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Cluster

Cluster were the duo of Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius. From the early seventies on, they have become one of the major players in the whole german krautrock scene and especially the cosmische sub-genre, where the music was almost exclusively made with the use of synthesizers. Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream are two other big names in the same vein to give you an example. During their earliest years when the were actually known as Kluster and had third member Conrad Schnitzler among them, their sound was much noisier and aggressive, similar to the industrial music scene which was burgeoning back then. Once Schnitzler split up with the band and went on to do his own solo work, Moebius and Roedelius went on as the duo and created the works the are most renowned for. The first few albums still had a bit of the noise thing going, but it quickly made way to repetitive loops and synth beats. These newer albums were pleasant to hear but remained quite experimental in their minimalism; very little would change during a song and only a few new elements would be added to create the sense of some sort of progression. The group made a huge impression on like-minded Brian Eno who went on to do a couple of collaborations with them under the lackluster name Cluster & Eno

I started listening to Cluster early on when I started delving into the whole krautrock scene. I was reading plenty about the movement on the net and trying to find some books and sure enough, Cluster was a name oft repeated so I checked them out in a Montreal store. I brought to CDs to the listening stand to give them a listen, I first tried Zuckerzeit but felt a bit disappointed: the music felt quite stale and dated and there were just too few changes to keep me focused on it, however when I listened to Cluster II, my mind changed immediately, it was exactly what I was expecting from the whole spaced-out cosmische music, long drones and reverberating electronic bleeps and buzzes. I went ahead and bought both immediately. It took a while, but Zuckerzeit finally grew on me, regardless of it's stale "sugary" vibe.

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