In the 80s, inspired oddball Christian Pfluger began a project that has racked up 30 albums of sideways pop music, internal kosmische, reimagined worlds that feel homogenous to him but far out from the outside. It’s really a testament to human creativity, going through the almost 40 years of endeavour that the two volumes of this compilation produced by Bureau B. His imagination is so rich and fruitful that he melts down any number of musical idioms to create somthing that is uniquely Die Welttraumforscher (Explorers of the Universe or Explorers Of The Dream Of The World). Pfluger has influenced everyone from Felix Kubin to Barbara Morgenstern but you can hear everything from The Residents to Conrad Schnitzler here.

The 1990-2012 period catalogued in Wir arbeiten für die nächste Welt (I’m going to apply my rudimentary German here and say it means “We are working for the next world,” a beautiful sentiment) isn’t much different to the previous decade. The instrumentation is a little different, a wee bit more digital and synth based, but that just means the music sounds even MORE precient. The clearer, sparkling tones that are masticated into inter-locking loops swerve into the ambient territory maybe while retaining the dadist sense of humour and play that permeates all of Pfluger’s tracks. The vast breadth and depth of the soundworld he conjurs is utopian in rendering: this music so playful and human sounding that it’s almost too good for this faulty, at times cruel world. In many ways, this is World Music as it should be. It’s music of the world that we should be living in, maybe only in dreams for now.