Rüdiger Lorenz

Born in 1941, German pharmacist Rüdiger Lorenz maintained a deep passion for collecting analog synthesizers. Frequently assembled spontaneously inside his private studio, his forward-thinking pieces investigated cosmic subjects together with terrestrial, marine, and natural subjects. Starting in the early 1980s he issued cassettes chiefly on Syntape, the imprint he established alongside Peter Schaefer. The first vinyl outing came in 1983 as Invisible Voices on his personal Syncord label, which thereafter handled every subsequent album. Across the 1980s he produced five LPs of original material plus the compilation International Friendship, which gathered works by Maurizio Bianchi, Yoshi Wada, De Fabriek, and further experimental artists. His initial compact-disc appearance, the 1990 album Fata Morgana, launched an active decade of releases centered on particular terrestrial sites and waters, among them Sibiria, Congo, Ozeania, and Coral Sea. Lorenz died suddenly in 2000, with 1998’s Tropica standing as his final album. Well over a decade after his death, renewed attention brought the earliest recordings back into circulation for the first time. Anthology Recordings reissued Invisible Voices in 2014, while the Krautrock label Bureau B restored 1984’s Southland the next year; simultaneously Vinyl-on-Demand issued the vinyl box set The Syntape-Years 1981-83 containing his initial cassette output.