Anemonengurt is a German experimental project working out of Aachen across about 1988 to 2003, produced and engineered throughout by Achim P. Li Khan of Hirsche Nicht Aufs Sofa (HNAS) and issued exclusively on the Dom Elchklang imprint that Khan co-operates. The catalogue runs to two full-length albums (Wo die Ebenen geglättet sind, recorded 1990–1993 at Artlos-Studio and Jottlos-Studio, Aachen, and issued in 1995 as DOM EK 007; and Bocuse Berneau, issued 24 September 2003 as DOM EK 011), one 8cm CD release (Audiozirkus, DOM EK 025), and a small number of compilation tracks across the surrounding Dom Elchklang catalogue (most-cited: Funkenfries on the 1989 Bratenstücke Dom Elchklang sampler). The personnel behind the Anemonengurt operator-name has not been comprehensively documented in publicly-available sources; what is documented is that Khan's production-and-engineering hand is the catalogue's continuous structuring presence, and that the Anemonengurt records belong to the surrounding Dom Elchklang / HNAS Aachen avant-experimental cluster the Bureau treats as a single late-1980s-and-1990s working scene.
The Bureau files Anemonengurt at Tier III and the wildcard on the position that the catalogue is the Dom Elchklang imprint's most-direct entry into the industrial-and-noise manner proper, and that the Aachen scene generally functions in the present archive as a distinctive German parallel to the better-documented Berlin (Neubauten / Die Tödliche Doris) and Hamburg (Tietchens / ZickZack) clusters of the same period. The Aachen scene is centred on Khan's HNAS catalogue and on the Dom Elchklang imprint Khan founded for HNAS releases and rapidly expanded to publish a surrounding Aachen-and-adjacent network: Damenbart, Anemonengurt, Brigitte & the Hansen Experience, MAAT, Rowenta/Khan, Frank Rowenta, Dr. P. Li Khan, Korea Soundblaster, Otto Vokal, Piano Conrads, Dieter Bauknecht, Coastal Guard, Grillhaus, Finsternis, Algebra Suicide. The catalogue is one of the German underground-electronic scene's most-distinctive long-running imprints, sustained by the Khan production-and-publishing apparatus across multiple operator-names and project-formats.
The first Anemonengurt LP, Wo die Ebenen geglättet sind (1995), is the catalogue's document. Recorded across about three years (1990–1993) at Artlos-Studio and Jottlos-Studio in Aachen, the record is a sustained working session in industrial noise combined with what later reviews have consistently described as self-made instruments sounds, cheap electronics and over-the-top singing. The Khan production hand is registered throughout: the album's sound-collage editing, processed-vocal treatments, and dense layered signal-chain approach all sit inside the HNAS-derived Aachen working palette. The critical description that has consistently appeared in later reissue coverage places Anemonengurt between Einstürzende Neubauten and Test Department: the self-built-metal-instrument mode of the former, combined with the rhythmic industrial vein of the latter, layered with the HNAS-derived studio-collage and surrealist-editorial position that the Dom Elchklang catalogue shares. The release was issued in a digipak sleeve; the catalogue-number anomaly that the spine reads DOM EK 007 while the CD itself reads DOM EK 008 is the kind of small archival inconsistency that the Dom Elchklang catalogue has produced across multiple releases.
The second LP, Bocuse Berneau (24 September 2003, DOM EK 011), is the catalogue's later extended statement, issued eight years after the first LP. The record continues the Anemonengurt working idiom, with Khan's production hand again continuously present; the 2003 release-date places the record well into the Dom Elchklang catalogue's second decade and within the cluster's mid-period mature working phase. The Audiozirkus 8cm CD (DOM EK 025) is the catalogue's third standalone release and operates as a shorter-form supplement to the two LPs. The remaining documented Anemonengurt material consists of compilation tracks across the surrounding Dom Elchklang catalogue (the Funkenfries track on Bratenstücke 1989 being the most cited such entry).
The surrounding context the Bureau places Anemonengurt within is the Aachen experimental-and-noise cluster the Khan apparatus has continuously sustained since the mid-1980s. The cluster's documented operator is HNAS itself (Khan + Christoph Heemann early years); the Dom Elchklang label is the cluster's publishing apparatus, with two distinct catalogue-number sequences (the DOM 77-XX HNAS-specific sequence and the DOM EK XXX surrounding-roster sequence) running parallel across the cluster's period. The Anemonengurt catalogue sits inside the DOM EK roster as one of about twenty-five projects the imprint has published, and as the cluster's clearest single direct industrial-and-noise entry the imprint has produced.
The Bureau's reading is that Anemonengurt occupies a position structurally similar to the one Aphasia occupies inside the Cold Meat Industry roster or the one Ohrenschrauben Ohrensausen occupies inside the surrounding experimental-cassette cluster: an operator-name producing a small but substantive catalogue within a larger continuously-operating imprint, with the imprint's house-style and production apparatus substantively shaping the operator's working manner, and with the catalogue functioning mainly as one of several adjacent voices within the imprint's working roster. The position is distinct from the one-operator long-form catalogues the Bureau files elsewhere; Anemonengurt is, in this respect, more accurately read as a Dom Elchklang catalogue-entry-with-distinct-operator-name than as a sole-operator catalogue working at imprint-distance.
The wildcard filing reflects this reading: Anemonengurt is industrial-adjacent in working palette (the Neubauten / Test Department comparison is the consistently-produced critical reception) but operates inside the surrealist-and-collage-oriented Aachen Dom Elchklang frame that does not fit the industrial-and-noise taxonomy. The catalogue's editorial position is, in the Bureau's reading, more accurately described as Aachen-cluster industrial than as industrial proper: a working mode that combines the industrial-noise vocabulary with the HNAS-derived studio-collage editorial position, producing records that read as both industrial-tradition-adjacent and substantively distinct from any single industrial-form the taxonomy describes. The wildcard designation is the most-accurate filing the present taxonomy permits; a later revision may file Anemonengurt as a specifically Dom Elchklang sub-cluster entry rather than at the form-level.
Filed by Bureau editor · VAGO · c. the Bronze Age · last revised c. the Renaissance