Cluster is the fountainhead from which entire genres and styles of “head” music sprang. Converging in 1969 Berlin, Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, and Conrad Schnitzler—or Ensemble Kluster, as they were originally known—made music that went very far out, even when compared to their contemporaries in Kraftwerk (then called Organisation) and Tangerine Dream (Schnitzler played on TG’s 1970 debut Electronic Meditation). During the 1970s, Cluster, as led by Roedelius and Moebius, engaged in a series of fruitful collaborations with some of the most innovative musicians in their bailiwick. By the time the group finally wound down for good in 2010, it had pioneered multiple forms of experimental music—from noise to drone, electronic pop to ambient field recordings, maximalist sound eruptions to barely-there atmospheric productions.
Much of Cluster’s catalog is available on Bandcamp. Below, we take a journey into its sprawling inventory of recordings.
Kluster
Klopfzeichen (1969)
Released in the closing days of 1969, Klopfzeichen is both primitive and future-facing and still sounds revolutionary nearly six decades later. The original trio came together at Zodiak Free Arts Club, aka Zodiak Club, a short-lived experimental performance space co-founded by Schnitzler and Roedelius. When the pair met Moebius, it was kismet, as both he and Schnitzler had studied under the influential artist and theoretician Joseph Beuys. With Roedelius, they applied their studies towards making music that transcended form itself, utilizing standard instruments like guitar, organ, drums, and cello along with audio test equipment such as signal generators, precision oscillators, and distortion analyzers. Filtering these sounds through reel-to-reel tape machines and tape echo, Kluster performances were extended expeditions into a psychedelic space that also functioned as a meditation on the wreckage of the post-war landscape. For Kluster, the differences between the inner and outer worlds were porous, and their music sought to obliterate any remaining barriers.
In line with their music, Kluster thrived on thinking outside the box, even finding ways to use local institutions to their advantage. Flipping through a newspaper, Schnitzler spotted an advertisement for Schwann AMS Studio, a record label that specialized in classical and church recordings, but was interested in so-called “post-tonal” new music. To satisfy their remit, Schwann required that an LP pressing include at least one side with a religious text. Thus, the first track on Klopfzeichen features Schnitzler’s wife, the actress Christa Runge, declaring the words of German poets and theologians over slashes of organ, swells of feedback, detuned guitar, radio interference, and ominous clangs and thuds. Klopfzeichen was engineered by a former student of Karlheinz Stockhausen named Konrad “Conny” Plank—a key sonic architect of krautrock and kosmische— leading to a mutually beneficial relationship that would last for decades and produce a run of classic recordings. Outside of a few university studios around the world (Columbia-Princeton, Dutch, Poland, GRM, Illinois) and the UK radical improv unit AMM, no one was making the kind of music on Klopfzeichen (English translation: “knock signal”).
The speed and force with which Kluster grasped the dynamics of noise and the mechanics of sound design make it difficult to separate them from the founding of experimental music as we know it today (or at least several branches of it). Stockhausen may have pioneered many of the concepts here, but Kluster brought them out of the auditorium and concert halls and into the “beat” club, where shaggy-haired rockers and psychedelic drug enthusiasts could experience them in all of their volume-enhanced glory. Pick a noise group—Throbbing Gristle, Einstürzende Neubauten, Black Dice, Wolf Eyes—and trace the elements back to Klopfzeichen and its follow-up Zwei-Osterei, which was also recorded by Plank and released by Schwann, which pressed 300 copies of each record, making originals of some of the rarest krautrock LPs. Eruption chronicles the original trio’s final show in 1971, after which Conrad Schnitzler left the group to embark upon a prolific solo career of mind-bending synthesizer-based electronic music.
Cluster
Cluster 71 (1971)
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
Following Schnitzler’s departure, Moebius and Roedelius left the urban environs of a divided Berlin for the verdant pastures of Lower Saxony. Settling in the village of Forst, they built a studio with Plank, who joined the group as a player and live-in engineer. They also anglicized the name by replacing the “K” with a “C,” thereby distinguishing the new version of the group from the original iteration with Schnitzler. The first Cluster album was originally self-titled—“71,” the year it was released, was added when it was first reissued in 1980. Made of three untitled tracks, Cluster 71 isn’t radically different from the group’s earlier works, retaining the volcanic nature of the trio’s sonic explorations, but with just enough air let in to render the proceedings less claustrophobic than the Schnitzler years. “15:43” segues from sharp, repeating pulses and hints of distortion into a yawning chasm dripping with icicle-sharp tones and whooshes of barely controlled feedback. The sound is simultaneously infinite and boxed-in, a prisoner of its own far-reaching imagination. On the side-long “21:32,” feedback manipulation takes on a starring role as the sound of electricity itself is modulated into voice-like cries of panic and wonder. The soundfield is dominated by the resonances of Cluster’s devices pushed through PAs and amplifiers into the mixing desk, which is then sent to outboard gear, which is sent back into the desk, coalescing into a raw expression of beauty and terror that anticipates generations of noise artists yet to come. Even though Plank left the group as a touring member, he continued to record Cluster, including the similarly abstract follow-up II.
Harmonia
Deluxe (1975)
By the time of 1974’s Zuckerzeit (“Hollywood”), Roedelius and Moebius had befriended guitarist Michael Rother, who was an early member of Kraftwerk before splitting off with drummer Klaus Dinger to form Neu! In 1973, Rother moved out to Cluster’s residence in Forst to start a new project called Harmonia. As evidenced by their debut, Musik von Harmonia, the band was the rare “supergroup” whose recordings can stand with the best of the constituents’ other material. On 1975’s Deluxe, the confluence of Cluster’s increasingly meditative music with Rother’s guitar-forward, motorik-focused rhythmic backbone blended so well that the reasoning behind the group’s name is immediately apparent. Leading off the album, “Deluxe (Immer weiter)” is simply one of the most blissful songs in the entire krautrock canon. As a bass drum thumps beneath a jazzy electric piano, Rother unleashes a phased guitar line that crackles above the river-song flowing beneath it. As the group chants the title like a choir of farmhands working away in the fields, an organ riff airlifted in from some future new wave radio hit worms its way into the ear and acts as a reprise that pulls you by the hand, eager to show you something new and beautiful.
Considering the group lived near one of Germany’s longest waterways, the Weser River, the endlessly flowing arrangements on Deluxe sound appropriate and impossible to separate from its surroundings. Getting in on the bucolic vibe was Mani Neumeier, drummer/leader of berserk power trio Guru Guru. But featured on tracks like “Walky Talky,” Neumeier is on his best behavior, leading and commenting on the relentless forward motion with perfectly placed tom work and the occasional cymbal flourish; a true group effort in conjuring a mood that is both contemplative and strangely rocking. On “Monza (Rauf und runter),” Harmonia is in full Neu! mode, kicking out a chugging psychedelic rocker powered by Neumeier’s battery. Synthesizer and keyboard-dominated tracks like “Notre Dame” and “Gollum” hew closer to Zuckerzeit’s sonic template, but the addition of Neumeier’s drums gives them a forward thrust absent from the halcyon haze of that album. Although Moebius and Roedelius’s partnership with Rother may have lasted only a few years (during which Rother went off to make another classic, Neu! 75), they did tremendous work together, including touring with some frequency, as heard on Live 1974.
Cluster
Sowiesoso (1976)
Compact Disc (CD), Vinyl LP
After flirting with rock music on Deluxe, with 1976’s Sowiesoso, Moebius and Roedelius retreated back to the arcadian idyll that surrounded their home at Forst. Opening with the pastoral title track (in English, “Anyway”), this is firmly Cluster 2.0. A rhythm box percolates gently but consistently while Roedelius and Moebius unfurl wispy, euphoric melodies as if they have set up an easel and are painting the twilight descending on a clear spring night. “Halwa” incorporates Arabic scales and an occasional strike of metal, while “Dem Wanderer” revolves around a wobbling, detuned guitar string. For the first time in Cluster’s catalog, on Sowiesoso, an unadorned piano plays a much bigger role, anchoring ethereal songs such as “Zum Wohl,” on which the duo coaxes bird-like chirps and whistles from their synths. It’s remarkable how Cluster uses new technology to create what sounds like very old music, playing out like weather patterns passing overhead and across the soil on which its players stand. With a bass drum thumping away in the shadows, “In Ewigkeit” closes out the album with a wistful melancholy, but the crashing piano chords hint at something disquieting behind the veil of evening.
Cluster & Eno (1977)
Of his many formidable skills, during the 1970s, Brian Eno perfected the art of being a gadfly. From playing in Roxy Music to recording with luminaries like Robert Fripp, John Cale, Nico, Robert Wyatt, and Kevin Ayers, Eno seemed to be perpetually game, and he was entirely enamored with Cluster and Harmonia. In 1976, before the band dissolved, Eno arrived at Forst to record with Harmonia. For two decades, the tapes were thought lost, until they were rediscovered and released in 1997 as Tracks and Traces. Departing Forst, Eno made his way to Berlin to produce David Bowie’s Low and “Heroes”, two albums whose repercussions would be felt in pop music for years to come. After that, Eno met again with Moebius and Roedelius at Conny Plank’s studio for another recording session.
Compared to Soweisoso and Tracks and Traces, the pieces here come off more as sketches, but they are no less beguiling for their off-the-cuff nature. Conventionally beautiful tracks like “Ho Renomo” and “Mit Simaen” feature prominent piano, while “Selange” adds pounding drums for a flash of anxiety on an otherwise placid album. The cover of Cluster & Eno frames a microphone on a stand in a field, pointed upward and surrounded by brush; the sustained guitar notes and buzzing insects on “Steinsame” paint a vernal tableau. With its gently swooping string-synth passages and unhurried electric piano, “Wehrmut” creates a template for New Age music that will find its way onto thousands of cassettes in the coming decade. “One” starts out like a raga and ends in convivial chaos, the hum of life turned up to 10.
Grosses Wasser (1979)
Compact Disc (CD), Vinyl LP
The first half of 1979’s Grosses Wasser (“Big Water”) consists of interesting experiments and vignettes. There’s “Avanti,” which is reminiscent of the material on Cluster & Eno, and “Isodea,” a sticky-sweet confection that sounds like a malfunctioning music box, but then there’s “Prothese,” which is undoubtedly influenced by the emerging Neue Deutsche Welle scene.
On the other hand, the 19-minute title track is a stunner and one of the group’s most ambitious pieces of music in years. Beginning with sparse piano and curlicues of synth, it takes a turn when mulchy clicks and swipes of resonant metal get sent through the Space Echo and spring reverb tank. An environment blooms before the listener, a setting with its own sounds, smells, flora, and fauna, before drums enter the mix and engage in a call-and-response with church bells and odd, truncated bursts of a wide range of synthesizer sounds. With its shifting moods and percussion-heavy sections, “Grosses Wasser” is a clear precursor to the work of ‘90s post-rock groups like Tortoise and Gastr del Sol.
Curiosum (1981)
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
1981’s Curiosum is even more forward-thinking than its predecessor—“Proantipro” could be one of the first dub techno tracks on record, while “Seltsame Gegend” anticipates the small gestures and quirky oscillations of glitchy early 2000s minimal techno. “Ufer” refers back to their unclassifiable, amorphous work from the early ‘70s. Alas, Curiosum proved to be the final album for this incarnation of Cluster, as Roedelius spent the ‘80s making solo albums, while Moebius collaborated with longtime friends.
Apropos Cluster (1990)
After nearly a decade apart, Moebius and Roedelius came back together for 1990’s Apropos Cluster, a typically varied affair that kicks off with the cartoonish “Grenzgänger,” which sounds like the duo is stumbling around the biergarten on stilts while clutching a sampler. “Gespiegelt” is a more focused take on what they were doing with Eno, adding a keening melodica, glassy guitar harmonies, and gated drums for emphasis. Much like Grosses Wasser, Apropos Cluster is dominated by its 22-minute title track. As if in a gaseous galactic cloud, undulating electronics pulse beneath ricocheting percussion and layers of chorale vocals processed through a vocoder. When the beat finally drops, the future comes into view—even more than their previous work, here is Cluster’s claim to inventing the style that would come to be known as “clicks and cuts.” At the dawn of the 1990s, they were outlining the sound of a decade to come. Of course, at this point only half the track has played, and it just keeps getting stranger as comically elongated metallic tones segue into an underwater lounge act featuring pinging sonar sounds and outrageous FM synth vamping. “Apropos Cluster”’s final section moves from zero-gravity drum-machine claps to grinding, low-bitrate beats that could turn up on an Aphex Twin album five years later without anyone the wiser.
USA Live (2015)
Vinyl LP
In 1996, Cluster finally made it over to the United States for a tour (they also went to Japan). In performances in New York, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Arizona, and Oregon, the duo flexes each of its many muscles, indulging in nocturnal ambient shadowplay, menacing pseudo-industrial, pulsating Fourth World techno, New Age-y light jazz, and calming inner-space travel. After these shows, Moebius and Roedelius parted ways again before reuniting in 2007 for tour dates in Europe and the US. In 2009, they put out their final studio album, Qua. In July 2015, Dieter Moebius passed away. As of this writing, Hans-Joachim Roedelius lives on, 91 years young.
