ZUCKERZEIT

Today's electronic new age has part of its root in Krautrock. Once you remove the darker elements and highlight the positive ones, what remains is relaxing even if the rhythm doesn't need to be slow.

Cluster in their first "duo" version seem to act in this direction. their music is electronic. Drums are electronic as well, of course. The first two trakcs are of a genre that's closer to what the Kraftwerk did in the years immediately following. This is the pop side of this album.

With tracks like Rote Riki we are back into psychedelia. Good psychedelia, effectively. Not very challenging, based on little variations over a repetitive electronic base. SciFi sounds. Close to early Tangerine Dreams.

Those are the two principal elements that we can find in this album and I think this reflects the different ways of composing of the duo. They play together but compose alone.

The result is a good album, but the tracks are disconnected. There's not a "path", it's more like the tracks have been recorded in a random sequence. At the end we have two half albums. I would have preferred to have the "Kraftwerk-like" tracks on a side of the vinyl and the "TD-like" tracks on the other.

Looking at the single track types, Rote Riki for the psych type and Rosa for the electronic are my favourite tracks, but the average level is good throughout all the tracks.

Good krautrock stuff, maybe a bit dated but good.