Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK
spacer

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Uncut OCTOBER 2009 - by Louis Pattison

HARMONIA / ENO / CLUSTER

1976 may be stamped in rock's history books as the year punk swept the UK, but it found Brian Eno on a very different course. One year before, Eno's 1975 album Discreet Music, a serene synthesizer piece inspired by a period spent bedridden, had demonstrated his commitment to what would soon be known as ambient. Now, Eno was bound for a studio in Forst, rural West Germany, at the invitation of who he had referred to as "the world's most important rock band", Harmonia.

The joint project of Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Mobius of Berlin's Cluster and Neu! guitarist Michael Rother. Harmonia's two albums to date, Music Von Harmonia (1974) and Deluxe (1975) were among the best Krautrock had to offer, gentler than Can or Faust, but with their shimmering keyboards and mechanical rhythms, every bit as compelling. That the fruits of the first session, collected as Harmonia 76's Tracks And Traces was not released until 1997 casts a little doubt on its quality. But while feeling somewhat sketch-like - this is evidently the sound of an improvisatory trio finding their common ground - there are fine moments here, from the languid synthesizer bubbles of Welcome to the gaping black hole kosmiche of Sometimes In Autumn.

Rother soon split from harmonia to go solo, but Eno would reconvene with Roedelius and Moebius at producer Conny Plank's studio in 1977. Joined by Can's Holger Czukay and avant-garde composer Asmus Tietchens, the three-week session yielded not one, but two albums. The first, Cluster & Eno, is crisper, with arrangements in tighter focus: Wehrmut wrings astonishing emotion out of minor-key synths. One is a mutant sitar raga that vacillates between melodies and Velvets-esque drone, and if Ho Renomo now reminds you of a mobile phone advert, it just shows how far ambient has seeped into the mainstream.

The second album from the sessions, 1978's After The Heat - released as Eno Moebius Roedelius - feels quite different. In fact, it's an Eno solo album in all but name. Good job, then, that it's a good one. Desolate piano and droning synth pieces segue into funk-inflected art-rock, and Eno sings on three tracks - notably The Belldog, which, with its soaring vocal and squirming sequenced bass, is surely a track LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy has spun a few times.

Three decades on and Roedelius and Moebius are still making music, touring with the revitalised Harmonia and working on solo material. Moebius' newie, Kram, is somewhat patchy, prone to bouts of discordant proto-techno, but the likes of Womit remain firmly in the spirit of kosmische, a melding of crystal synths and gurgling bass that played quiet, or speaker-shakingly loud, has a transporting effect.


ALBUMS | BIOGRAPHY | BOOKS | INSTALLATIONS | INTERVIEWS | LYRICS | MULTIMEDIA


Amazon