BASF (record label)

Lore & Background

By mid-1975, conductor Rudolf Kempe had signed a new contract with BASF. The label's roster grew to include Angela Branca, Reiner Rodin, and others, and it had success with groups like Bläck Fööss and the Westphalian Nightingales. BASF also moved into children's recorded music. The label distributed the MPS catalogue for its jazz releases, but those recordings were not released under the BASF label itself. Classical sales accounted for 14–17% of turnover.

Reader's Guide

BASF's significance lies in its brief but broad presence in the 1970s record industry, issuing thousands of recordings across pop, jazz, classical, and children's music. It was notable for its early adoption of quadraphonic sound and its aggressive expansion into pre-recorded tapes. The label's association with MPS Records gave it a strong jazz catalogue featuring major artists like Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson. BASF also demonstrated the ability of a chemical conglomerate to enter the music business, securing distribution deals in Germany, the US, and the UK. Its chart successes with German schlager artists like Cindy & Bert and Freddy Breck showed its commercial viability. However, the label's lifespan was limited to the 1970s, and it did not survive into the next decade. Its legacy is preserved through reissues and collector interest, particularly for its quadraphonic releases and jazz recordings.

Did You Know?

• BASF paid 1,000,000 German marks to sign singer Manuela from Telefunken-Decca in 1972.
• The label's quadraphonic releases included 'Demonstration in Quadro' and 'Fantastic Quadro'.
• Candlewick Green's single 'Who Do You Think You Are' was released in the UK on BASF and charted there for seven weeks, but it was not a US release.
• By October 1975, Cindy & Bert and Freddy Breck had each sold more than 100,000 singles on BASF.

Origins & Label Architecture

Pilz, a name that translates from German as 'mushroom,' emerged in Berlin in 1971 as a venture of Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser, a German music figure who also founded the Ohr label. Operating as a sublabel of BASF—one of Germany's major record companies at the time—Pilz occupied a distinctive niche within Kaiser's broader empire, which also included Cosmic Couriers. The label's visual identity was straightforward and memorable: a mushroom emblem appeared on both the record sleeves and the vinyl labels themselves. This structural placement meant that artists on Pilz frequently crossed over to Kaiser's other imprints; for instance, Witthüser & Westrupp released material on Pilz while also putting out records on Ohr and/or Cosmic Couriers. The sublabel arrangement gave Kaiser a way to house a specific slice of the German psychedelic scene under the BASF umbrella without diluting the identity of his primary labels.

Musical Identity & Catalogue

Across its brief run, Pilz issued a compact catalogue of twenty albums and seven singles, nearly all of them steeped in psychedelic and cosmic rock with folk undertones. The vocal language was predominantly German, though several releases were entirely instrumental, allowing the music to speak without linguistic barriers. The 1971 album *Heavy Christmas* (a various-artists compilation) opened the catalogue, followed by a dense run of solo and group efforts from acts like Dies Irae, Flute & Voice, Joy Unlimited, Ardo Dombec, Rufus Zuphall, Bröselmaschine, Virus, and McChurch Soundroom. By 1972, the roster expanded to include Hölderlin, Wallenstein, Emtidi, Anima, Jerry Berkers, and the various-artists compilation *Rapunzel – Neue Deutsche Volksmusik*. The seven singles, released between 1971 and 1972, offered shorter snapshots from Elga, Virus, Dies Irae, Witthüser & Westrupp, Joy Unlimited, and Jerry Berkers. Together, these releases paint a portrait of a scene that blended electronic experimentation, folk tradition, and cosmic ambition within a single, tightly focused imprint.

Defining Artists & Cultural Resonance

Among the roster, Popol Vuh stand out as the label's most widely recognized act, having released multiple albums on Pilz, including several film scores that earned sustained critical and fan admiration. Their 1971 record *In den Gärten Pharaos* is frequently cited as a classic of the genre. Wallenstein enjoyed a degree of commercial success during the 1970s and has seen renewed interest through recent reissues of their Pilz-era material, *Blitzkrieg* and *Mother Universe*. Witthüser & Westrupp, whose Pilz releases include *Der Jesuspilz – Musik vom Evangelium* and *Bauer Plath*, have maintained a devoted following as cult favourites. The interconnection between these artists and Kaiser's other labels—Ohr and Cosmic Couriers—meant that the Pilz catalogue was never truly isolated; it was one thread in a wider tapestry of German experimental music. Julian Cope's *Krautrocksampler* (1995) further cemented the cultural memory of this circle for later generations of listeners.

A Brief Life & Lasting Echoes

Pilz's operational window was remarkably short: from its 1971 founding to its closure in 1972, the label existed for barely a year and a half. Its final release was Popol Vuh's *Hosianna Mantra*, catalogued as 20 29143-1, which marked the end of an era for the imprint. Despite the brevity of its existence, the label left an outsized mark on the landscape of German psychedelic and cosmic rock. Decades later, the influence of its catalogue continued to ripple outward: Japanese musician Kawabata Makoto of Acid Mothers Temple undertook a complete cover of *Hosianna Mantra*, a testament to the enduring resonance of the material. The discography, though modest in size—twenty albums and seven singles—remains a point of reference for collectors and scholars of krautrock, with listings maintained on platforms like Discogs and dedicated fan sites. For a label that lasted only two years, Pilz packed an extraordinary density of artistic ambition into its mushroom-branded sleeves.

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