Düsseldorf, Germany DJ, musician and producer Jan Schulte aka Wolf Müller, the mastermind

behind the cult Tropical Drums Of Deutschland compilation returns with Albumsi, his first album under his Bufiman alias on Dekmantel Records. Building on a series of 12”s released through Dekmantel, Safe Trip, Verein Freier Menschen und Musik and other labels between 2012 and 2018, Albumsi is a colourful and adventurous Balearic journey. Over it's running time, we encounter Schulte’s interpretations of electro-boogie, post-punk, prog-funk, synth-pop, Italo, rave, acid, deep house, apo-calypso and numerous other hyphenated micro-genres, and what interpretations they are.

Albumsi is the first record Schulte created after leaving his day job of eleven years to focus on touring the world as the open-eared, genre-crossing DJ he is (African-inspired krautrock, voodoo techno, rare B-sides, you name it) and spending more time in the studio. Created with a cast of collaborators including Niklas Rehme-Schlüter (Cass.), Lucas Croon, Nikolai Szymanski (Airchina), Alexander Dorn (Credit 00), Gregor Darman & Aki Vierboom (Phaser Boys), Sara Dudzinski Rodriguez and Florian Van Volxem, Albumsi connects dots, ties together threads, and poses questions around the possibilities of alternative histories.

Album opener ‘Galaxy’ sets the tone for the record, with an undeniable b-boy break, and Schulte’s languid vocal welcoming us to a galaxy of snare drum samples, full of emotions. He’s reminding us that he is a drums and percussion guy and set against a backdrop of samples culled from twenty plus years of record collecting and some refreshed song sketches/demos, those drums knock hard. ‘Sara Sara’ keeps up the skip, but set against a synth-pad so polished you could build a spaceship out of it, and ‘Hoolock Rock’ maintains the bounce and futurism, or perhaps retrofuturism given we’re headed straight into 2020. Equally squelchy is Schulte’s rave-ready remake of Fred Wesley & The J.B.’s ‘Blow Your Head,’ one of those cuts you’ll want to put aside for DJ use.

Across Albumsi, Schulte mostly trades in 5-7 minute songs, just long enough to build a semi-hypnotic vibe, but on ‘Pantasy’ and ‘Langsam Aber Slowly / I Think I Got It Under Control Now / Well, Traumhaft’ he pushes the boat out to 12-14 minutes. You know, repetition is a form of change, and why not reference some classic early 80s vibes along the way. And at the same time, he rides a tidy balance between programmed grooves and live instrumentation, because it’s not real drum machine funk or cybo-rhythmatics without some jacked-up man/machine interfacing. There is a wealth of possibilities for the dancefloor where, which is what it’s all really about isn’t it? Come through Bufiman!

Albumsi is due for release on Dekmantel Records in digital and 2xLP formats pre-order it (here) or (here).