Harmonia
Harmonia is what you get when you add one half of legendary krautrockers Neu! (Michael Rother) with the two members of Cluster. The music of Harmonia falls indeed between the electronic ambience of the latter with the more repetitive/motorik sound motives of the former. The focus is often on the electronics which sounds a bit "dated" at times, but the albums in their whole sound like nothing the three artists have put out before and is highly original even by their standards.
Both Brian Eno and David Bowie have admitted to being fans of this incarnation and some of it's influence has rubbed off on some of their recordings (Eno even went on to collaborate with Cluster as the imaginatively named Cluster & Eno). The sound is both experimental, ambient yet beautiful and pastoral. Some of it sounds quite bombastic, but the analog sounds always give these tracks an earthy feeling
I was a fan of Neu! when I heard about Harmonia. My local specialized music store in Montreal had a copy of Musik Von Harmonia (or simply Harmonia). It had the absolute lamest cover I had ever seen and the import price was quite frightening, but I finally decided to give it a listen. As soon as Watussi, the first track on the album faded into my ears, I knew I had a winner and picked up the album right away to listen to it in the privacy of my own home. I ordered their second album Deluxe from that same store, but a week later, someone brought a used copy of it and I bought it immediately (feeling bad about having ordered it in the first place, but 13$ and 29$ is a big difference!). I've never been as much of a fan of the second album as I was of the first one. To this day, it's always in my iPod, ready to be played at any given time.
Musik Von (Harmonia)Label: Polydor Records (Brain) Release: 1974 Format: CD Cat. no: POCP-2387 |
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DeluxeLabel: Polydor Records (Brain) Release: 1975 Format: CD Cat. no: POCP-2388 |
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