Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Uncut MAY 2016 - by Tom Pinnock

CLUSTER: 1971-1981

Kosmische masters' first decade collected in full.

While Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius' catalogue of work with Michael Rother in Harmonia was packaged in last year's 5-LP Complete Works box, the duo's efforts as the untethered, improvisational Cluster are a little more extensive. Ignoring their early, noisy incarnation Kluster, or Roedelius' more recent Qluster, 1971-1981 instead concentrates solely on the eight albums Moebius and Roedelius made in their most productive decade. The records seem to exist in pairs - Cluster 71 and 1972's Cluster II are freeform and moody, with Roedelius' organ melodies submerged under Moebius' industrial noise. The twelve phased minutes of the latter's Im Süden signpost 1973's Zuckerzeit, their most accessible offering, and 1976's more ambient Sowiesoso. The following year's Cluster & Eno and After The Heat saw Suffolk's biggest Cluster fan contributing vocals, synths and Afrobeat rhythms that predict his and David Byrne's My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts; while, closing the set, the overlooked Grosses Wasser (1979) and Curiosum (1981) move from the epic (the side-long Grosses Wasser) to the wonky (Curiosum's eerie Helle Melange). Though disparate, it's some legacy.

EXTRAS: Booklet, plus two previously unreleased twenty-minute live excerpts: 1972's is churning and mechanical, 1977's spacier and more melodic.