Michael Rother
Sterntaler

Talking about Michael Rother's solo albums (Neu!) is truly difficult. Not because the subject matter is hard or complex and unreachable except for a few. No, quite the opposite. The point is that each album (at least those from the '70s) is a small masterpiece, a gem of beauty that strikes you with its facets that soothe you, with those harmonic lines and masterfully used synthesizers. Everything is perfect, from "Flammente Herzen" to "Fernwarme". Beautiful albums taken individually, but if considered as a whole, or simply listened to one after the other, well, you realize that no matter how magnificent the various tracks may be, they all seem to be born from the same idea. Now manipulated, now enriched with electronic effects, now stripped to the bone in the Neu! style, it really seems like a continuous rehash of a brilliant insight. Let's take for example this "Sterntaler" which is the second work as a solo artist: a grid of guitar strokes opens the album. It's "Sonnenrad", a piece more Rotherian than Rother himself, it takes us into this work more directly compared to the previous one, and perhaps not less. It moves through the melancholic and timeless "Blauer Regen" with that feeling of notes-played-in-the-void somewhat like Flammende Herzen. Also noteworthy is the romantic "Fontana Di Luna", haunting and enchanting, certainly among the best pieces of the German solo artist and the beautiful title track. The album (1993 reissue) closes with two tracks that add nothing and take nothing away from the original work.

How to judge this album?

There are two choices:
Excellent album, because indeed on listening it is a wonderful album;
Yet another iteration from someone who understands how the world works and tries to repeat the same winning formula;

Listen and give yourself an answer, maybe you'll even find a third choice. Personally, I found it.
I love this album and the previous one, and I love Rother and his guitar and objectively, listening to the first four works, I admit that the theme doesn't change and remains more or less the same. But I don't know how to explain it to you in words. It's a bit like love, you can't explain why you do certain things, maybe judged by you in hindsight as ridiculous, but you do them. Because you're in love and there's no room for rationality in love. When I listen to this album, or all four one after the other, I am always enchanted and get lost in my world while I try to construct, scribbling, a castle in the pink air, not even a thought crosses my mind that there might be plagiarism or something. When I listen to this album, I listen with my heart, ignited by the flames of someone who, with a couple of guitar and synth strokes, can show you the aurora borealis from the moon.