/ Beroshima/ Acid Orange/ Tanjobi catalogs. Putting Autotune, Tok Tok and affiliates aside, we have releases by Tom Clark of Highgrade, Alex Krueger aka Dub Taylor/Tigerskin, Rok, Ulrich Schnauss (!), Keen K aka Divider, Dave DK, Treplec of Milnor Modern label, the incredible Richard Davis, Sylvie Marks, Latex aka Steril, Lab.Insect of Lasergun and a Best Of ... by Air Liquide. And I-F as Frank Castle, and a lot more. I won't talk about remixes, it'll need another post. Still he has remained relatively unknown. At least he enjoys the respect of a lot of producers.
This is a compilation of tracks off the many 12''s he published (but only two albums so far), plus some remixes (check the Selway one) and live excerpts. Sums up quite nicely his progress until then. Nothing changed much until recently, when he took a more detroit-ish, hypnotic turn towards sunset/ sunrise music. Hope he goes bigger than everyone else and finally gets the recognition he deserves. He stayed underground for too long. The cover of this compilation should tell you something about him.


Beroshima - Best of ... compilation 2001 (Japan edition)

CD1: Part 1 - Part 2
CD2: Part 1 - Part 2

Info here.