Cluster - Cluster 2

A scary, wonky, bleak distancing from Krautrock

Having helped birth ‘kosmische musik’ in 1971, Hans Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, alongside producer Conny Plank, went into Hamburg’s Star-Studio in January 1972 to build on their innovative new style. Wishing to define themselves outside the developing fashion of Krautrock, they aimed to combine primitive electronic devices with stringed instruments and keyboards. The ideal was improvisation with emotion, but without the intense side-long extemporisations of Can’s Tago Mago, nor the hippie indulgences of Amon D��l.

With tape loops and a new gizmo called an Echolette, Cluster aimed to shorten their form of ‘instant composition’ to create electronic tone-poems of the heart. Opener Plas sounds like it’s emerging from a dense German forest of electrical equipment. For The Cats is only three minutes long, but has such a twirly-dial FM radio flavour that it could have come from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Plank acceded to including a lengthy live cut, Live In The Fabrik, that shows Cluster could create chillingly dark music if they wanted. This quirky set ends with Nabitte, a kind of scary, wonky piano piece. Though it�would have huge impact outside Germany, particularly with the likes of Pink Floyd and Eno, its overall bleakness makes it one for fans only.

Lilith | LR 124

Reviewed by Mark Prendergast
<< Back to Issue 338