CLUSTER

The remaining duo of Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius were known at the time for generating sounds instead of playing music, but what a sound it was. Harsh, atonal, abstract, mechanical, and more than a little scary: like the better German bands of that era providing the perfect sonic escape hatch from an unsavory national past. But the results were far removed from the interstellar meditations of other Krautrockers, even kindred cybernetic rebels like the embryonic TANGERINE DREAM, fellow travelers at the Zodiak Free Arts Lab in Berlin and related to Cluster through the common denominator of Conny Schnitzler.

Moebius and Roedelius weren't interested in exploring the cosmos; they were too busy dissecting their brave new electronic world from inside the machine, looking out. Even within the freewheeling musical landscape of the German counterculture this was pretty extreme stuff, shattering every convention of melody and rhythm, and daring the listener to pick up the pieces. Just when you imagine there might be a hint of some harmonic stability to grab hold of, the floor shifts again and that illusory safety net is pulled away, leaving you in exhilarating freefall once again.

My advice is to forget about the soft landing and simply go with the flow. It's not as if you have much of a choice: you won't even find a convenient parachute in the album name or track titles, which merely catalogue when it was recorded and the length of each segment.

One silver lining is that the album still sounds remarkably contemporary. Unlike other early experiments in electronic music this one hasn't aged a day in over forty years, partly because it avoids the easy clichés of the time: endless sequencer arpeggios and so forth. Later Cluster albums would follow a more user-friendly approach, but in 1971 their avant- garde edge was sharp enough to draw blood.

There's a lot of pitch alteration, effects pedals, oscillators, ring modulators and tone generators used throughout which keeps things feeling fresh. Part one is quite layed back when compared with more the more mechanical and nightmarish sounding parts two and three. The whole album sounds like a Soviet nuclear plant with a serious internal problem that no one can repair.

These are proto industrial drones that, around ten years later were all the rage with bands such as Konstruktivists, Non, Coil and SPK. I guess this is where it all began... Hamburg, January 1971.

This would make an excellent alternative soundtrack on board the 'Nostromo' in the original 'Alien' film. It's that creepy! In fact at many points you could be forgiven if you thought you were listening to Tangerine Dream's 'Alpha Centauri' or 'Zeit'. Phillips must have had a nightmare of a time trying to market this, as there's no vocals, no chance of a single and not even tune titles.

It's just a pity that Moebius' cover artwork is so poor. It's not at all in keeping with the sound of the music. However, with well written liner notes, a decent re-mastering job, in which a lot of hiss has been removed, leaves this album with a very respectable 4 stars.

This, the second Cluster album, is like an extension of the equally essential first; both have now been reissued here by Esoteric's Reactive label. The mastering is superb, and it comes with a very attractive booklet with new interviews with both members. As they explain, the music here was all improvised in a couple of nightly sessions, Moebius and Roedelius weaving electronic textures together using primitive equipment and stone age effects devices, making ordinary instruments like the home organ sound positively other-worldy. Legendary producer Conny Plank is virtually the third member and it is likely that much of the all important shifting stereo placements are his work. "In the early '70's we didn't have access to synthesisers" says Moebius "we'd use whatever was around at the time". Necessity being the mother of invention, the duo put everything they could lay their hands on to good use.

The sum total is a throbbing, exciting sound world, free of melody and yet accessible, easy to listen to and yet a million miles from ambient music. It is truly a world of its own created through echo devices, oscillators, organs, guitar, wah-wah pedals all shifting around the stereo image constantly giving the impression of vast three dimensional sound shifts.

The individual titles are largely irrelevant (indeed on their debut they didn't bother with them, only durations), the six pieces add up 50 minutes of captivating, shifting sound which constantly reinvents itself and sounds like nothing else.

The largely improvised work ( don't look for any sheet music for this one ) doesn't rock swing or groove and is devoid any melody, harmony or rhythm and doesn't approach anything that is remotely musically redeemable and seems to drone on and on directionlessly. This is what Oscar Peterson's nightmares were made of, yet many critics managed to extrapolate depth and read deep meanings into it's extreme abstractness. It's easy to percieve this audio experiment as two guys going nuts in the studio creating a bunch of strange noises and impressions but this is not the case at all once one gives the three extended untitled sections a few listens. These guys were obviously musically literate at the time this frankenstein was recorded in 1971. I don't think that below par musicians could have created a work of this calibre bearing mind that they do use conventional instruments as a sort of foundation. Both play some sort of organ as well as the aforementioned guitar and cello. The work does have certain dynamic approach and each effect is introduced unexpectedly. Cluster would expand on this formula somewhat on their second album gradually streamlining their music thereafter.

An open mind is certainly required for this sonic masterpiece. It can mean anything or it can mean nothing depending on how the listener approaches it. So, put the cat out strap yourself into the ejection seat and crank this baby to eleven and blast off to another dimensional plane.

The warped sounds and primal monotony of 'Cluster 71' are also the stuff of nightmarish space opera, so the next time you're alone late at night and obsessing about what music to listen to it might be best not to play this because it could just scare the sweet bejeebus out of you. It isn't so much a ready-roasted turkey flying into your mouth as a synthetic toxin for you to choke on.

The first track alone is like some industrial hell-world that's under the spell of Cocteau's kick, and where the mournful screaming of the Banshee echoes through the depths of timeless time to the rhythmical cla-clank of its metallic beating heart. And the remainder of this device- driven racket of an album sounds as if it's inhabited by other shapeless phantoms, all-seeing tyrants and abandoned interstellar hulks that all in all represent a very disturbing world of electronic expressionism.

'Cluster 71' is a work of pure menace and perhaps its major importance lies in its power to evoke such vivid mental images. I need to be in a certain frame of mind to listen to this album but it's possible with a little imagination to really lose myself in it without doping the jockey as well as the horse.

The album is entirely instrumental and while all pieces are pleasant and fascinating, they lack that songwriting genius that Kraftwerk was blessed with, and as a result, the songs aren't always as memorable as you might wish. Still, this album is a landmark and it clearly must have caught the attention of one Brian Eno, who would collaborate on a later Cluster album and who would absorb all of their ideas in his own work and collaborations. The Bowie Berlin period would have sounded entirely different without this band.

Historic relevance aside, I find this album very enjoyable and captivating. The fact that it reminds me of the synth and rhythm box experiments of the early post-punk bands is a plus for me. 3.5 stars for sure.

This however is one of their better releases. A creepy sounding album that has traces from (in my opinion) the superior Kluster when Conrad Schnitzler was on board.

The inappropriate album artwork doesn't get things off to the best of starts. It sounds nothing like it looks. Repetitive drones and extended electronic whines are the order of the day, all built on top of one another to create a spooky sound that would not appear on any of their subsequent recordings from the Seventies. 'Live in der Fabrik' is the lengthiest and best track taking what's best of these drones and whines and creating a very ghostly atmosphere. 'Georgel' continues in this vein and reminds me a lot of Coil's 'Time Machine's' from the late 90's. Quite experimental and a lot easier on the ear than Kluster ever were. Real haunted house stuff with ghosts appearing through solid walls to terrify you in the middle of the night.