II

Great album, but I wish to review the track called Im Suden...How about this idea: take four notes and modulate them over 12:53...can it keep your attention? It's hypnotic, droning, pulsating, as various other sounds fluctuate in and out of the mix. Organic, electronic vibrations. Layers of sound, shaking and buzzing, drifting and hovering. It's good background music, let it drift in and out of your awareness as you do household chores or make dinner.Cluster was comprised of two experimental musicians: Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius. Conny Plank produced and had a major role in the recording. They made all these sounds using analogue synthesizers, effects processors, and various other electronic instruments and equipment, lots of cords all over the place like spaghetti.

Seminal German Electronic group - part of the Berlin School sound that also spawned Tangerine Dream Klaus Schulze and others. If you were there, you know what I'm talking about. Brilliant Ambient Electronics from before when the term was invented.

You've returned to consciousness in the engine room where you hid after stowing away on this event horizontal skimmercraft that seems to be deriving some additional power from the Earth's oceans and is perhaps even recharging itself this way. Good to know, especially if the thing starts to get moody when you try and land it. On a whim, you close your eyes and try and reach the cockpit on intuition and tactile sensation alone, perhaps more than a little influenced by a timbre of alien idealism. Just as you are feeling a wet thermodynamic null seep in through your exploring fingers and smile to yourself about a possible encounter with a security guard who finds you absolutely adorable and side steps you in perfect silence to watch you toddle on, the texture of light through your lids alters as if you had been under a serving platter's voila dome, a side dish for an all-business lunch. You fight the urge to clear your throat, not wanting to give the impression of being tainted meat almost as much as you'd rather not be eaten. Turns out you're just garnish for the Venusian Ostrich Fish marinading in mobius serenity and hovering above you, free of all restraints, a kind of zero-gravity contra-veal. It's taking an awful long time for this lid to lift and the roasting fumes, never noticed until now, begin to overwhelm. Suddenly, the two most disconcerting words in the language are "palate cleanser". You haven't lived this long to snuff it as prelude to alien face sucking, right after the "well, that meeting went well, shall we seal the deal?" blink code, so you run for it and for a moment you think no one's noticed. That is until the multi-source slash of laughter and lasers, often indistinguishable from one another and often each heralding the other. This is less an exercise in extermination than a game to see who can come closest to hitting you without actually hitting you. Oh, the gilling the poor sucker will get who bisects my animacordus ridiculus, so you decide to make it easier and just stand motionless. Turn the whole thing into a knife-throwing act and try and work your way out of the infinitely botchable finale. Your stillness seems to have an effect on the inhabitants of the engine/dining room to the tune of a slowly accelerating show down at the OK carousel. Keep your own lunch down and maybe you'll remain becoming even while being circled by psychedelic soup shooting nerve shredding shards [...]suddenly you see it. It has been blooming up through your spine since you nearly turned your drawers into a fecal docking bay upon lift off. You can't be in over your head because there you are, like you've never seen yourself before, over your head. This is going to be quite a story. Now where did you put those hands?

Perfect. Mind blowing

I am so glad I discovered Cluster, they were a group I was long aware of, but for some reason it took me until now to buy any of their albums. I have been long a fan of the more experimental end of Krautrock, ever since I discovered those early Tangerine Dream albums, and I have to say Cluster does not disappoint. Cluster II finds the band recording for Brain, after being dropped by Philips. Like its predecessor, all the sounds were created off guitars, organs, and various generators and echo chambers, courtesy of Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, but this time around, each of the cuts actually have real titles, and the cuts are shorter, but it's simply a great album emphasizing lots of industrial type of drones, pulses, and spacy sound effects, a lot of it with a rather sinister feel. I hear plenty of sound effects that sounds familiar to those who heard Can's Tago Mago (especially "Aumgn") and Tangerine Dream's Atem ("Circulation of Events"). A lot of Cluster II has that minimalist approach, so if minimalism isn't your bag, don't bother with this album.The CD reissue I own also describes Cluster and their musical approach, and it describes how so many acts at that time were using sequencers, which in 1972 isn't true. For one thing, Tangerine Dream had yet to discover sequencers (the sequencers didn't play a role in that group's sound until Phaedra, in 1974). Kraftwerk were still a highly experimental group, not the dancy electronic pop they were later known for, Klaus Schulze was experimenting with drones as demonstrated on Irrlicht, most other German groups were using sound generators for electronic sounds (like early Kraftwerk, Can, and of course Cluster), and if they were to use a synthesizer, it would likely be an EMS VCS-3 (like Tangerine Dream around this same time period). But it's true that the notes included in the CD reissue booklet did mention that the band did not care about being categorized, and it's true you really couldn't call it rock, guitars used here were often used for the same droning effects as the rest of the group's gear. It's definitely avant garde and minimalist. But back in the early '70s, the German scene was full of very highly experimental and adventurous music, you could tell these groups did not care if they never had any commercial success, and what's surprising were the labels that allowed these groups to record such albums (like Ohr and Brain). But by the mid '70s, many of these Krautrock acts started moving to electronic music (Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Cluster, Schulze) or more conventional prog rock (Amon Duul II, for example).Anyways, I really think if you like their 1971 debut (as Cluster, as they were previously called Kluster when Conrad Schnitzler was in the group), you'll like this one too. It's certainly one of the highlight of the more experimental end of Krautrock.