Cluster
Cluster are one of the most seminal and renowned Krautrock bands, forming in the art furnace of Berlin in the late 60s. Surrounded by innovative and avant-garde talent, Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Conrad Schnitzler formed the improv group Kluster in 1969. First playing at The Zodiac Club, their performances were radical pieces consisting of feedback, violin, piano and cello as well as kitchen sinks, alarm clocks and other found objects. Through the 1970s Cluster, as they were then known, provided some of the first glimpses into electronic and ambient music and released a string of classic mid-70s albums on the pioneering Krautrock label, Brain Records. Through collaborations with Brian Eno and Michael Rother of NEU!, solo careers and even a revived Kluster lineup, the band have continued to innovate and experiment throughout.
Cluster and Brian Eno
Kluster’s first releases were realised through an unusual union – a church organist interested in new music put out an advert and Kluster found themselves sponsored by the church and able to enter the studio in 1969. Two albums were released by church music label Schwann, on condition of the addition of religious readings on the album! Schnitzler recalled years later with unease: "If you don't understand the German [religious] words, it sounds better. If you know what it means, you'll find it terrible." The music, however, was far from hymnal – a bleak, industrial soundscape signposting the future likes of Throbbing Gristle. Producer Conrad Plank became integral to the band’s sound, painstakingly (for the time) treating the raw recordings Cluster produced with electronic effects. The two albums released on Schwann, ‘Klopfzeichen’ and ‘Zwei-Osterei’, prefigure elements of industrial, space rock and electronic, with the third Kluster album ‘Eruption’, a privately-pressed record of a live event, being their last with Conrad Schnitzler and using the name Kluster.
Moebius and Roedelius continued working with Conrad Plank under the name Cluster. At the time, the German avant-garde scene was being mined by major labels and Cluster found themselves being released by Philips. And so the debut album, named ‘Cluster’ (1971), was delivered to a presumably mystified major label. As ‘outside’ as outsider music gets, the albums’ three tracks (15:33, 7:38 and 21:17, named by their lengths) only seemed to refine some of ideas Kluster work was reaching towards. Alien sounds and traditional instrumentation treated through effects, delays and tape loops into unrecognisable, otherworldly and hypnotic rhythms, hundreds of our so-called ‘modern’ genres, sub-genres and sub sub-genres of music can be traced right back to this strange and astonishing release.
Finding a spiritual home on Brain Records, their second release, ‘Cluster II’ (1972), is a more ambient affair. Containing shorter tracks and their first hints of melodic concession, albeit as experiments in repetition, the album brought a sort of structure to the band’s experimentation. As bands such as Tangerine Dream, NEU! and Can continued to innovate alongside Cluster, this sound became known as Kosmische, defined by spacey, electronic repetition, and became a cornerstone of the wider Krautrock term.
Cluster had returned to a core duo of Moebius and Roedelius for ‘Cluster II’, but in 1973 teamed up with NEU! founder Michael Rother and recorded together at their own studio. Released under the Harmonia name, the first fruits of these collaborative recordings were put out on Brain entitled ‘Musik Von Harmonia’ (1974). Though it retained the feel of the ‘Cluster II’ kosmiche vibe, NEU!’s Motornik style clearly had an influence on the direction the band were to take next.
‘Zuckerzeit’ (1974) was recorded as a duo while Rother returned to NEU! to record the ‘NEU! ‘75’ album, Cluster’s influence showing on the more ambient first side of that album. Cluster seem to have taken just as much from those sessions as Rother, as ‘Zuckerzeit’ is a different, altogether more programmed and syncopated album. A very early example of pure electronic pop, the album remains uplifting, joyful and even exhilarating in places. ‘Zuckerzeit’ can translate as ‘Sugar Era’, and leaving the space rock behind was probably helped by the addition of the drum machine that helped to pin down the rhythms and melodies.
Entering their most fertile period, more Harmonia releases followed: ‘Live 1974’ and ‘Deluxe Harmonia’ (1975). Their rural retreat was also a perfect stopover for musicians of the time, and Brian Eno took part in the sessions that were only released in 1997 but recorded in September 1976 under the group name Harmonia 76. ‘Tracks And Traces’, as the album was titled, proved the surprisingly equal collaborative nature of the Harmonia recordings was no fluke - Eno fits seamlessly and individually into the fold as the collision of ambience, space and proto-punk progresses. It’s a special recording; one that was never intended for commercial release but a huge pleasure all the same.
Again, as with Rother, Eno’s musical outlook seems to rub off on the next release. ‘Sowiesoso’ (1976) was their gentlest collection to date, lulling and textured, changes coming almost unnoticed amid the organic, otherworldly construction of sounds. Eno and Cluster reunited for another series of recordings, made with Conrad Black as producer and released in 1977 as ‘Cluster & Eno’. This pushed their dreamlike state further, as spaces open up in the tracks and the electronic becomes romantic. It was clear following ‘After The Heat’ (1978), which was credited to Eno/Moebius/Roedelius rather than Cluster & Eno, that the trio and their producer were in a similar creative place and creating extraordinary sounds together. ‘After The Heat’ is more varied, ambitious and striving than its predecessor, with the music dropping into pop, electronica, and even dub and funk as well as the measured dreaminess. A wildly futurist album even by the standards of all involved.
This purple patch, the Zuckerzeit-to-After The Heat years that brought international attention and respect, culminated in ‘Grosses Wasser’, an album that moves from the Motornik-like ‘Zuckerzeit’ feel, into the ambient textures of the ‘Sowiesoso’ and Eno recordings, then ends on a long and unpredictable updating of the Kluster avant-garde experience. A near-perfect culmination of a decade in which Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius built the foundations for electronic, ambient, space rock and a myriad of musical touchstones inbetween.
The influence and invention of these productive years continued, as their restless experimentism led to only one more Cluster album, 1980’s ‘Curiosum’, before solo and collaborative projects meant Cluster did not record or play live until 1989. Three studio albums have followed - 1991’s ‘Apropos Cluster’, ‘One Hour’ from 1995 and, fourteen years later, last year’s ‘Qua’ release. Countless live albums and videos have been officially and semi-officially distributed, however, as the reformed band gained a reputation as continuous forward-thinkers, sounding as futuristic now as in 1970.
Recent UK performances have been especially groundbreaking, with a live collaboration alongside experimental mentalists Chrome Hoof, and a one-off show with Tortoise. It’s going to be a fantastic and unforgettable return for Cluster at Offset 2010.
