Kluster - 1971 - Eruption

Kluster
1971
Eruption

01. Part One (31:04)

02. Part Two (25:30)

Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Conrad Schnitzler

Note: The name of this album is Eruption; it was incorrectly titled Kluster und Eruption on its initial 1971 private issue and later corrected for CD release (as confirmed by Schnitzler in a 1980 interview with David Elliott of Eurock Magazine

This album documents the final Kluster concert at Göttingen Universitat in May 1971.

t exists with various credits...

The first self-released issue (with white stamped labels) credited the four protagonists: Schnitzler - Roedelius - Moebius - Freudigmann listed, followed by the words Kluster and Eruption, and had no track titles.

The 1974 Edition Block issue (also included in the Conrad Schnitzler "Work In Progress" box set) only included the credit of Conrad Schnitzler and track titles "Eruption 1" and "Eruption 2", and no mention of Kluster at all.

After the issue of Conrad Schnitzler solos with similar plain card covers in red and blue, Conrad Schitlzer started to list these releases as "Schwarz", "Rot" and "Blau".

Various CD issues since have messed-up the credits even further, and despite the Eruption credit on this it is not to be confused with the self-titled release by the band Eruption released on Qbico.

Being already, by two grand and more than hypothetically connected albums, a band of pure revelation and clear industrial marooning, Kluster, by the craft and chaos trio of Conrad Schnitzler , Dieter Moebius and Hans Roedelius, does another mind-dazzling, style-culminating and imperiously deprived composition, in the same year of the 1971 and in the same motive of creation and destruction. In fact, it is a fundamentally thicker and more unimaginable experiment, in contrast with the other two classics, and it is almost a parable to the fact that, after enough innovation and "absurdification" in the realms and inconvenienced tastes of krautrock, acid rock, electronic waste, sound-feast, noise and independent wave special signs and treats, an even more dark, conceptual, sardonic, cold-blooded and mechanical exploitation is close to unreal and paradigmatic. Add the avant-garde, for sure, because nothing is of simple logic, blatant technicality or fantasy of an enjoyable convention. Instead, this excelled program is nightmarish, haunting, neurotically and industrial, fractal and micro-tonal, insensitive and without color, harsh and without gravity, colossal and without sensibility. It's a freakin' masterpiece.

Titled as Kluster & Eruption, this album also wants to be a sort of Kluster and Eruption collaboration, though the Trio plays the music and the entire sense, and only the mix, the arrangement and the producing effort gets a tenacious help from Klaus Freudigmann. In a listened way, there's no possible chance you can differentiate the music's brand from the band's geniality - so that it is a clear-clean Kluster. Only musically it is so different, strong and deep-imploded that it seems the bigger and more audacious artistic work of the band with a special influence - the Eruption on. Anyway you take it, this creation is droopingly unbelievable in force, gluttony and sensation.

From scratching the living aesthetic out of you to studying the microcosms of a sound's second, this work has nothing to do with normal metrics and patient forms. First of all, hardly there is allowed a melody, a calibrated rhythm, ambiance or self-simple vibrations - which can make the beautiful music lovers have a grunge against this entire avant-garde; also it can point how interesting it is that this postmodern, narcissistic, derisory and malformed album is recommended among the most essential works. At least without doubt it is worthy its independent subtlety. The German krautrock lies under transfigurations and transformations, and the acid of it is touchingly depressive and aggressive. The electronic fiber is impossible to pronounce as absurd or rather accomplished, but it sure lies on edges, mechanics and supporting breaks - though a lot of "traditional" electronics and components do the massive thing. By experimentalism this is big, studying brutal minimalism, clenching great lengths of tone and sound rictus, reaching nerve collapses and valorous techniques of undetermined raw sort. Noise, the last ingredient, is ultimate, exploiting almost every heavy, dystrophic, tech-macabre resource imaginable.

This is a violent art and a heartless creation, but it also resembles a sffering of improvisation towards perfection. I personally regard this a masterpiece and Kluster's best because the detail of their initial protological and scientific experiment has reached a crass and overwhelming idea: electronic/krautrock mechanical and psychotic satisfaction on the extremest verge of a restless noise and minimal improvisation. An essential, visceral and hardly accessible rage craft album in the genre or the big movement.

Kluster - 1971 - Zwei Osterei

Kluster
1971
Zwei Osterei

01. Part one (22:36)
02. Part two (22:16)

Bonus Track Cluster & Farnbauer
03. Live at the Wiener Festwochen Alternativ 1980 (15:10)

- Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Conrad Schnitzler

- Manfred Paethe / voice (Part one)

Out of the two authentic Kluster albums (because Eruption, though not obligatory so, is more complex under the circumstance of a collaboration and a total avant-garde strange unleash), Zwei-Osterei is a more splendid, characteristic and memorable creation. Yet the 'two-easter eggs" of Kluster are both albums, motivated under the same precision, year of music and combination of explosion and surprises. And both complement the pivotal trio of Schnitzler, Moebius and Roedelius (the first a grand soloist of electronic, kraut and German rock himself, the other two artists with a more hard excellency down the future Cluster albums or general electronic manipulations).

What makes Zwei-Osterei ticks and twist is in fact the ultimate and prolific minimal sound manual or the greatly evolved set of special effects, most progressively distinguished between the bad dreams and the hectic noises of krautrock, the independent and reactive sound forms, the electronic birth and mirth of significantly achieved expressions, the noise clutch and the acid ubiquitous involvement, and, more personally, the act of art and avant-garde. The better parts contain more angry and saturated moment, more depth and carnal experimentation, more strange focuses, more sensitive over-blows of something that, for sure, seems both exaggerate, has the incoherence of a grand sound festive and also, gently, aspires to be unique, tough, klutzed. Still having in mind that Klopfzeichen was slightly weaker, the ambient and melody-stretch over there is hardly tested in here as well. For aficionados, this Kluster material is both the extended art that sends doubtful qualities and similar traces into any other contemporary genius of the kraut, cosmic, electronic or electro-dementia field, but also relaxes of referentiality itself, having in mind a rahing individual manipulation.

Part One privileges again a powerful narration - religious, metaphysically and philosophically based - this time with a more gripping, side-dark and hollow reverberation, unlike the most mystic and confounding similar message that Christia Runge practiced in Klopfzeichen. The amazing thing is the sobriety, yet the foolish affection for hard words, in memorable echoes and brand-acid colors; the lines evoke riot, life, demise, war, methodical insatiety and indistinction. The instrumental involvement is a bit forgotten, likewise, but the interest in a narrative experimental piece is remarkably conducted.

Part two of the medical progressive album is fascinating and difficult, experimenting in all the mentioned marks and values (noise, kraut, electronic technicality, sound-licks) a piece of heavy rhtyhms and groaning breaths, tough artificial chemistry and over-worked electronic production (out of mentioned instruments and related experiments, that, themselves, are between facile and up-stirring). The indescribable essence only means that the acid piece is something for a listener's great and deeming adventure. Numerous generally influences, such as those of palpitating atonal beats, sequencing atypical reactions, high decibels of drone melt emphisis, numbness and cosmic avidity, technical and surrounding suspense or dark fluency, cracking or bursting emotions of loneliness, sense-demise or psychedelic atrophy. Outside this symbolical, powerfully induced or predisposed experimented values, Zwei-Osterei becomes a music of total avant-garde and senile fantastic artistry.

The album, upon being a re-release, includes a second piece from a Cluster & Fernbach concert, one not fundamentally fantastic, but not purely electronic either.

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.

Cluster - 1981 - Curiosum

Cluster
1981
Curiosum

01. Oh Odessa (3:15)
02. Proantipro (7:30)
03. Seltsam Gegend (8:00)
04. Helle Melange (3:45)
05. Tristan in der Bar (3:00)
06. Charlic (4:40)
07. Ufer (8:40)

 Roedelius & Moebius / all instruments & effects

                               

                   

This album neglects the classic abstract-psych experimentations of the two first albums to catch the essence of silent, synthesised pop sounds and sonic meditation. The result is rather strange, enigmatic and static. It's less organic and much more mechanical and minimalist. "Oh Odessa" is closed to Kratwerk's robotic electro pop sophistication...featuring computer like melodies, very repetitive with a certain dose of derision. Senseless for fans of Cluster's original sound. "Seltsam Gegend" is really bizarre composition, infiltrating acid psych electronic "patterns" with a distinctive poppy vibe, dissonant combinations...hard to digest! "Helle Melange" is without any doubts the best track here, sumptuous «melancholic», «grave» looped and repeated melodies, atmospheric dreamscape closed to the best of "Sowiesoso" (1976). Not their best, but illuminate, acessible with ephemeral melodies.

Cluster - 1979 - Grosses Wasser

Cluster
1979
Grosses Wasser

01. Avanti (4:47)
02. Prothese (2:12)
03. Isodea (4:09)
04. Breitengrad 20 (4:08)
05. Manchmal (2:10)
06. Grosses Wasser (18:39)

Hans Joachim Roedelius / electronics
Dieter Moebius / electronics

Grosser is a combination of Cluster's characteristic "ambient", "environmental" atmospheres (previously put in light with the beautiful "Sowiesoso") and modern "funky" electronic sounds. Made of efficient synth works and drum machines this album presents a total dissociation with their two first experimental, avant garde efforts. This one has similarities with Roedelius solo works ("lustwandel"...), especially due to the use of meditative, discreet piano lines. "Grosses Wasser" starts this serene adventure with a basic sequencer / synth repetitive composition 'Avanti" that can reminds some of Michael Hoenig / Ashra later works. Very different in style "Prothese" is a humorous, catchy composition which has a subtle "disco" flavour with an insistent electronic pulse in the background. The very short track "Manchmal" represents the summit of the album, a nice, peaceful song played for the piano.

Cluster & Eno - 1977 - Cluster & Eno

Cluster & Eno
1977
Cluster & Eno

01. Ho Renomo (5:11)
02. Schöne Hände (3:05)
03. Steinsame (4:12)
04. Wehrmut (3:26)
05. Mit Simaen (1:32)
06. Selange (3:34)
07. Die Bunge (3:47)
08. One (6:20)
09. Für Luise (5:04)

Brian Eno / synthesizer, keyboards
Dieter Moebius / synthesizer, keyboards

Hans-Joachim Roedelius / synthesizer, keyboards

The first of the Cluster/Eno collaborations to be released (though both came from the same sessions), Cluster & Eno is the more consistent of their two albums. It's a good example of a collaboration that brings out the best in all concerned, and the result is a little gem of an album that achieves the kind of timeless beauty that can be heard on some of Popol Vuh's albums of about the same vintage, or Jade Warrior's Floating World.

It's a purely instrumental affair which combines Eno's detached minimalism with Cluster's atmospheric soundscapes. The music has a warmth and humanity that is sometimes lacking in Eno's ambient excursions and a sense of structure that Cluster didn't always have on their 70s albums. The opening piece, Ho Renomo, features a guest appearance by the incomparable Holger Czukay and sets the scene for what is to follow - a simple theme is played on one instrument (usually one of the keyboards, though there is also some pleasantly non virtuoso guitar to be heard) and then a variety of sounds, textures and counter melodies are played around it. Most of the pieces seem to grow organically, and there is little emphasis on linear melodic or harmonic development, which adds another layer of exoticism to the music. The pieces are mostly short (the longest clocks in at just over 6 minutes) and while the texture shifts and changes constantly there is a consistent mood retained for the full 36 minutes. It's not all wispy keyboards and synths either - Mit Simaen is a purely acoustic piano piece which recalls the music of Erik Satie, while Selange (which opened side 2 of the vinyl original) has a slow backbeat played on some extemely rudimentary percussion. Die Bunge even features a chord change, which is effective partly because it is unexpected at that point in the album. One is the longest track and features a couple of guest musicians on what sound like Indian instruments, which are manipulated and distorted (presumably by Eno) while Cluster create a hypnotic elecronic backdrop. It's the darkest track on the album, and for all the lack of events on the surface it constantly mutates and reveals new facets of itself. The album closes with the beautiful, piano based Wehrmut, a ghostly fragment that wouldn't have sounded out of place on Eno's Music For Films.

Cluster - 1976 - Sowiesoso

Cluster
1976
Sowiesoso

01. Sowiesoso (7:19)
02. Halwa (2:52)
03. Dem Wanderer (3:52)
04. Umleitung (3:29)
05. Zum Wohl (6:54)
06. Es War Einmal (5:26)
07. In Ewigkeit (7:24)

Hans Joachim Roedelius / electronics
Dieter Moebius / electronics

More placid and calm than previous Cluster releases, Sowiesoso feels a bit like a middle ground between the experimental hypnotic drone pulses of earlier Cluster and the somewhat more immediately accessible work of Autobahn-era Kraftwerk. One of those electronic Krautrock albums which very easily fades into being background music, it's a pleasant enough experience but not what I'd call an enduring highlight of the scene, or of Cluster's particular discography. (Perhaps they were spreading their efforts out too much with the concurrent work on Cluster & Eno, though they'd pull things together in time for the excellent After the Heat).

Cluster - 1974 - Zuckerzeit

Cluster
1974
Zuckerzeit

01. Hollywood (4:40)
02. Caramel (3:00)
03. Rote Riki (6:10)
04. Rosa (4:08)
05. Caramba (3:55)
06. Fotschi Tong (4:15)
07. James (3:18)
08. Marzipan (3:15)
09. Rotor (2:38)
10. Heisse Lippen (2:20)

Dieter Moebius / bass, electronics

Hans-Joachim Roedelius / electronics

Next to Ralf and Florian, the biggest pair of names in German electronic music might be Moebius and us, the brains behind CLUSTER (or KLUSTER, as they were called back when ex-Tangerine reamer CONRAD SCHNITZLER was in the group). Both teams grew from the same fertile incubator of late 1960s/early 1970s Krautrock, but unlike the robot-pop stars of KRAFTWERK the two Berliners stayed true to their counterculture roots, content to earn their stripes quietly somewhere on the outer fringes of sonic experimentation.

A subsequent joint endeavor with BRIAN ENO would belatedly fix the gold seal of avant-garde approval to their already sterling credentials, but this 1974 album was where CLUSTER found its true ice. The session was co-produced by MICHAEL ROTHER (joining the pair that same year in their ide project HARMONIA), and the melodic instincts of the angelic ex-NEU! guitarist must have had a mellowing influence on the band, easing their transition from primitive noise merchants to prestigious ambient forefathers.

The big difference between the aptly titled "Zuckerzeit" (rough translation: "Sugartime") and the more difficult early KLUSTER recordings is how easily the newer album struck a perfect balance between two contrasting but complimentary talents. Hans-Joachim Roedelius was a modest ivory tickler with a flair for muted, minimalist electric piano arpeggios (a style he would later refine in countless, near-identical solo albums of simple, subtle nursery school tone poems). And Dieter Moebius was the hardcore knob twiddler responsible for that dirty, homegrown drum machine sound, like his occasional electric guitar used more for texture than actual rhythm.

Together they were adept at molding and massaging what might have been a series of strictly academic doodles into unexpected shapes and patterns. But unlike the electronic meditations of other German synth pioneers (I'm thinking of TANGERINE DREAM, naturally), CLUSTER added a measure of typically dry Teutonic wit to their music: check out the back cover photo here, with the two posing like Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.

Or try a bite o\amel", the obvious highlight of the album, and the closest thing here to a genuine mainstream pop sound (as heard on the planet Mars, at any rate). The track is built entirely around a simple four-note synthesizer pattern, programmed in an up-tempo, toe-tapping 4/4 beat, and like all the best Krautrock it's almost absurdly repetitive and oddly compelling, suggesting a Third Reich and Roll RESIDENTS cover of Depeche Mode or (remember them?) the Silicon Teens.

The sugarcoated "Caramel" then dissolves into the throbbing drones and warped mechanical dreamscape of "Rote Riki", an embryonic foreshadow of the (highly recommended) 1979 Moebius and Conny Plank collaboration "Rastakraut Pasta", driven here by an uncertain but insistent rhythm sounding not unlike a dripping faucet at 2 a.m.

The remainder of the album alternates between gentle, more accessible Roedelius ditties and weirder Moebius detours (I don't know if Moebius is his real name, but it fits). Add them all together and the result is a minor milestone of electronic ingenuity, and a springboard to a larger family tree of challenging music, all of it linked by six degrees of kosmische separation. From the roots of KRAFTWERK and TANGERINE DREAM (and of course the Krautrock demigods of CAN) you can climb to just about every important German band of the era, and more than a few branches will eventually lead you back to CLUSTER.

Cluster - 1972 - Cluster II

Cluster
1972
Cluster II

01. Plas (6:16)
02. Im Suden (12:50)
03. Fur Die Katz (3:05)
04. Live In Der Fabrik (14:41)
05. Georgel (5:37)
06. Nabitte (2:40)

Dieter Moebius / electric organ, guitars, effects & electronics

Hans-Joachim Roedelius / electronics

This album closes Moebius & Roedelius early radical experimentations in electronic, guitar/organ works. Compositions are always made of repetitive patterns, simple motifs, noisy and cerebral. However it features a better implication in term of "structures". The electronic exercises are shorter, more controlled. The album starts with a spheric music that surronds you, then it introduces a continuous organ line with perpetual static electronic "tones" and guitar's distortion. This tune van evokes the unit of perception. "Im Suden» used a hypnotic electronic bass pulse / guitar patterns to produce hallucinations inside your ears. Gradually it alternates the sound level of each part. Fascinating and visceral "Brain" music. "Fur Die Katz" combines modulating electric sounds with many electronic noises and effects in the background. The atmosphere obtained is very creepy, calibrated for a real discharge of intensity. "Live In Der Fabrik" is made of a repetitive, concentric, duplicated electric sound with a kind of abstract electric bass sound. Very industrial and chaotic. We can also hear modulating frequency harmonies, feedback in the performance space. "Georgel"is a haunted, dark organ work, irrevocably moving to a serie of changing, beating pitches. A sonic meditation, a pleasant cerebral massage. One of the most incredible, stimulating albums I've heard.

Cluster - 1971 - Cluster

Cluster
1971
Cluster

01. 7:42 (7:42)
02. 15:43 (15:43)
03. 21:32 (21:32)

- Dieter Moebius / electronics

- Hans-Joachim Roedelius / electronics

After a scission of the avant-garde (Berlin) group « KLUSTER » due to the departure of Conrad Schnitzler, the two musicians Dieter Moebius and Hans Joachim Roedelius go to work in duet as « CLUSTER ». The band's first years were clearly orientated to Krautrock and to experimental electronic music. Consequently, the production of the band started with massive, radical improvisations, constructed around electric organ works, electronic collages, guitar sound manipulations, feed back. The result is rather similar to KLUSTER's underground, conceptual music, very chaotic with lot of distortion and reverb. With its repetitive, hypnotic guitar patterns and embryonic electronic collages, the second album "II" can be seen as a classic in 70's German electronic underground. This high quality experimental electronic music will progressively lead the band to something far from the kraut rock scene and extreme music.

Since 1974, CLUSTER has recorded many albums of ambitious, pre-ambient electronic music with gorgeous synth arrangements, a groovy tone and a constant sense of melody. "Zuckerzeit", "Sowiesoso" and "Grosses Wasser" are the most representative progressive albums of the band's career. At the same time, the two CLUSTER's members begin to work in solo and in collaboration with others artists (notably Brian ENO and Michael Rother for the project "Harmonia"). They published many innovative, complex and attractive sounds for contemporary and ambient music.

Individually or together, Roedelius and Moebius are now recognised as pioneers of the "Kosmische Musik genre", extending the experiences of contemporary music thanks to the growing capacities of modern technologies.

Three experimental electronic pieces made after the departure of Conrad Schnitzler (Kluster). The principles of composition prefigure what we can hear on Cluster II: long abstract & "visceral" soundscapes using echo-machines, microphones, and aleatoric electronic "collages". The music is constantly impressive, giving a certain "claustrophobic" atmosphere. Track 1 starts with electronic noises and repetitive, obsessional electronic patterns. After 5 minutes of tormenting effects, the music includes different primitive synth sounds and cyclical, electronic rotations. No melody here but a very evocative mental picture, maybe the sound of nightmare or bad dreams. The tension goes higher during the last minutes. The pulsation is changing, exploring the place of emotional "trance". Track 2 begins with some vibrant, linear, oppressive industrial sounds, floating into the room. The orchestration features "fuzzy" accentuations, sustained synth chords and some noisy arrangements. As in the previous compositions, the last track contains some minimalist, "hypnotic", circular motifs in the background. A "monochord" surrounds the deep spheric place. We can hear similar materials in Cluster II. Without any doubts the best Cluster with the following one: psycho-electronic works focused on mechanical and organic "assaults".

Guru Guru - 1975 - Mani Und Seine Freunde

Guru Guru
1975
Mani Und Seine Freunde

01. Sunrise is Everywhere
02. Chicken Rock
03. It's your Tour
04. Walking, Eating my Hot Dog
05. Fly Easy
06. From Another World
07. Woodpecker's Dream
08. 1234 Marsch'n Rock

Champion Jack Dupree / keyboards
Gerd Dudek / wind
Ax Genrich / guitar
Dieter Moebius / keyboards
Ingo Bischof / keyboards
Christa Fast / vocals
Jan Fride / keyboards
Tommy Goldschmidt / percussion
Hellmut Hattler / bass
Sepp Jandrisits / guitar
Jogi Karpentiel / bass
Mani Neumeier / drums, keyboards, producer
Conrad Plank / guitar, keyboards
Peter Wolfbrandt / guitar
Roedelius / keyboards

From the cover of this album with Manni on the front to the music inside, it's all about making one forget about life for a while.This is fun. Mani was at a crisis point when it came to the existance of GURU GURU. Ax the guitarist had left the year before and the temporary live lineup had disbanded. Hellmut the legendary bassist for KRAAN suggested to Mani that he should make a solo album and that KRAAN would help him make it. And man this sounds more like KRAAN than it does GURU GURU, well the first half of it especially. It was released after the fusiony "Dance Of The Flames" and they continued along that same path really only they added some silliness. Lots of guests helping out, hence the album title.The two guys from CLUSTER, three members of KRAAN, a Blues pianist and even Conrad Plank adds some guitar and keyboards as this was recorded in his studio. EROC remastered this at the Ranch. So yes there is a strong KRAAN flavour here and this was released the same year they released "Let It Out".

"Sunrise Is Everywhere" has this catchy beat as the vocals join in.This sounds exactly like KRAAN. Sax a minute in and the guitar that follows is so uplifting. Great track ! "Chicken Rock" opens with the sounds of a chicken (can't remember saying that before) as almost spoken vocals come in. This is funny stuff. "Give your cock a chance and set your chicken free" is the main lyric. Words to live by. It sounds like a cross between Zappa and WIGWAM. Nice guitar solo 1 1/2 minutes in. "It's Your Turn" has some great sounding bass from Hattler in this funky intro. It then settles with guitar into a KRAAN-like mode. Love the guitar, bass and drums in this instrumental tune. Fantastic ! "Walking, Eating My Hotdog" is catchy with vocals. Sounds like a good party tune in the KRAAN style. "Fly Easy" is a short instrumental with sax, bass, keyboards and drums standing out.

"From Another World" is experimental and dark to open. Nature sounds arrive 1 1/2 minutes in as it brightens. Percussion then flute follows. Chanting is next in this tribal-like section. It changes before 6 minutes as the beat stops and it turns dark and experimental again. It kicks back in before 7 minutes to a KRAAN-like soundscape. "Woodpecker's Dream" opens with church bells and nature sounds while the mellow music joins in.The nature sounds of birds singing continues pretty much throughout. We get some spoken voices around 5 minutes as this dream gets stranger.Yes the woodpecker is talking. It ends with a guy saying "Oh, it was just a dream". Cool tune. "1234 Marsch'n Rock" is a short piece with spoken words and drums then someone looking for the right radio channel and finally getting a Chuck Berry tune. "Drink Wine" is a funny live clip.