Martian shoe factory

Why isn't this something more people are talking about? Perhaps I just wasn't listening, but the first studio album in 14 years from krautlords & premium collaborators - not just with Eno but, in a couple of Sundays' time, the de-hibernating Tortoise too - Cluster is a landmark that merits a bit of a fuss. I feel fanboy breathlessness coming on...

What's more, Qua sounds both as expert as you might expect with 40 years' pioneering experience behind it & way more engaged than conceivable after all this time: from the clanging, noodling So Ney & clicky Na Ernel to the lugubrious Xanesra, Cluster's textured, loping playfulness is present & correct. Oh, & a creaky door gets played too....

"After a 14-year stretch of releasing only live albums, the duo of Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius — more succinctly known as Cluster — has emerged from Tim Story’s Ohio studio with another Cluster classic, Qua.

“It’s like having a cup of coffee and a donut in the middle of a Martian shoe factory,” says Story of his first experience producing a Cluster session. “Moebi and Achim always have the incredible knack of carving a bit of warmth and humanity out of the most unlikely elements. On Qua, there's a surprisingly melodic solo that Moe performed on our squeaky bathroom door, and a virtuoso performance ‘playing’ the feedback from the unplugged end of a guitar cable. Meanwhile, Ach plays a bass line on our old orange Farfisa organ — and naturally centers his riff around the one note that's broken.”

The squeaky-door solo is one of many mysterious sounds on the 17-track Qua that Cluster and Story have sewn together to make seamless, artful music out of what others hear as noise.

Story muses: “It’s what makes Cluster absolutely unique — taking the debris of life, and the sounds most other people would ‘tune out’, and turning them into supremely odd, but engagingly human poetry. A happy marriage of Dada and romance.”

That happy marriage (albeit with its on-again, off-again moments [see the glaring omission from Moebius' links - LMYE]) has continued for nearly 40 years — so it would be a natural to assume that the music resulting from Cluster’s return to the studio would have been something of a nostalgia trip. But at an age when other musicians are making bank on old ideas, Cluster is making music that is in every way new.

“When we first starting talking about making this record, I imagined a 20th-century version of Sowiesoso or Zuckerzeit,” recalls Story, “abandoning for now the long, freeform improvisations that had been a staple of Cluster’s recent live performances, and revisiting the short idiosyncratic miniatures that we would be able to achieve in a studio setting. But even I wouldn’t have guessed that a total of 17 great pieces would result — each with it’s own inner logic and personality, and all working within the framework of the whole.”

Even more remarkably, Qua’s 17 tracks aren’t just audio novelties — they have a richness of texture, tone and character unexpected in the electronic music genre. Perhaps the most surprising thing about Cluster’s sound-as-sandbox approach to music — and why they’ve inspired so many other influential musicians — is that they explore inventive and expressive potentials in electronic music seldom realized by others.

Story concludes: “With the humbling honor of being the first Cluster ‘producer’ in several decades, I felt my main duty was to give Ach and Moebi as many good options as possible, then get out of the way, and record their process as transparently as I could. Hopefully, Qua captures the richness and humor and the warmth that made the recording sessions so much fun for all of us."

Below, a taste via an LMYE-'curated' 'hack' (meaning I glued some samples together & changed their running order from the album's...).

Cluster > Qua-lude [LMYE hack] (from Qua, Nepenthe)

Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.

"I didn't want the music to remind of the normal"

Before Cluster, there was Kluster. Before Kluster, & ever since, Conrad Schnitzler. All three of these over-lapping Teutonic pioneers have exceptional albums on Important that document their ground-breaking wrestles with electronic cold & warm, noise & sweetness - all the way back to 1971 & up to 2007 (when Cluster made what must have been a triumphant & was certainly an unrelenting return to Berlin after an absence of nearly 40 years...).

Completists will share LMYE's sad train-spotting excitement that Important will expand this canon further this year. A tweet from @imprec yesterday announces a first full CD release of Cluster's 1980 Vienna performance with Joshi Farnbauer.

Neither sad nor completist, though, to delight in the throbbing, restless imaginativeness that connects Kluster & Cluster across a generation. Compare the first parts of the Cluster & Schnitzler 'hacks': the same spaciousness, the same primal bass grounding & electronica lacing...

Kluster > Live Extracts [LMYE hack] (from Admira & Vulcano, both Important)

"I founded the music group Kluster after my exit 1969 from the group GERÄUSCHE (Zodiak with A.Roedelius and Boris Schak).Between 1969 to 1972 I worked with different friends,with TD among others.With them I tried to perform the music of my imagination .

Finally Klaus Freudigmann and Wolfgang Seidel remained at the work continuously over the years. In addition there were several actions with A.Roedelius and D.Möbius where the LPs KLUSTER Klopfzeichen,Osterei and Eruption were made. Instruments, amplifyer and effects I gave D.Moebius because he had had no own equipment.
I didn't want the music to remind of the normal. My criterias were not folk music, not rock music, not pop songs and not dance music. The idea for "Cluster" later "Kluster" (I wanted to avoid americanisms) is not only a name for a group but a form of music.
I had amplifier,instruments ,contact mikes and effects, that could used by the others,too.Klaus had tape machines and microphones.In addition he constructed instruments and electronical sound generators,which made the most undescribable sounds. Wolfgang had everything connected with drum and base and in addition amplifier and effects.
Klaus had rooms where we could work out our music performances.The tapes "Electric Meditation" with TD were made in one of that spaces.Most of the performances happened with friends who took part in the actions;
therefore Conrad,Klaus,Wolfgang and friends.
A special date for the creation of the single tapes couldn`t be find out,therefore the date of the creation- years 1969-1973. After that there were only sporadical actions with KLUSTER,no money for place to play, only cold winter.

-- Conrad Schnitzer"

Cluster > Live Extracts [LMYE hack] (from Berlin 2007, Important)

Conrad Schnitzler > Trigger Trilogy Extracts [LMYE hack] (from Trigger Trilogy, Important)

"Trigger Trilogy consists of three discs each selected from hundreds of hours of Schnitzler's private recordings. Each represents a one of the few unique approaches that Schnitzler takes to recording, each uniquely identified and defined by Schnitzler. Within each of these recordings one can hear how Schnitzler influenced a generation of artists not only in Germany but the world around and how he's brought those sounds into the modern day. It's also apparent in these recordings that Schnitzler is thoughtful and enlightened, a total pioneer floating freely in a world of sound.

Trigger One consists of what Schnitzler calls his Solo Voices or Solo Electronics. This particular recording happens to be rhythmically based electronic work. Recognizing that in traditional music the melodic line is subordinate to the ensemble leaving it no true impression of it's own Schnitzler has liberated the solo voice in his own music and given it it's own vocation as noise, tone and sound. By superimposing several voices or forming a sound environment by mixing Schnitzler has created new dimensions, worlds of sound where the individual voice is no longer subservient to synchronization or the conductor's baton. The results are sound combinations which adhere to no logic.
”The strength of the individual voice lies in its freedom from vis-a-vis any sound.” Conrad Schnitzler

Trigger Two is what Schnitzler refers to as Free Concert Mix Solos:

“From solo to mix, from melodic line to ensemble. Accumulation of voices,
note clusters which are not opposed to one other but are equal and
parallel in a free play of energy. The mix of solo voices produces
concentrations of notes and noises, tangles, compressions, sound
constellations, sound catastrophes, acoustic phenomena's.
The individuality of each voice is absorbed into the chaos of the
overall sound, is held there and blurred. Musical developments emerge
from the atmosphere of the individual voices of the ensemble and its
variations. Sound sequences spill forth, revealing tight and loose webs
of notes, changes in tempo, varying expressions of volume and dynamics
and shifts in the direction of the sound pattern. A sound chaos which
appears to change automatically becomes perceptible. the indeterminate
starting order for the solo voices create an open unfinished work,
containing a wealth of episodes with sound sequences, environmental
associations, stylistic devices from other worlds and interplay's of
nature and technology.” Conrad Schnitzler

Trigger Three, the final disc in the Trigger Trilogy, is a Con-Cert. This is a tradition that Schnitzler has been working in for quite some time. Originally using cassettes and now using compact discs Schnitzler creates live mixes of multiple recordings. The sounds are intentionally designed, shaped, constructed and composed in specific relation to one another.

“The articulation of sound in an era where new technology allows for the
creation of an unlimited number of new sounds calls for new recording
techniques. These are offered by tape, CD or computer hard disks.
In the past I used conventional cassettes to create my concerts, but now
the sounds are recorded on CD and can be used in the concerts thanks to
their enhanced quality.

The individual tracks have fixed starting points which can be adjusted
by a number of seconds and thus produce different results. The volume of
the individual tracks can be adapted to the acoustics of the location
and the listening experience will vary for each location as a
consequence.” Conrad Schnitzler

Art from http://www.conrad-schnitzler.de/; photo from http://fancymoon.com/con_s/

Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.

Ondulation

Clearly, Moebius is a legend & Lifetime Achievement Award-winner - for his work in Cluster & Harmonium, his collaborations with Eno & an epic solo career that's still going strong (he & Roedelius were touring as Cluster just this autumn, I'm mortified to discover from his site...).

Anyway, see a good overview of the great man's output at All Music Guide & check out the satisfyingly throbbing, echoey, spacey Ondulation from 1999's Blotch (buy here).