Cluster
Sowiesoso

Do you listen to "Confusion Is Next", "Discipline" by Throbbing Gristle, Nurse With Wound, and the first album by Suicide? You must be aware, not of an ultra-famous band like Kraftwerk, but of a duo not too celebrated. The Germans Cluster, coming from an initial experience (Kluster), accompanied by the wise producer Conny Plank in their first work. This, and episodes like "Plas" and "Im Süden" in the second, are fundamental for the styles of the bands just mentioned. Bringing forth such proto ambient-industrial atmospheres, dissonances, stellar drones, and dilations in the roaring Germany of the 1970s' protest is thrilling.

Having digested the lesson of Pink Floyd and the early genius steps of Canterbury, the German kraut tried to rehearse, improve, extreme, and abstract that design even further. In America, they were making huge jams like the Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers at Fillmore, Ten Years After of "Undead" and "Do "What You Like" by the English Blind Faith. In Italy and England, they loved mellotrons, organs like Wakeman, and the flute. In Germany, they put their hands on the black and white keys. This panorama is exceptionally chameleon-like yet equally effective and efficient. Setting aside the pictorial abstractions of the Kluster project, the aim was more reflective, devoted to auditory and visual contemplation. The goal wasn't to create a reflection on the mysteries of the psyche or the cosmos, but rather to evoke a neurotic effect centered on the horror of the subconscious. Perdition, alienation, and abyss. This is the gigantic and immense message of artistic Germany.

The desire to suppress the darkness of Nazism encouraged a dedicated effort in the political, cultural, and subversive life of young Germans, intellectuals, and feminists. There, too, there were kidnappings and murders hidden in car trunks. So, different from the celestial mysticism of Popol Vuh and without getting lost in the minimalism of an "Atem" or lazily reporting "scary tales" in the style of Amon Duul or Magma, here come Roedelius and Moebius.

After the colossal electronic wall of the first two works, they arrive in rural Forst and establish a recording studio. The Harmonia project is born with Roether of Neu. They make two interesting albums and then abandon the idea. "Zuckerzeit" is the work that precedes "Sowiesoso" and announces the start of more plastic, more velvety, and less grim sounds ("Hollywood"). Roether, who was already hopping with "Fur Immer", certainly influences with his "motorik" structures, so we find a rhythm, a stable sequence, and no longer digressions. Innocence, childhood is retraced, leaving Berlin, and the spirit relaxes. The sounds will also be useful for Ultravox, Cars, and OMD, especially the prominence of those soft synths over a mechanized, "Kraftwerkized" rhythmic carpet.

"Sowiesoso" was recorded in 1976 in two days with producer Conny Plank, a guru for Gottsching, Devo, kraut in general, and even present in "Profumo" by Gianna Nannini. The musical design is milder, spring-like, thanks also to the first contacts with Eno (already at that time coming from the ambient of "Discreet Music", "Evening Star", and "The Heavenly Music Corporation"). Not surprisingly, the following year, they made two albums with him, still pleasant today. But "Sowiesoso" remains the most enterprising work of the second phase, thanks to the update, versatility, and the duo's typical multifaceted imprint. Let the record play, as they say "in a loop", you enter an impalpable picture, of sunbeams and light mist, precisely what comes to mind if you handle "Before And After Science" or "Music For Airports". These are the connotations that illuminate the bolero of the title track and "Zumk Whol", with the rest of the tracks retracing the abstraction of Eno's ballad "Taking Tiger Mountain".

The crazy Julian Cope of Teardrop Explodes includes it among the top fifty kraut albums, but he is not necessary: you need peace and a landscape to meditate on, but if we are in the "mood" of the early period, perhaps a room and a ghost of the mind.