Egoexpress A Piece Of The Action (1995-2005) September 12th 2025 CD / 2-LP ++++++++++++ A Piece Of The Action is a long-overdue retrospective celebrating Hamburg duo Egoexpress, whose rebellious blend of punk spirit and club energy defied genre conventions. From 1995 to 2005, Mense Reents and Berndt “Jimi” Siebels forged an offbeat, emotional, and rhythm-driven path through Germany’s electronic underground, which still pulses with defiant vitality today. ++++++++++++ Formed in 1995 and rooted in the radical spirit of Hamburg’s St. Pauli district, Egoexpress began as a friendly rebellion. Jimi and Mense, two East Frisians who’d known each other since adolescence, came to the city in 1990 as part of the broader wave surrounding the Hamburger Schule - but theirs was a brief cameo in that particular scene. While peers like Blumfeld mastered literate rock and existential dissection, Egoexpress turned instead toward the bass drum: blunt, immediate, and liberating. Their musical upbringing, punk, mod culture, Neue Deutsche Welle, and a love for the hypnotic intensity of Suicide and Bohannon, translated into a fierce commitment to DIY ethos and sonic play. Originally tethered to indie imprint L’Age D’Or via their earlier band projects, the duo delivered the inaugural outing on Ladomat 2000, a sublabel designed for club cuts and electronic excursions. Their first release, “Bungalow”, smuggled house music into German indie culture with lopsided charm - German vocals and a disarming lack of polish. What followed was a body of work as defiant as it was danceable. Between 1995 and 2005, the pair developed their sound from minimalist, Atari-driven loops to sprawling, psychedelic club tracks that gestured at house, electro, and pop, without fully belonging to any of them. Though an immediate sensation around Hamburg’s Golden Pudel club, their sound took longer to become established outside their city. Egoexpress played techno parties with a Fostex 8-track recorder and punk energy, and the club crew didn’t quite know what to make of them. They weren’t Detroit purists, nor Berlin minimalists, nor 80s revivalists, and they couldn’t care less. Influenced as much by Green Velvet as garage rock, they charted their own course, resisting the predictable forms of verse and chorus, choosing instead repetition, grit, and groove. A residency at the margins gave their music a lasting edge, a refusal to conform that now sounds oddly prescient. By 1999, thanks in part to an invitation from Westbam to play Mayday, they were finally embraced into the wider electronic fold. But by then, their work had already crystalised its core ideas. The ‘00s wore on and electroclash exploded. With their punk background, brash saw-saves and towering beats, it would be easy to consider Egoexpress as forerunners, though in truth they bristled at the retro fixations of the scene. They didn’t want to return to the 80s and the boredom of East Frisian adolescence — they wanted to burn through the now. This retrospective, compiled and curated by Mense, offers a long-overdue reintroduction to one of Germany’s most fearless electronic duos. Neither early enough to ride the house wave nor comfortable cashing in on the electroclash moment, Egoexpress fell between the cracks. What they left behind is timeless: a heartfelt, headstrong catalog that celebrates instinct over intellect, rhythm over rigidity, and emotional intensity over sonic orthodoxy. A Piece Of The Action is a reminder that often the most vital music doesn’t fit the moment, it defines one of its own. - Patrick Ryder ++++++++++++ 2-LP Tracklist A1 We Are Here (Remastered) A2 Dumkraft (Remastered) A3 Hot Wire My Heart (EDIT) A4 Weiter (Remastered) B1 Beautiful Music/Dangerous Rhythm (EDIT) B2 Knartz Iv (Remastered) B3 Smily Blu (Remastered) B4 Aranda (Remastered) C1 Everybody (Remastered) C2 Live At Sirius Prime (Remastered) C3 Nobody Expected It To Happen That Way (Remastered) C4 A Piece Of The Action (Vinyl Version) (Remastered) D1 Hohl Von Innen (EDIT) D2 Telefunken (Remastered) D3 Disco Past Perfect (Remastered) D4 Memories Can Wait (EDIT) CD Tracklist 1 We Are Here (Remastered) 2 Dumkraft (Remastered) 3 Hot Wire My Heart (EDIT) 4 Weiter (Remastered) 5 Smily Blu (Remastered) 6 Aranda (Remastered) 7 Beautiful Music/Dangerous Rhythm (EDIT) 8 Knartz Iv (Remastered) 9 Everybody (Remastered) 10 Live At Sirius Prime (Remastered) 11 Nobody Expected It To Happen That Way (Remastered) 12 Telefunken (Remastered) 13 Disco Past Perfect (Remastered) 14 Hohl Von Innen (EDIT) 15 A Piece Of The Action (Remastered) 16 Memories Can Wait (EDIT) ++++++++++++ BB491 CD 273762 4015698560091 LP 273761 4015698948660 ++++++++++++ Promotion Sean Newsham +49(0)40-88166663 sean@bureau-b.com www.bureau-b.com