Showing posts with label cluster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cluster. Show all posts

Sunday 12 July 2020

Log #198 - Alva Shallow Wasser

Eddy Bamyasi

Cluster - Grosses Wasser
Cluster - Zuckerzeit
Loscil - Lifelike
Alva Noto - Unieqav
Alva Noto - Transform
Porya Hatami - Shallow



Interesting minimalist art graces Cluster's Grosses Wasser album cover. Is it a diving board or an aeroplane wing? The title translates as Big Water, suggesting it could equally show the ocean under an aeroplane wing, or a swimming pool under a diving board. 

Alva Noto is a new artist to me. Real name Carsten Nicolai hails from Germany. His music is very electronic, literally, being some of the most mechanical I have heard - think of some of the most random bleeps and clicks in early Kraftwerk. He is perhaps most famous now for his scoring of the Revenant film with regular collaborator Ryuichi Sakamoto. Of these two albums Unieqav is the most recent (2018) and the most rhythmic. Transform (2001) also has its cohesive moments but is more experimental. 

Read more here>> and here>>.





Sunday 15 March 2020

Log #181 - A Lift To The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads

Eddy Bamyasi

Why have I not heard this stupendous album before? Loving the The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads album from Lift To Experience and I've only played the first half. Fronted up by Josh T Pearson I was vaguely aware of his original band but had never heard this, their only album. 


This is the story of three Texas boys busy mindin' their own business when the Angel of the Lord appeared unto them.

The double album (I've only just realised there were 2 CDs in the carboard sleeve!) was released by the Texas-based indie trio in 2001. Mixed by Cocteau Twins Simon Raymonde and Robin Guthrie the album is a marvellous mess of noise casting Texas as the "promised land" in a "second coming of Jesus" concept. Having seen Josh T Pearson live solo where he projected a hardly disguised "messiah" persona I'm not surprised. 


Josh "Bear" Browning's, Josh T Pearson and Andy "the Boy" Young

Indeed Pearson's solo album Last Of The Country Gentlemen is certainly unusual. When I first heard it I couldn't decide if it was the worst or best record I'd ever heard. But The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads is a whole new level. 

Readers' Note - there are two versions of the album, the 2001 original and a "remixed as God intended" version released in 2017 (my version is the 2001 release).


Cluster - '71
Cluster - II
Tangerine Dream - Zeit
Fennesz - Endless Summer
Brian Eno - Ambient 4 On Land
Lift To Experience - The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads (CD 1)

The Lift To Experience offering is opposite to the other records in the player this week where we have 5 ambient favourites - although maybe not completely opposite. Where last week's Eno album Apollo is no doubt lovely musically, his Ambient 4 On Land is much more experimental in terms of soundscapes and odd noises. Then the Cluster albums, certainly the debut '71, is the industrial sound of an electrical power plant. The Fennesz album Endless Summer has its moments of beauty but these are submerged in plenty of grating clicks and fuzzes, and the strings heavy Zeit comes from the discordant school of classical mininalism.



Sunday 8 March 2020

Log #180 - Adding The Mix To The Kraftwerk Mix

Eddy Bamyasi


Kraftwerk - The Mix
Brian Eno - Apollo
Midlake - The Trials Of Van Occupanther
Cluster - Zuckerzeit
JJ Cale - Naturally
Cocteau Twins - Four-Calendar Cafe

The Mix was a double album of Kraftwerk remixes and re-recordings of previous material released in 1991. The band had recently returned to live touring after a 9 year hiatus and The Mix almost served as a sort of live album with the band using updated digital arrangements of their original recordings.

Predictably the album received a mixed reception especially from the established fans (rather like Can's Sacrilege). Personally I think it's a great album which refreshes some of their best old tracks and stands proud in its own right within the Kraftwerk discography. With significant reworkings it's much more than a Greatest Hits album. The track selection is excellent and I love the mathematical perfection, when I'm in the mood:

Tracklist:
1 The Robots
2 Computerlove
3 Pocket Calculator
4 Dentaku
5 Autobahn
6 Radioactivity
7 Trans Europe Express
8 Abzug
9 Metal On Metal
10 Homecomputer
11 Music Non Stop

Worth getting as a primer if starting out on Kraftwerk? Yeah, I reckon, why not.

Sunday 22 September 2019

Log #156 - Whole Lotta Led Zep

Eddy Bamyasi


Mouse On Mars Vulvaland
 Emeralds Does It Look Like I'm Here
Cluster Zuckerzeit
Cluster II
John Legend Once Again
Led Zeppelin II

Just the one survivor from last week's log #155: John Legend's growing album Once Again. Growing in this context meaning it's a grower on me.

The early chop fell on Beirut to whom I had promised to give more time but it only confirmed initial impressions: I don't like the singing and don't really like the instrumentation either to be honest (has a ukulele ever made it in rock?); so that's probably it for me and Beirut.


Feed the flowers, cut the weeds. 

I don't really get Wilco either. I do love Americana and Alt-Country but don't appreciate Wilco that much. Again, maybe it's the singing? Or maybe the persistent glum mood. As well as Yankee Hotel Whatsit I have their equally revered Being There double album which will get a spin one of these days.

Once Again Again From John Legend

As for last week's soul boys Anthony Hamilton, and John Legend in particular, I really started to enjoy their albums. The John Legend has some very catchy tunes and even some moments of raw Hendrix like guitar (although Legend's main instrument is the piano as on this lovely tune below). 


Let's go to the park
I wanna kiss you underneath the stars
Maybe we'll go too far
We just don't care

What is PDA (the name of the above track) anyway? It took me a while to figure. In this context it's not "pathological demand avoidance" or a "personal delivery assistant" but a "public display of affection".

Who is the guitarist elsewhere on the album - I assume it's not Legend (real name Stephens)? I can't find out (and not worth trying to read CD inserts is it?).

For this sort of super smooth mega produced soul music the mood and timing has to be right and the underlying songs have to be good enough to carry it off and they are on the whole in Once Again.

Cluster Leap

On to the new entries. Well not really new. As recent readers will have noticed I've been on a major Cluster trip for a month or two now and two of their albums return for further assessment. So this Sunday we have Cluster no. II and the follow up Zuckerzeit. Both excellent, both different. 

Whole Lotta Led Zep 

Why Led Zeppelin now? Well, you know, it's just great stuff and sometimes you just need to rock out. A more specific reason is I heard Whole Lotta Love on the car radio during the week and wow, what a track. I remember hearing it for the first time (even just the curtailed Top Of The Pops version) and it was everything I wanted in rock music. I purchased the live album The Song Remains The Same as it had a 15 minute version of Whole Lotta Love on it, but actually it disappointed. You really did need Led Zep II

So my first experiences of Led Zeppelin and Whole Lotta Love would have been around 1980. By then they were pretty much defunct (calling it a sad day after John Bonham died in September 1980, just two months before John Lennon) (Lennon was 40, Bonham just 32). 

I can't remember the order I purchased the Led Zep albums but I guess it would have been something like The Song Remains The Same, II, IV, III, Houses Of The Holy, Physical Graffiti, I, Presence, In Through The Out Door, Coda. Pretty exciting stuff even 10 years after the event but imagine hearing Whole Lotta Love and II in October 1969 on its original release. It must have blown a lot of people's minds.

Sometimes I realise I have 2 of the same albums in my collection. This is the case with Physical Graffiti, not clever...



The cover for Led Zep II was designed by David Juniper, an art school colleague of Jimmy Page's. He took an old German WW1 photo of the Red Baron's Flying Division and superimposed faces of the band and various members of their entourage including manager Peter Grant. The cover also allegedly includes Neil Armstrong and Miles Davis but this is debatable as the faces are heavily disguised. 


Mouse On Mars and The Emeralds

The Mouse On Mars album Vulvaland, their debut, is excellent powerful electronica with heavy beats and bass, and sprinklings of lush ambience too. It's scarcely believable this is music from 1994. The Emeralds album has all the elements I love but somehow doesn't quite float my boat (just yet) in the same way.








Sunday 8 September 2019

Log #154 - Eno's Forst Years

Eddy Bamyasi

A big fan of both Cluster and Harmonia (the latter a short lived "supergroup" being the Cluster duo of Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius plus Neu! guitarist Michael Rother) Brian Eno collaborated with both groups in the mid 70s, co-recording 3 albums. Tracks and Traces was actually the first recorded in 1976 (just before Eno began work on Bowie's Berlin albums) but oddly not released until 1997. Cluster & Eno followed in 1977 and a third After The Heat (not reviewed here) came in 1978.

When Brian Eno first alighted upon the Harmonia grouping he proclaimed that they were the “the most important band in the world”. By then they had released their debut Musik Von Harmonia in 1974, and the follow up Deluxe in 1975 - both amazing original records combining the drive and motorik beats of Neu! with Kraftwerk electronics. Krautrock would never reach such peaks again and in fact Harmonia didn't try to either: these two outstanding records becoming the only studio albums to bear the Harmonia name alone.

Eno sought the musicians out at their studio hideaway in the rural town of Forst (on the German/Polish border 70 miles east of Berlin) and together they recorded sessions that would eventually make up Tracks and Traces which was first credited to Harmonia '76 and then as Harmonia and Eno '76. 

It remains odd that the compilation of these recordings would not see the light of day for 20 years as the eventual record makes a very strong collection with a lot more depth than the more celebrated Cluster & Eno that followed. It has what you could call a commercial side and an experimental ambient side which has as a centrepiece a 15 minute Sometimes In Autumn, a wonderful evocative track similar to the extended drones on Eno's later Ambient 1 album or Aphex Twin's SAWII.

The beautiful album opener Welcome showcases the added guitar present in the Harmonia version of the group from Michael Rother. The track would have been at home on Eno's classic pedal steel infused Apollo album. 

Atmosphere has those lovely electronically treated hi-hats that inform so many Harmonia albums. It's almost Kraftwerkian but much gentler. 

Vamos Companeros is where I really first hear the Eno influence - it's not one of his most inspired contributions reminiscent of some of his throwaway trifles of more recent years. 

Lurnberg Heath has vocals (or more or less spoken word, from Eno):

Don't get lost on Luneberg Heath

'Tis a real place, south of Hamburg.

An excellent record that now stands belatedly alone and proud in the Harmonia discography.

The following year the group, minus Rother, reconvened to produce Cluster & Eno (the one with the famous microphone above a bush at dusk cover). Can bassist Holger Czukay also guested on the album. 

Cluster & Eno is a lovely albeit slight record. I'd say it sounds to me like one part Cluster, two parts Eno. The tracks are mostly simple, usually composed of a theme of just three or four repeated notes, although most have hints of added strangeness which enhance the interest. 

So for instance opening track Ho Remono is largely a gentle pulsing keyboard piece typical of Cluster and Harmonia but becomes increasingly more distorted as it progresses. Wermut introduces soft chord pads and Selange is lightweight fayre. One is the longest and most experimental track including odd sitar sounds. 

My favourite track is Die Bunge which approaches the best of Cluster with fantastic otherworldly sounds, a heartbeat pulse, and a piano round that reminds me of Penguin Cafe Orchestra.

Eno went on his way after After The Heat but his endorsement and association with Berlin and its music, and particularly Cluster and Harmonia brought heightened attention and recognition to the groups and the whole Krautrock movement.


Cluster I / 71
Cluster  II
Cluster Grosses Wasser
Cluster Cluster & Eno
Harmonia Musik Von Harmonia
Harmonia Tracks and Traces

Cluster's Eno free Grosses Wasser came in 1979. Produced by ex-Tangerine Dream member Peter Baumann this album also ended a long association with engineer Conny Plank who had pretty much achieved group membership status since working with the duo since their Kluster debut in 1969.

The record featured a wider variety of styles including some wildly avant-garde material particularly on the extended side long title track which veers off on "Tago Mago Side 3 and 4 like" tangents. The rest of the album features shorter more beatey tracks quite distant from the ambient rural beauty of 1976's classic Sowiesoso album.

It's intriguing how Harmonia and Cluster are practically the same in personnel but do have tangibly different sounds. Personally I think the Harmonia albums are slightly ahead but then they only had two proper albums over which to maintain the standard whereas Cluster had a long and varied career (even being Kluster and Qluster during some of it!) not to mention all the Moebius and Roedelius solo albums and collaborations.

Where to start with this lot? Zuckerzeit, Deluxe, Sowiesoso, and Musik Von Harmonia are must-haves. To that I'd now add Tracks and Traces. Furthermore I'm sure I will discover more delights (albeit different ones) in the Cluster I and II albums but am yet to fully digest them.





Sunday 1 September 2019

Log #153 - Large Clusters

Eddy Bamyasi

Cluster I / 71
Cluster  II
Cluster Grosses Wasser
Cluster Cluster and Eno
Beatles Magical Mystery Tour
Beatles Revolver

Grosses Wasser (translated as "large water") was Cluster's 7th (not counting the two albums recorded as Kluster) album released in 1979. Produced by Tangerine Dream's Peter Baumann the music takes a significant turn towards a Tangerine Dream sound with some sequencer loops and percussive pulses.

A long time before that duo Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius debuted with Cluster I (later rebranded as Cluster 71) and a year later Cluster II, two classic albums of early experimental electronics. Then came the more famous and accessible Zuckerzeit and Sowiesoso albums before two collaborations with Brian Eno that foretold his "Ambient" series, the first Cluster and Eno featured here with it's marvellous cover (mind you, the Grossses Wasser cover is pretty cool too - is it a diving board or an aeroplane?).







Thursday 22 August 2019

Kosmische innovators’ influential debut - Cluster I / 71 reviewed

Eddy Bamyasi

Monolithic particle generators emit insect chat to the skies, while adjacent cloud territories lie pregnant with oscillating womb throb. Welcome to the sound of Berlin 1971: transcendental proto-techno conjured by Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Conny Plank (who’d only be on board for this album). Moebius and Roedelius had previously fussed up a discordant industrial clatter with Conrad Schnitzler in Kluster, but now they were seeking softer cosmic atmospheres, though clearly not at the expense of their indefatigable sense of the surreal. Indeed, several times during these three expansive electronic sprawls it’s as if the Mahars – a race of over-sized flying lizard telepaths from 1976 sci-fi film At the Earth’s Core – were encouraged to conduct their conversations at the heart of the swirling synthetic nimbus, employing a disconcerting range of high-pitched wails and yodelled yelp. But amid the madness were sown seeds of future creation.

At one stage towards the end of the second track (all are untitled) Wolfgang Voigt appears to have stumbled into the studio, underpinning the throng of pitch-shifted sine waves and attendant engine roar with an amplified and propulsive heart pulse. Only this beat was struck a quarter of a century before the first Gas long-player was released.

Of course, this stuff has also blown the minds of Brian Eno, John Foxx and members of Coil. But now a new global network of synth-powered cosmonauts has risen to prominence. From Emeralds and Oneohtrix Point Never to Mountains, Astral Social Club and the Ghost Box imprint, each owes a colossal debt to Cluster and this album in particular. Far from providing mere background ambience, Cluster 71’s (the original release dispensed with the numerals) rolling waves of hypnosis are continually exposed to perforation by disorienting surges of energy, imparting wake-up calls to comfort.

New age elevator music? No chance. There’s too much going on here. There’s too much experimentation, too much expression. That’s why, after more than 30 years, Cluster and this wondrous album continue to enchant and inspire.

Review by Spencer Grady courtesy BBC at http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/xfnv/

Sunday 21 July 2019

Log #147 - Ambient Excursions Across Suffolk, Sowiesoso and America

Eddy Bamyasi


Brian Eno Ambient 1 
Brian Eno Ambient 4
Magma MDK
Magma Köhntarkösz
KLF Chillout
Cluster Sowiesoso


After the excesses of the monumental Magma last week we wind it back a bit this outing at Bamyasi studios with some gentle ambience in the form of two from the four original Eno ambient series: 

Ambient 1 / Music For Airports (1978)
Ambient 2 / The Plateaux of Mirror (1980) with Harold Budd
Ambient 3 / Day of Radiance (1981) with Laraaji
Ambient 4 / On Land (1982)

Music for Airports although strictly not the first ambient record, or even Eno's first ambient record, is often viewed as such having been the first album specifically labelled as "ambient". It's the record Eno created literally after sitting at an airport and meditating on a background sound that could be...
As ignorable as it is interesting.

The four tracks merge imperceptibly using short piano loops (some piano provided by Robert Wyatt) and ethereal vocals. The album as a whole was designed to be continually looped and it works well that way. It's the sort of background music you can have on all day and just catch snippets of as you pass by, occasionally recognising repeating themes particularly in the piano. Alternatively it's a record you can totally immerse yourself in through concentrated headphone listening.

A friend hearing the piano melodies told me it reminded her of Star Wars. (?)

3 outings and 4 years later and Eno drops Ambient 4 On Land.  Considered by many to be the best in the series the album is a classic of the ambient genre spawning many imitators. There is much more movement and depth to this album than Ambient 1. The atmosphere is dark and brooding with sound effect embellishments based on Eno's experiences exploring the countryside, marshes and coast of Suffolk. 

From the Suffolk marshes to the Deep South with one of the albums that On Land spawned. KLF's Chillout takes us on a cross state train and for me the album is really the younger and slightly more unruly brother of Ambient 4. The albums seem to sit well together (a third to make up a nice trilogy of atmospheric ambience would be the Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld).

Finally we visit Sowiesoso with Cluster. I don't know what Sowiesoso is but it sounds like a country or state in Southern Africa. 

Actually what it means is "anyway" or "one way or another". I guess the equivalent to the modern term "whatever". The music fits this description: it's very easy going containing thick melodic synth lines with gentle pulses and atmospheric background effects. It simply bubbles along like a mountain stream engendering a very chilled out reverie. 

These muted descriptions do make it seem like the music may be lightweight and not particularly original but on the contrary the Cluster of Sowiesoso is instantly recognisable and I can't immediately think of another album in my collection that sounds like this one.
Synthetic birds chirrup, bells chime and life is easy and good.
Euan Andrews in Quietus

#Lovely

A new term I heard while researching this entry: Musique Concrete. According to Wiki:

A type of music composition that utilizes recorded sounds as raw material. Sounds are often modified through the application of audio effects and tape manipulation techniques, and may be assembled into a form of montage. It can feature sounds derived from recordings of musical instruments, the human voice, and the natural environment as well as those created using synthesizers and computer-based digital signal processing. Compositions in this idiom are not restricted to the normal musical rules of melody, harmony, rhythm, metre, and so on. It exploits acousmatic listening, meaning sound identities can often be intentionally obscured or appear unconnected to their source cause.

So very similar to ambient but with more "found" sounds not necessarily arranged in conventional musical forms, so why not avant garde? I'm assuming enveloping artists like James Joyce and Keith Berry, and pretty much a description of On Land too. The Frenchness of the term, literally translated as "real music", was first adopted in the 40s via French composer Pierre Schaeffer (1910 - 95).



The question turns around; "what am I hearing?... What exactly are you hearing" - in the sense that one asks the subject to describe not the external references of the sound it perceives but the perception itself.

 

Sunday 7 April 2019

Log #132 - A Mammoth Perfection

Eddy Bamyasi


Soft Hair Soft Hair  
Sly And The Family Stone Dynamite! The Collection
Popol Vuh In Den Garten Pharaos
Father John Misty God's Favourite Customer
Cluster Zuckerzeit
Various Neu Decade


It's a sharing week in the 6 CD changer this week with an equal showing from Krautrock and Soul Funk (plus a considerable helping of the brilliant Father John Misty which has trumped both camps to be almost certainly the most played CD in the slots).

In the blue Krautrock corner we have more from the very interesting Cluster, a Mojo magazine cover disc and a classic early album from German experimental group Popol Vuh. In the red Soul Funk corner we have a quick return for the sleazy disco of Soft Hair and an overdue one from Sly And The Family Stone (I've also been enjoying another classic album new to me - this one from Isaac Hayes - but that's not here today and will be saved for another time). 

As I said in last week's post I thought I was pretty well acquainted with Krautrock but the Neu Decade compilation disc (touted as "modern European music from 1970-79) from Mojo would, again, indicate otherwise: There's only one track I'm familiar with on here and about ten of the actual bands I've not heard before at all;




Lots to absorb here but I was immediately intrigued by the Tangerine Dream track Ultima Thule Part 1 which sounds nothing like the Tangerine Dream I know. The track was recorded in 1971 around the time of their second album Alpha Centauri and released as a single. It's a heavy rock instrumental with drums and guitar and soaring keyboards. Rather like early Pink Floyd:




I don't have a copy of the band's first two albums but would be very surprised if they sounded anything like this.

We also have some solo works from the Cluster/Neu!/Harmonia personnel featured last week, and a piece by Hawkwind's keyboardist Tim Blake.

There's a nice quote from David Bowie's producer Tony Visconti on the CD cover:

The atmosphere really stimulated David. He loved it there. I think he spent less than two years in Berlin but it really gave him a new perspective and a new outlook on what to do. 

It certainly did, as Low, Heroes and Lodger testify.

"A Mammoth Perfection" - In Den Garten Pharaos so described by Julian Cope.

Popol Vuh were a German electronic avant-garde band founded by pianist and keyboardist Florian Fricke in 1969. In Den Gärten Pharaos (In The Garden Of Pharao) is Popol Vuh’s second album.

The first album Affenstunde (1970) is regarded as one of the earliest "space music" works, featuring the then brand new sounds of the Moog synthesizer together with ethnic percussion. German music guru Peter Cat tells me that Fricke was actually the very first musician to own a Moog in Germany. This continued to be used on In Den Gärten Pharaos, before Fricke largely abandoned electronic instruments, selling his Moog (to Klaus Schulze!), in favour of piano-led compositions from 1972's Hosianna Mantra forward. Check out this beautiful minimalist piano solo from Fricke for instance:




Eat your heart out Philip Glass.

Popol Vuh influenced many other European bands with their uniquely soft but elaborate instrumentation, which took inspiration from the music of Tibet, Africa, and South America (the original "Popol Vuh" was a sacred Mayan text - I love learning new stuff (and not just music) through this blog). With spiritual and introspective music sometimes described as "ethereal", they created dense immersive soundscapes through psychedelic walls of sound, and are regarded as precursors of contemporary world music, as well as of new age and ambient.

Popol Vuh went on to contribute soundtracks to the films of Werner Herzog, including Aguirre, the Wrath of GodNosferatu, Fitzcarraldo, Cobra Verde, Heart of Glass and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, in which Fricke appeared.

In Den Gärten Pharaos consists of two side long compositions with the later reissue also adding two bonus tracks. The opening title track begins with water sounds and a gentle drone which are joined by tabla drumming and jazzy electric piano which even reminds me a little of the sound on John Martyn's Solid Air album. This beautiful restful track fades away as it begins, on washes of water.

The church organ and choir drenched second track Vuh is described as "a near religious experience" by Peter Cat. Beginning on a swell of gongs and crashing cymbals a triumphant cathedral of sound is built on three monumental organ chords.

It's truly fascinating to hear these revolutionary sounds at the dawn of the synthesizer.
Eddy Bamyasi 

The bonus tracks are two 10 minute pieces entitled Kha-White Structures (parts 1 and 2). These are a little more experimental. Part 1 has a very revolutionary off key synth loop which sounds just like some tracks from Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works II. Part 2 is a wavering drone with ghostly background most like a Stockhausen piece.

In Den Garten Pharaos is definitely in my top 3 Krautrock albums along with Tago Mago and Zeit.
Raphael Loubert 

All in all a fascinating record of ambience much closer to Tangerine Dream and Brian Eno than the "traditional" rock-based Krautrock of contemporaries Faust, Can and Neu!.


Florian Fricke, 1944 -2001





Sunday 31 March 2019

Log #131 - A Cluster Of Faustian Harmonia

Eddy Bamyasi

I've considered myself a relatively knowledgeable fan of Krautrock for many years - ever since I stumbled across my first Can album in a second hand store in Chichester one school lunch hour nearly 40 years ago (it was the spanner in the sky one which was how it was known, or aka simply Can, or Inner Space) (it was an interesting record pretty unlike anything else I had in my collection at the time (I was unaccustomed to the monotonic singing, the fluttery jazzy drumming and the in-your-face synths) but my life didn't really change until I heard Tago Mago a few months later from whence I was launched into Krautrock space: My rocket ship taking me to planets Neu! Grobschnitt, Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Nektar, and Klaus Schulze).

The caveat being of course that the much maligned (including by the artists themselves) term Krautrock has varied and wide meanings. For me I think it covers a particular genre of rock music that was coming out of Germany in the early to mid 70s. This is music characterised by repetitive "motorik" beats - it certainly wasn't the blues based rock or progrock prevalent in the UK and US at the time although there was a small degree of overlap. It wasn't all the German rock music either - I don't think a band like Scorpions is a Krautrock band for instance.

It is also arguable whether the synth bands like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream were really Krautrock. Their music is more often associated with the terms Kosmische (cosmic) or Berlin School (although the latter term didn't gain much traction until Eno and Bowie, heavily influenced by German electronic music, rocked up in that city in the mid 70s).

The origins of the more generic term Krautrock are disputed but seem to derive from use by some music journalists and radio DJ John Peel was an early adopter in the early 70s. German band Faust even recorded a track entitled Krautrock as early as 1974 but would later, like most of their contemporaries, distance themselves from the term explaining that "when the English people started talking about Krautrock, we thought they were just taking the piss".  Nevertheless the term gained more credence especially as the bands became retrospectively influential and revered reaching a critical mass through Julian Cope's legendary 1995 Krautrocksampler book. Cope would explain though that the term was merely a subjective British word based on the way the music was received in the UK rather than on the actual West German music scene out of which it grew.

The point of the lengthy preamble is new (to me) Krautrock music is still coming to my ears for the first time pretty much proving I was not as knowledgeable or well-listened (well-listened should be a word too like well-read) on the subject as I had thought. This week I've been enjoying a diet of Faust, Cluster, Popul Vuh and Harmonia. All bands I've not studied before. In coming weeks I'll delve deeper into Krautrock outer space and hope to take trips to Planets Ash Ra Tempel, Guru Guru, and Amon Duul.

This week's selection in the magazine centres on a family of overlapping artists - personnel was shared throughout the bands Neu!, Harmonia and Cluster (also called Kluster and Qluster at different times).

The Neu!/Harmonia/Cluster cast list:

Klaus Dinger - Kraftwerk, Neu!, La Dusseldorf
Michael Rother - Kraftwerk, Neu!, Cluster
Hans-Joachim Roedelius - Kluster, Cluster, Harmonia, Qluster
Dieter Moebius - Cluster, Harmonia
Conny Plank - producer for Can, Harmonia, Cluster, Kraftwerk, Scorpions
Brian Eno - Cluster, Harmonia

The world's most important rock band.

Did Brian Eno really say that about the short lived collaboration of Cluster and Neu! musicians otherwise known as Harmonia? It is indeed a crying shame the band were so short lived and produced only 3 albums as they sound excellent. In fact one of the best Krautrock bands I've come across.

Their first two albums Music Von Harmonia and Deluxe are both superb - containing a hybrid mix of beats and ambience / a sort of half way house between the electro synth styles of Tangerine Dream say, and the rock of Neu!. The synth pads are thick and bassy like the sound on Kraftwerk's Autobahn. The rhythms are hypnotic and ravey. Watussi and Walky Talky are orgasmic tunes. The third album Tracks and Traces featured Eno (forming a bona fide "supergroup") and had an unaccountably delayed release of some 20 years eventually seeing the light of day in 1997. This one is a little more ambient.

Not surprisingly Cluster are similarly excellent. Across a much longer lifespan (13 albums) they started off experimental, before moving more into the mainstream of motorik beat led Krautrock, and then ambience. Zuckerzeit and Sowiesoso both from the mid 70s tend to be the go-to albums for the group.

Last in the Krautrock series this week is Faust and their classic IV album. I like the cover which with its empty music staves takes minimalism to an extreme. I get the impression Faust didn't take their art too seriously. The album is much more psychedelic heavy rock (even punky) than most Krautrock. The distorted guitars and synth effects remind me very much of Hawkwind. There's whimsy with an amateur sounding The Sad Skinhead:

Apart from all the bad times you gave me
I always felt good with you
Going places, smashing faces
what else could we do?

... and the Gong/Zappa like Giggy Smile with its jaunty singing and saxophone breaks. This track sounds very familiar. It is either very similar to something else or I've heard this track before never knowing it was Faust.

The best tracks are more traditionally Krautrock like Jennifer which for the first half is Ege Bamyasi style rumbling bass and distant vocals before it descends into weirdness (in this case massive noise and saloon piano). Lauft... is another song of two halves. The first half is 60s Love-like acoustic guitar, and the second half consists of a slow organ solo. Final track maintains the 60s feel with a Syd Barrett like song interspersed with rude blasts of distorted organ and guitar.

Not much time for the other albums this week (but note the Father John Misty is brilliant - a cross between Elton John and John Grant and certainly one to watch) but for the record they are:


Band Of Horses Infinite Arms  
Harmonia Deluxe
Faust IV
Father John Misty God's Favourite Customer
Cluster Zuckerzeit
Pink Floyd Atom Heart Mother








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