MUSIK VON HARMONIA

Musik Von Harmonia consists of the members of Cluster joining Neu!'s Michael Rother to explore a fusion of their musical approaches. The result is an album which displays both the driving, proto-punk tendencies of Neu! and Cluster's always exceptional production values and synth mastery. To be honest, the two musical approaches never quite meet in the middle - tracks tend to be either Neu!-ish guitar-led punk-ish affairs or Cluster-type ambient works, though to be fair it's hard to see how the two approaches could be completely reconciled. But if you like both Neu! and Cluster, then it's worth tracking down Harmonia just to get more of the same - especially on the Neu! side of things, since they released precious little material over their career. That said, it is worth noting that "more of the same" means just that - Harmonia don't really expand the boundaries of Krautrock in the same way that their constituent members did in their main groups.