Michael Rother
Katzenmusik

A sky with two opposite clouds. And in the middle a clear blue with only a white line crossing and dividing it into two, yet at the same time connecting the two clouds.

It's the music of Michael Rother's cat, and perhaps that line is nothing more than a scratch in the sky of Katzenmusik, which does not admit divisions of any kind: a single title track in twelve movements, to be listened to strictly in order. Drive everyone out of your little room and let yourself be taken up high by Michael. Let's begin.

After just a few (classy) touches with his guitar, he brings you inside that album cover, but then the sharp synthesizers break in, cyclic like his music, light as a cloud that a well-defined drum rhythm supports. It calms, then more guitar touches serve as a ramp for the final explosion, a synthetic, yet real orchestra. The guitar reappears after a 30-second breath, this time drier and more essential, it seems to never take off in its tranquility, interrupted only by small parentheses of oriental riffs that open the mind and relax it before yet another excursion through the rainbow of synthesizers, which here too make you wait a bit, and are a little shy, leaving us for the most part with that motorik well-grounded, and that guitar that seems to be brushed by the wind, and just as you're preparing for the final explosion, the whole thing is erased by a single note, the only memory of the symphony, like a rainbow witnessing a storm. But then the clouds seem to gather again, and here come manipulated tapes, memories of a personal experience of Michael's, artificial yet well-suited to a natural and simple drum, and it's like watching the flow of raindrops on our passenger window as they are carried away by the wind, so this harmony fades away, giving place again to the rainbow, to joy, to dew. And you remain hypnotized by a motif so enchanting in its infinite repetition. But unfortunately, nothing lasts forever, and neither does this album escape this law. In fact, it comes very close.

Because Katzenmusik in its 40 minutes seems an atemporal symphony. You could swear you've heard those notes before in some other track of the album. And while you strive to understand, perhaps in one of the album's pause moments, you find yourself humming those one-two-three notes that get inside you, and you arrive at a conclusion. This is celestial music that can never tire you, but instead, only amaze you upon the umpteenth listen, because a beautiful clear sky, even if seen billions of times, never loses its charm and always puts you in a good mood. So this is a very clear sky, with only a white line crossing it: well, that is Katzenmusik, that line, as if we were crossing it balanced on tiptoe, so sharp in dividing and scratching the sky, yet pleasant in its consistency and serenity. The end.