Cluster

One take, one hour, no overdubs. Moebius and Roedelius let a single improvisation unfurl in real time, gently evolving electronic tides, meditative and unforced. Late-period Cluster at its most patient and hypnotic.

Caught onstage in 1980, Cluster improvise an evening into long, mutating electronic landscapes. The duo's live telepathy in full flow, sequencers churning, textures blooming and dissolving. A vivid document of kosmische in real time.

Cluster's early-'80s farewell to their first era: shorter, gnarlier electronic vignettes, wry and rhythmic. 'Curiosum' finds Moebius and Roedelius at their most impish, sketching miniature worlds with battered analogue gear.

The abrasive, epochal debut. Moebius and Roedelius push organ, guitar and homemade electronics through banks of effects into three untitled slabs of proto-ambient drift. Year zero for German electronic music, still startling fifty years on.

Moebius and Roedelius reconvene decades on, and the old telepathy holds. 'Apropos Cluster' drifts through supple electronic sketches, playful, warm and abstract at once, proof the duo's improvised chemistry never dimmed.

After Curiosum (BB 038CD/LP, 1981), the last Cluster album to be released on Sky, Roedelius and Moebius turned their attention to solo work. It was not until the early 1990s that Cluster returned to the electronic music stage with Apropos Cluster (BB 171CD/LP, 1990) and One Hour (BB 172CD/LP, 1994). The duo also took to the road for live shows in Germany and Europe, followed by tours across the USA and Japan. Some of these concerts were recorded in digital quality and offer compelling evidence o…

** 50th anniversary Limited Edition ** The fourth full-length album by legendary German electronic music duo Cluster, originally released on Sky Records in 1976. Sowiesoso follows on from their most highly-acclaimed album, Zuckerzeit (1974). Michael Rother's influence was clearly audible on the latter, Cluster having already recorded two albums with him under the name of Harmonia. 1976 saw the duo looking for new musical forms. More than any other Cluster album, Sowiesoso represents the utopian …

On their last trip to Silberland, hurtled along the chrome highways and glass skyways of the kosmische landscape, powered ever onwards in perpetual motorik motion. This time, however, the Hamburg imprint opt for an unhurried itinerary, coasting far beyond the familiar rhythmic terrain to immerse listeners in the ambient side of this alternative Allemagne. Building on the tape loops, tone poems, and minimalist compositions of the '60s avant-garde, these musicians utilized the sweeping scope of th…

Cluster can be counted among the most important international protagonists of the electronic avant-garde. Some credit them with having invented ambient music, others as pioneers of synthesizer pop, whilst to some they are firmly embedded in the krautrock universe. There is some truth in all of these notions. Cluster (or Kluster as they were in the beginning) were founded in 1970 in Berlin by Conrad Schnitzler, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius. A change in direction and musical differenc…

Guitarist Ax Genrich began his career in 1970 with a brief stint with German prog-kraut rockers Agitation Free. There he was able to develop his improvisational style, but was soon poached by Mani Neumeier to join Guru Guru. Together with bassist Uli Trepte, Genrich and Neumeier enjoyed their first major successes and were soon regarded as the new figureheads of Krautrock, releasing Känguru in 1972, a milestone in the genre. After four years and four albums, Ax Genrich left Guru Guru because the…

1973 second Brain pressing with green labels and gatefold sleeve of the superb second Cluster LP produced by Conny Plank.

Berlin 2007 was a monumental performance for Cluster, marking their first live performance in Berlin since their 12-hour concert in the Galerie Hammer in the Europacenter in 1969. The performance was a massive success as a sold out crowd cheered loudly for Cluster to return to the stage. Fortunately, the concert was preserved for posterity and is proudly presented here on Important Records. Packaged in a deluxe digipack. Cluster was formed around 1971 when Roedelius and Moebius left Conrad Schni…

Limited Anniversary Edition: 180g vinyl, hand numbered, 1000 copies.  In 1974, Cluster entered the sugar era. This doesn't mean that they had finally arrived in their promised land, but they had simply moved from Berlin to the country, to a small place called Forst on the river Weser. Many a thing had changed for band members Moebius and Roedelius since Cluster II: They had moved from boisterous Berlin to this calm rural village, they had founded the band Harmonia, had set up their own studio an…

Welcome to Silberland – where the streets are paved with strobes. Home to neon lights, straight lines and open roads, this futurist fantasy was first founded in the mid-seventies, when Germany's creative class chose musical therapy in order to indulge their shared hallucination of a new Europe. Fuelled by the catalytic fusion of globalisation and new technology, the world was turning ever faster and the kosmische generation were ready to keep the pace. With synthesisers, rhythm computers and hu…

Fellow humans, Bureau B invite you on an expedition to Silberland, a singular span of spacetime created by Germany’s sonic futurists of the seventies and eighties. Embracing the early electronics and tape experiments of the sixties’ avant-garde, these artists aimed to boldly go, eschewing small steps for giant leaps into a nebulous and novel sound. 1. Die Partei – Strahlsund2. Rolf Trostel – Two Faces (bureau b edit)3. Michael Bundt – Full Steam Ahead (bureau b edit)4. Moebius – Etwas (bureau b …

The first of two milestones in ambient music recorded by Germany's legendary electronic pioneers Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius together with Britains music eccentric Brian Eno.

with CD. The two authorized recordings presented on Konzerte 1972/1977 vividly conjure up the atmosphere, perhaps even the magic, of a Cluster performance back in the day. One took place in 1977 during a science fiction festival in Metz (France). The other dates back to an earlier show in Hamburg's Fabrik venue. Cluster played three gigs in the city in 1971/1972, including the one partially included on 1972's Cluster II (LR 335LP). Cluster shows routinely lasted six hours or more, luring bot…

Nine-CD box version. Cluster's influence on the development of electronic music cannot be overstated. The original trio of Conrad Schnitzler, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, and Dieter Moebius released two seminal albums as Kluster before Roedelius and Moebius replaced the "K" with a "C" and continued as a duo. They produced eight albums in their most innovative period between 1971 and 1981, two of them together with Brian Eno. Cluster anticipated much of what would later emerge in such varied style…

Recorded in 1978, Grosses Wasser was the fifth album by kosmische musik pioneers Cluster (their seventh if you include the two Eno collaborations). At this stage in the band's lifespan Cluster was a duo, manned by Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, although Tangerine Dream's Peter Baumann acts as co-producer, helping craft some of the group's most experimental material since they swapped their 'K' for a 'C' in the early seventies. Nowhere is this air of sonic exploration more apparent th…

A new cluster album is always full of surprises. That hasn't changed over the last 35 years. qua is written with the typical, slightly scrawly hand of cluster but, to stay within the metaphor, the musical text now is completely new. 17 rhythmic and harmonic miniatures with mysterious titles pass by the listener like a toy caravan of dark, fast camels, loaded with alien and precious drams - or is it a mere fata morgana? cluster throw flashes of light on a far but not completely foreign world; out…

Magnificent reissue of this tape obscurity from 1980, Cluster's eighth album (the first of three live LPs) originally released on the YHR label (which was curated by Pump's David Elliott), also including archival material never before issued on CD. With so much stuff from this era coming to the surface recently it's sometimes easy to get blasé about it all, but this is one you really ought to give your fullest attention to. As the title says, this was recorded live in Vienna in 1980 at th…

A massive 6xCD box that includes the six titles (Cluster, Moebius & Beerbohm) with special outer box and replica paper sleeve of Cluster (Philips version) '71: the first release of Cluster on Philips in 1971 and reissued on Sky Records in 1980. Experimental electronic sound! Producer: Conny Plank. Sowiesoso: the original LP was released on Sky Records in 1976. The fourth Cluster album produced by Conny Plank. Grosses Wasser: the fifth album on Sky Records in 1979. Produced by Peter Baumann (ex. …

Cluster were key members during the formative years of the Krautrock movement. They initially released 2 LPs in '69/70 with the Kluster spelling that are amongst the earliest Teutonic pulse masterworks. Their first album with a "C" spelling was the s/t LP on Philips (currently o/p as a CD on Sky), before they moved over to the Brain label. This is their first of 2 for that label, from 1972, and is a great, confused space classic by this duo (Roedelius & Moebius). Utilizing primitive synthesizer …