Zuckerzeit

Vinyl copy finally worn out! For those who tend towards Kraftwerk, La Dusseldorf and Harmonia--a must. A side-note: 30 years of collecting and listening to German music, I gotta say that this Krautrock thing is way overblown. If you wanter Krautrock, there are about 70 items you need; the rest is cool German riffs on Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, Egg, Barrett, Deep Purple, et. al Brit psych/progsters. Just because it comes from Berlin in 1973 doesn't make it Krautrock--trust me, I have hundreds of the re-issues. Kluster/Cluster was innovative because of their sense of humor and the enormous influence they had on Brit bands of the late 70's and early 80's. So have a "Sweet Time" with this and know there would be no Ralph Records and the Residents without it.

First things first: I recently saw the instructive "Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution" DVD documentary, and in it a bunch of Germany's so-called "Krautrock" scene is discussed, including of course Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Neu!, Can, etc, but also a number of bands with whom I was less familiar, or not familiar at all. Kluster (later renamed to Cluster) is one of those bands, so I started reading up a bit on these guys, and ordered this CD."Zuckerzeit" (1974; 10 tracks, 38 min.) is somewhat of a curiosity. Band members Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius were at a crosspoint in their career, and for this album rather than the full-blown space rock one might suspect, Roedelius and Moebius each contributed 5 racks, ranging from 2 to 6 min. Moebius seems to be the pushing the band into a further experimental direction, check out "Rote Riki", by far the longest of the tracks here, and also the most abstract piece. I love it. Roedilius' pieces remind me more of the latter days of Tangerine Dream, almost new age-like. Check for example "Rosa" and "Hollywood". Not bad, but not terribly engaging or demanding either. His "Fotchi Tong" and Marzipan" tracks are much better, though.In all, this is not a bad album, but not a great one either. I will be exploring more of the Cluster albums in the near future, in particular and can't wait to see where that will lead me, but I've got "Cluster II" and the Eno-collaborations on my radar screen already.