VARIOUS ARTISTS

This is a retrospective on the life and work of the mighty Brontosaurus label. Already planned since the cretaceous age, it needed some centuries for us to perfect our witch doctor skills to bring this gentle giant back to life. Although he was only granted to live for four years (2006-2010) his work was quite influential, and Brontosaurus managed to become a reference of its own. Which rarely happens in an often reference overcrowded genre. Enough reasons to raise Brontosaurus a monument to reminisce him in his full glory. We are also very happy to get an inside view by fellow palaeontologist and Tuff City Kid Gerd Janson, who contributed liner notes to this double gatefold LP. You can read them here in full:

„On the surface, Frankfurt am Main has been always about money. Banks, fancy restaurants, jewellers and shopping streets have an almost inconvenient cultural imprint on a city that sometimes makes it all too easy to forget about the place's prolific publishing houses, galleries, museums, artists, intellectuals and sometimes thriving counter-culture. In a sort of trickle-down effect that structural condition didn't leave dance music out of the equation. Either it has been commercially hard-hitting (Snap!, Logic, airport discotheques and their aftermath), tried to be or took the antagonizing and agonising road of resistance. There was a dictum during the early nineties techno madness that Berlin would be the city of partying, while Frankfurt would be the place of work. Go figure.

Thankfully, Brontosaurus got that all wrong right from the very start and through to its end. Born out of boredom rather than a desire for stardom (or ability for that matter), the label was the playground of three don't-wanna-be-grown-ups:

Phillip Lauer, Thomas “Saap” Sabrowsky and the man formerly known as CB Funk aka The Citizen's Band. A label from and for friends that claimed to release so called proto dance music long after its emersion, misspelled mayhem as mayham and met ennui with excitement and a DIY ethos that wasn't very far away from the snotty nose that is hardcore punk. Baptized by a guy named Popowicz, Brontosaurus managed to lighten up the mood in a scene that is sometimes too-serious-too-stubborn-too-conventional, while independently keeping the aural quality standards of Frankfurt's larger-than-life label persona Playhouse. With releases by Lauer himself, Extra Produktionen, Exile Missile or the Lauer & CB Funk house music hoax Arto Mwambe that turned into a major player of its own, the label released very numerologist-friendly exactly thirteen 12-inches, before it stopped and the protagonists went on to other adventures.

Those maxi-singles include melancholic first timers like Zachary, remixes from the likes of Move D and Osborne, chart storming deep house anthems (“Mudhutma!”, “Greatest Love”, “Love Lifted”), euphoric piano madness by Lauer (“Delta NRG”) or slow motion cosmic funky by The Exile Missile (“Ray Rider”) - some of them housed in hand-crafted limited sleeves portraying the inviting homes of dictators and all of them strictly bound to the vinyl format.

Consigned for posterity by Munich's music machine Permanent Vacation, the label's momentum and those moments can now be relived again and again. “Brontosaurus” collects the labels brilliance for the first time on digital formats and for the last time makes it obtainable on vinyl again. Here you have all the ingredients that makes dance music enjoyable, elating, staggering, shrewd, heroic and non-conform and most of all fun.

Say hello and wave goodbye!“