Hans-Joachim Roedelius, born in Berlin in 1934, starred as a child in a number of UFA films. He fled Berlin in 1943, moving from one place to another before being conscripted into the National People's Army (NVA) of the German Democratic Republic. Again he took flight, only to end up in prison. He trained as a male nurse, then as a hospice orderly. Having relocated from East to West Berlin, he went on to meander through Europe (as a thatcher, detective, masseur, bartender, cleaning toilets), before finally becoming a freelance artist, with avant-garde music his prime focus. Co-founder of Berlin's first free art studio, the Zodiak Arts Lab (1967), he was also a founder member of various groups, namely Human Being, Kluster, Cluster, Harmonia, Tempus Transit and Lunzprojekt.

He played on around 160 record productions either as a soloist or with band projects. Some 1600 musical works bear his name, plus a similar number of texts (poetry, prose etc.).

Music for dance theatre productions, oratorios, radio plays, symphonies. Cultural award winner in his home town of Baden, near Vienna, stipendiary of Vienna's Alban Berg Foundation. Honorary President of the Moving Culture Festival in Tirana (Albania), Honorary member of the Happy Valley Foundation in Ojai (California/USA), artistic director of the More Ohr Less symposum and festival at Lunz am See, Austria. Collaborations with artists all over the world, including Brian Eno, Holger Czukay, Susumu Hirasawa, Tim Story, Dwight Ashley, Dieter Moebius, David Bickley, Jurij Novoselic, Stanislaw Michalak, Fatos Qerimaj, Fabio Capanni, Nicola Alesini, Michael Rother, Stefan Schneider, Alquimia, Yuko Matsuzaki, Clementine Gasser, Bernadette Reiter, Florian Tanzer, Georg Taylor, Neil Mac'Coll, Felix Jay and Lloyd Cole