Cluster

The duo formed by Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius stood out — within the sprawling world of kraut-rock — as one of the most extreme and least accessible ventures to emerge from that immense cauldron known as German experimental rock. Working within a scene that was largely semi-underground, they produced some of the most abrasive and inaccessible albums around, yet ones endowed with an innovative drive and a vision of the future that today seem undeniable. Within their electronic experimentation lie the seeds of the future industrial music of Throbbing Gristle, the doomed new wave of Suicide, the murky post-rock of Labradford, the most uncompromising strains of electronic music, right through to the more conciliatory pop sounds that followed ("Zuckerzeit", 1974) and the ethereal atmospheres foreshadowing future ambient landscapes ("Sowiesoso", 1976). It's no coincidence that the father of ambient music himself, Brian Eno, always named them as his mentors, even paying tribute to them with a collaborative album in 1977, "Cluster & Eno". It's probably a paradox, but all of Cluster's visionary insights would find their true creative peak in other bands, and not only within the kraut scene.

Roedelius and Moebius are among those who, even in relative anonymity, played a fundamental role in the growth and development of kosmische musik; it was they who, in a Berlin divided in two by the Wall, founded what would become the operational base of a sort of circle of artists creating a new experimental music, some of whom moved from one lineup to another, writing several pages of German rock history. In 1968 they founded the Zodiak Free Arts Lab, a club that became the crucial hub of electronic music in Europe, a strategic bridge between psychedelia and the avant-garde, drawing inspiration from a concert concept of John Cage. This important club was set up in the large back room of a theatre: just like a perfect yin and yang, one half of the room was painted white while the other was painted black, with instruments, speakers and amplifiers positioned all around. Although the venue lasted only a few months, it gave birth to numerous influential artists such as Kluster (the parents of Cluster), Agitation Free and Tangerine Dream. The latter, in particular, played there for hours on end, sometimes improvising through entire nights.

The duo's beginnings came with Kluster, initially a trio alongside musician Conrad Schnitzler, fresh from recording that monument of psychedelic improvisation that is the debut album by Tangerine Dream ("Electronic Meditation", 1970). Their two albums – "Klopfzeichen" (1970) and "Zwei-Osterei" (1971) – are primordial proto-industrial experiments with a genesis that is, at the very least, amusing: short on money to release the album, Kluster turned to funding from a Catholic church, which agreed to pay them on the curious condition of being allowed to write the lyrics. Kluster accepted, both out of sheer need for money and out of indifference to the lyrical side of things. "Klopfzeichen" moves between fragments of chords and ecclesiastical declamations; "Zwei-Osterei" (1971), drawn from the same session, is essentially a bizarre monologue by a Catholic preacher set against a backdrop of extreme, largely inaccessible avant-garde sound. Up to this point, the output of Roedelius and Moebius stands as the most extreme and uncommunicative thing krautrock ever produced; with Conrad Schnitzler gone, celebrated sound manipulator Conny Plank recruited, and the name changed to Cluster, the new trio debuted with the self-titled "Cluster" (1971), only slightly less forbidding than the first two albums released as Kluster. "Cluster" had the merit of catching the attention of the German specialist press, which included it among the year's ten best albums.

With Plank now confined to the role of producer, the band released – on the fledgling Brain label – the following "Cluster II" (1972), which marked a decisive turning point in their career; it's as if Roedelius and Moebius stopped making music for themselves and opened up to the world, choosing to engage in dialogue with it. "Cluster II" – while still remaining an extreme entry in the finest krautrock discography – opens up to the outside world, looking to the experiments of their fellow countrymen, ranging from repeated rhythms to psychedelic-cosmic sagas intertwined with the pre-apocalyptic (or post-atomic) neuroses of contemporary society; all elements that would find, or had already found, their peak respectively in Neu! (1972), "Alpha Centauri" (1971) and Zeit (1972) by Tangerine Dream, Irrlicht (1972) by Klaus Schulze, and Faust (1971).

But the new album is, above all, a great forge of pioneering ideas made available to new musicians ready to pick them up and grow them into something even bigger; and if the wider public seemed indifferent, the more discerning musicians grasped its innovative charge and drew inspiration from it. The opening six minutes of "Plas" are marked by a pulsing, obsessive electronic loop, a long hypnotic spiral that seems to evoke, more than cosmic space, the all-too-human neuroses of contemporary man. The guitar on "Im Suden", with its gloomy undertow, could be seen as a forerunner of much of Neu!'s discography, minus the obsessive drum rhythms; twelve minutes of continuous interplay between guitar, synthesizers and piano, of remarkable impact and innovation. It would be Neu! themselves who took this new intuition to even greater heights across their first three albums. "Für Die Katz" and, above all, the epic tour de force of "Live In Der Fabrik" point ahead both to future industrial scenarios and to Labradford, as well as back to the monolithic space sagas of "Irrlicht". The organ on "Georgel", stripped of any reference to time or rhythm, digs into the depths of the abyss of modern psychosis, so deeply as to create an almost unbearable tension; no less striking is the closing "Nabitte", where piano notes drag us back into claustrophobic yet thoroughly human atmospheres (fears, anxieties, frustrations). Paradoxically, it is precisely in its darkest moments that Cluster manage to be most human and evocative.

"Cluster II" is a great container of budding ideas, an instruction manual for those few musicians capable of hearing the future before it becomes the present.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

12/02/2017