Kosmische trailblazer Harald Grosskopf is back with a new album ‘Glitches Brew’, the title being a jokey pun on the iconic Miles Davis’ record ‘Bitches Brew’ to reflect the productive friction between man and machine.

Harald Grosskopf first made his solo impact in electronic music back in 1980 with his now classic solo debut record ‘Synthesist’ establishing a musical language that bridged the often improvised kosmische tradition and sequencer-driven electronics. He was already a German music veteran having worked as a drummer with Manuel Göttsching in ASHRA and Klaus Schulze while before that, he was a member of the Lower Rhineland rock band WALLENSTEIN.

A swift follow-up to 2024’s ‘Strom’, based in his garden studio and continuing to work to a click track, Grosskopf used mostly digital instruments on ‘Glitches Brew’. The process allowed him a speedy realisation of spontaneous ideas that could later be reshaped using more analogue tech. In 2024, he told ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK: “I like the quick access that music software and virtual instruments offer. This way, I can always stay in the flow of spontaneous creativity without wasting time on wiring synths and dealing with tons of processing tools.”

With a cacophony of deep throbbing sequences, the opener ‘Leisure Life’ is like an aural spinning top building towards a percussive centre with subtle melodic drifts. ‘Spheroids’ though is much heavier and more mechanical, pumping into the cosmos before pulsars sparkle in its second half.

Both ‘Flow’ and ‘Stranger Strings’ (another great pun) take proceedings to a steadier pace, the former drifts past the stars across its 8 minutes while the latter embraces the cocoon of The Upside Down. But the spacier ‘Panta Rei’ utitlises much more rugged rhythmic approaches while maintaining a wonderfully cerebral mood from Grosskopf’s sweeping signature synth.

Making use of deep staccato voice samples, more freeform keyboard playing and offbeats, ‘LiLaLu’ ventures into slower jazzier territory before the rippling technopop of ‘Kalter Lärm’ arps and pulses with faint string pads acting as distant melodies into cosmic bliss.

‘Glitches Brew’ is unmistakeably Harald Grosskopf despite the greater digital interventions adopted to expand his field of possibilities. This is human and machine in harmony, where rhythm is liberation and the future is something to reappraise.

‘Glitches Brew’ is released by Bureau B in CD and vinyl LP formats, available from https://shop.tapeterecords.com/records/bureau-b/

Download available from https://haraldgrosskopf.bandcamp.com/

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Text by Chi Ming Lai
Photos by Markus Luigs
5th June 2026