In 1986 Pyrolator moved into a sparsely furnished apartment in Berlin. This is where he wrote the tracks for the album. "I was fascinated by dream research at the time, even visiting seminars on the subject. I wanted to capture dreams in music -- not esoterically, but in a scientific, analytic manner." Pyrolator thus set his alarm to ring at the same time every night in his Berlin pad, the somnolent sonic-explorer-turned-dream-chaser noting down what he remembered. Once he had collected enough material, he headed back to the studio in Düsseldorf. Traumland is the Pyrolator work which comes closest to a band album. Saxophones, trumpets, drums, yes, even real guitars! Jörg Kemp and the New York singer Susan Brackeens took over vocal duties. How did that transpire? Pyrolator: "I had produced a few songs for Susan at the Ata Tak studio, we got on well and I liked her voice. The songs were classic pop tracks, more or less, so it made perfect sense to invite Susan back for Traumland. As a rule, my pop songs usually went to my band project, Der Plan. However, working with Susan motivated me to give them a try on a Pyrolator record. Jörg had worked with me on almost all of my solo albums. We were good friends, and we also released records by his band, Lost Gringos, on Ata Tak." If the front and back covers of the album (surrealism on one side, a band picture on the other) are diametrically opposed, then the music on Traumland is no less diverse: spheric instrumental tracks confront jazzy pop songs, reminiscent of English pop à la Scritti Politti or even ABC. "The critics liked Traumland and good reviews appeared almost everywhere, but the public reception was somewhat less euphoric. This was not the music they had expected to hear. People wanted something more experimental from me," Pyrolator recollects. Musikexpress magazine proclaimed it "springtime for consciousness," which sums it up nicely. Includes four bonus tracks.