Kluster - 1970 - Klopfzeichen

Kluster
1970
Klopfzeichen

01. Part one (23.31)
02. Part two (21.34)

Bonus Track:
03. Live at the Werner Festwochen Alternativ 1980 (15.56)

Conrad Schnitzler
Dieter Moebius
Hans Joachim Roedelius

Voice (track 1) / Christia Runge

The formation of Kluster can be referred to the activities of Conrad Schnitzler, one of Joseph Beuy's students at the Düsseldorf's Fine Arts Academy. Schnitzler was a key figure in the underground art scene in Berlin in the late 60's. He participated in the formation of the Zodiak Free Arts in 1968, with amongst others Hans Joachim Roedelius. Schnitzler soon met Dieter Moebius, an other student of Beuy's and asked him to become the third member of the ensemble Kluster in 1969. The trio's music directly reflected the free form aesthetic of the Art Lab in lengthy improvisational performances. The two first Kluster albums "Klopfzeichen" and "Osterei" came about when Schnitzler noticed a newspaper item regarding a church organist interested in their music. The album was produced and released by arrangement with the church, hence the religious content of the text. The third and final Kluster album, "Kluster und Eruption" was released in collaboration with members of Eruption and released in a private pressing by the Block Gallery.

Without hesitation, one of the most important, hard and astounding electronic class band is Kluster, made entirely out of an express desire to challenge the art and the movement of its kind (a kind to be discovered, entirely by one's own listening and recommendation). Revealed a lot as magisterial under the progressive electronic school of thoughts, dynamics and experiments (German-style, naturally, despite some influences that seem totally private, and others that numb out no particular music at all), the band's musical concept is yet far from such an easy definition (or even a ragged-drone one), mixing the hysteria or the silent respect of the krautrock/acid movement, deepening the experiment towards intricacy, desperation, no-logic, mechanical motion and abstractionism, or creating noise or independent electronic movements.

Conrad Schnitzler's vast past-60s experience is a good point of reflection leading to these early 70s years, when, not just in Kluster, but also in Tangerine Dream or in solo measures, his visions strode deep into challenging music, touch and artificiality in incomparably hard, technical, edasic and veracious ways. Moebius and Roedelius are a compact important duo joining Kluster, in a way that will continue into the good to great Cluster later albums, but not that much as to say that the Kluster moment of music, electronic, kraut-noise and experimentalism-dependency, was something far from retched, quasi-original, tonic, influential or drastic.

The Kluster sessions strike, dramatically, only three albums and only one year of work. But mixing a lot of progressive electronic, Berlin School music dynamics and elementary art-strain evolutions into your perspective leads always to the impression that the trio of Kluster have made some radical and brand astonishing moves, while other artists slept on a bit more easy or atmospheric, transitory or sound-reflexive tastes (not that many, for sure, since the classic years remain devoted to electronic excellencies, yet almost sensible, in the link between progressive and experimental, cosmic or mechanic, etc.).

Specifically in the Kluster dynamic of appreciation, Klopfzeichen is keen on being the most pointed out. It has a lot of the "elementary" power and details that the trio uses, in order for their gumble-art, organic-note or experimental-cause music to get the special shine. It's more introverted and ambient-shaded, in order for the orientation of electronic with noise and kraut to seem very clear and very impressive. But, down the artistic measure, the other two albums made by Kluster are entirely better, more rough, more skeptical regarding the electronic or sonic impulse.

Interesting, captivating or so-to-say full of exultation in Klopfzeichen are fragments of music, expression and expiration. The first part has a large side of low-mono sound and deep-physical voice narration, this last thing leading to imagining something from Floh de Cologne or Cosmic Jokers, but resembling actually neither. The topic is vast, acid or superficial, respectively, whether we're still talking about the word play, or of the actual effects of music, ambiance and primary sounds. The second part is more cold and ravishing, mixing an ambient "krust" of music, but also focusing the positive, artistic and magical moments of the noise-shrud, the experimental-surround or the typical abstract feel.

Klopfzeichen, with minimal, experimental, ambiental or collage elements of the electronic, kraut-docile, noise-sound or "kluster" blend of genres and illusions, is a sophisticated new brand and progressive effect; yet the most peaceful, intuitive, large-echoed experience too.