Cluster (1971-1981) - Pick your favorite track

isodea

Why include Cluster und Eno but not Harmonia? Unfair.

<3 the cover to cluster & eno

(just reminded of it cuz i saw it at the record store last weekend)

Zum Wohl

Ah, good choice.

Am going for "Hollywood" though which turned me inside out and upside down the first time I heard it.

My go-to track is usually Caramel but of course now I need to take this thread as an excuse to go through and carefully listen to everything just to make sure.

What's the one right at the end of Sowiesoso that sounds like an instrumental version of Cocteau Twins? That one's really amazing, too.

Also why is After The Heat not on this because I seem to remember I love The Belldog, but is that an Eno album that Moebius and Roedelius played on, rather than a Cluster album with Eno on it?

Posts VMIC but you guys are gonna kick me off the thread if I try to take a poll of who was cuter in the 70s, Moebius or Roedelius, right?

lol never thought either if then were very cute tbh

Come on, Moebius was adorable. Five foot nothing and all grin.

http://www.bureau-b.com/images/Eno+Moebius+Roedelius.gross.jpg

this wd make a better poll

alls i'm saying is that Moebius has a look of Ralf about him nicht war?

Nah, mate. I really don't see anything of Ralf in Moebius. Moebius I think was probably cuter than Ralf.

http://indeepmusicarchive.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Cluster-Moebius-and-Roedelius-Seventies.jpg

I think that Hans-Joachim was more than slightly Florianesque in appearance but it might be crepey and incestuous to suggest that those two tall, skinny, balding, pointy-nosed Germans with oscilloscopes looked hugely alike.

Anyway Michael Rother is the real hottie in the Forst gang. So excited about next week!

Rother is like too trad dreamboaty if anything, i do love the expressiveness of the Clusters and their ever-changing moods, they are kinda Krautechre in some way

http://eil.com/images/main/Michael+Rother+Lust+440177.jpg

CHEESECAKE

Yes that is the correct emotion yes.

Cluster are just so abstract and floaty and are happy to just let beautiful bubbles drift up into the air and hang there. Rother always hangs onto that shred of melody, there's this driving weightlessness to his music, but there's always the sense that he is driving *somewhere*, with a goal or purpose or destination in mind. Cluster are best at these perfect soap bubbles that just kind of shimmer and drift in the wind.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1m6j6v46rT4/Uv3-jGWPipI/AAAAAAAADHo/e5cvuhiVzsI/s1600/Cluster+71+(carpeta+interior+2).jpg

Swoon @ Moebius's flash of shoulder phwoar etc but mostly... tone generators WAU.

bubbles is dead right, if i was going to dignify a bloody poll with an answer it would be either "Sowiesoso" or "Es War Einmal" i think, that's their most aerified record i think

i think etc

I love s/t fwiw

Cuet interview with Moebie.

http://blog.frieze.com/interview-dieter-moebius/

Yes, I had things to do today but now I am just listening to Cluster and looking at pictures of hairy Germans. This is the life.

Hard poll, have to review. Hope to see a solo work follow-up.

what no lap-sitting pic
http://quietus_production.s3.amazonaws.com/images/articles/4090/cluster_large_two_1271267106_crop_500x460.jpg

I need to think about this

...the poll, not the image, though uh...

tough poll, good reason to listen to all these again

for cross-referencing purposes: CLUSTER / Moebius & Roedelius solo & group recordings 1970-1986 poll

"In Ewigkeit"

Why include Cluster und Eno but not Harmonia? Unfair.

Because this poll is to mark this new release, obviously.

Anyway Michael Rother is the real hottie in the Forst gang. So excited about next week!

What is next week?

No Harmonia because I seem to recall we did a Neu!/Harmonia/La Dusseldorf track poll.

No "After The Heat" because it isn't explicitly listed as a Cluster album. Plus isn't there a 50 item limit for polls?

I had no idea that box set was coming out!

A solo work poll would be great, though I think the number of options would be too many.

"Sowiesoso" was the first Cluster track I ever heard, still a sentimental favorite.

Posts VMIC but you guys are gonna kick me off the thread if I try to take a poll of who was cuter in the 70s, Moebius or Roedelius, right?

― Liebe ist kälter als der Todmorden (Branwell with an N), Saturday, January 30, 2016 4:25 AM (9 hours ago)

I got a chance to meet Moebius a few years ago when Geeta helped get him to play the SF electronic music festival. He was still handsome.

Next week Michael Rother is in London playing "greatest hits of NEU!, Harmonia and solo." At German shows recently he's been playing with Hans Lampe so I think that's the line-up we're getting?

He played his thing with Steve Shelley here a few years ago; it was great. My friend was his guitar tech and rother stayed at his house while here, and I really should have tried to get to meet rother via that but I felt abashed

Just read yesterday in this Bowie book how rother had agreed to play on the Low sessions and RCA scotched it through machinations

Is Cluster considered top tier krautrock, or slightly lesser? I usually see Can/Neu/Kraftwerk and Faust referenced when discussing the genre but Cluster seems overlooked.

In the olden days they were.

... considered slightly lesser, that is. But I remember reading an old NME review of a Neu! compilation where they were dismissed as second tier.

Cluster/harmonia are absolutely top tier kraut-kosmische IMO. I would take them over can even.

I'm not sure how available their stuff was, outside Germany, In the 70s/ 80s.

Less available than can during the 80s iirc, and can wasn't that easy to come by in the twin cities

Even in the 90s -- the first time I heard them was via vinyl rips to CDR from a buddy. Can and Faust were my entries to krautrock, but Cluster (and various side/solo projects) get far more listening time these days.

lol this thread did not go the way I expected

this is a really tough poll because all these albums are so different. how to measure an abstract soundscape vs. electronic pop vs. gorgeous ambient music? went with "In Ewigkeit"

as for the other debate...c'mon everyone. it's Rother.

Was thinking about in their lifetime really. Can, Faust, Kraftwerk, T Dream, Amon Duul II, were all on UK record labels at some point or other (don't know about the US) even Neu! were!

(xps)

Cluster/harmonia are absolutely top tier kraut-kosmische IMO. I would take them over can even.

― scarcity festival (Jon not Jon), Wednesday, February 3, 2016 12:27 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i gasped! nothing is better than can imo but cluster are top tier for sure. cluster >> kraftwerk for interesting sounds/being perennial rather than single-bloom imo.

Am going for "Hollywood" though which turned me inside out and upside down the first time I heard it.

Xpost single bloom! V useful term!

Also yeah maybe I was challopsin' a teeny bit. But not by much!

(xp) I almost chose that over "Hollywood"!

Look I like Cluster as much as the next krautnerd but don't diss my Kraftjungen or there will be Rindfleisch.

fotschi tong

voted hollywood, but maybe shudda given some more thought
hindsight says caramba

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

torn between "Hot Lips" and "Zum Wohl"

Zum Wohl for me, just made up my mind.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Crap I missed the deadline by seconds!

What would you have voted for?

Oh, never mind, just saw your post.

Excellent poll, thanks folks!

yeah I went with "Zum Wohl" too but I still got mad love for "Hot Lips"

Pleased I went with 'Umleitung' as it only got the one vote. Surprised there wasn't more love shown for the forest yelping and cowbells.

I was the only voter for my track, too but I'm actually kind of pleased that the 1 and 2 votes far outweighed the "winners" because it says something about the artists' breadth.

In Ewigkeit is so... out there and pretty and haunting. Has this old time/ragtime/blues feeling to it. But from outer space, things dropping in and out. Love it

I hear Sowiesoso so much, and every time something new shows up to me. It's a record I think I take for granted, in a way: I always say in my head "oh, such a great record – so calming" – but the details and the way it progresses shows more intent and vision that I remember from the last hearing

when I was getting big into the hypnagogic James Ferraro tape stuff I remember thinking some of it sounded like the best stuff you'd ever heard was playing on the other side of the wall, but if you listened closely you could kinda make out what it was, anyway Sowiesoso I think really embodies that feeling, except of course it's much clearer. total classic record

what a band

I can think of few pieces of music lovelier than the title track of Sowiesoso.

― fit and working again, Wednesday, May 19, 2010

I've finally been able to really get into those first two records, they're so special now knowing that music like this will likely never be made again, at least not organically