Hans-Joachim Roedelius
A pioneer in in the field of electronic music, Hans-Joachim Roedelius is considered one of the founders of contemporary popular electronic music. Remarkably prolific, Roedelius has appeared on well over 100 releases between his own work and collaborations.
A pioneer in in the field of electronic music, Hans-Joachim Roedelius is considered one of the founders of contemporary popular electronic music. Remarkably prolific, Roedelius has appeared on well over 100 releases between his own work and collaborations.
Aliases: Roedelius
Member of: Harmonia
Schwarz (Eruption)
Kluster was a short-lived project of three musicians/artists/performers: Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Konrad Schnitzler. They recorded two albums in 1970, unprecedented in their experimental radicalism. Chaotic, apocalyptic (noise) improvisations, a sound later termed industrial music. Kluster disbanded as Moebius and Roedelius found the financial risk of bringing out a third album too daunting. Schnitzler decided to go ahead on his own, releasing the material they had recorded tog…
King of Hearts
Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Christopher Chaplin first met in 2010 at the "Gugginger Irritationen 2" festival near Vienna, dedicated to Art Brut. In 2011, Roedelius was invited to play a live piano set for the BBC, which would be recorded and remixed by a musician of his choice, but with whom he had never worked before. Roedelius chose Christopher Chaplin for the task. The result was broadcast on BBC Radio 3's "Late Junction Sessions" program in June 2011. Roedelius then asked Christopher t…
Klopfzeichen
180 gram vinyl version. Imagine finding a message in a bottle, forty years after it was dispatched. That is what it feels like when you listen to Kluster's Klopfzeichen for the first time, mysterious, hard to decipher, a relic of a time long since passed. The handwriting is archaic, barely legible, the complex contents only falling into place when examined through the light of historical context. Klopfzeichen is an incredibly important release for the time in which it appeared (1971), an …
Zwei-Osterei
180 gram vinyl version. Zwei Osterei is the second half of a recording session which took place on a single day in November 1970. Klopfzeichen is the first part. Yet the uncompromising Zwei Osterei surpasses the earlier Klopfzeichen album by some distance in terms of its harsh noisiness and near brutal sonic attacks. Everything that was left of the revolutionary verve of the late 1960s seems to have been distilled into this music with a burning glass: aesthetic destruction to liberate the mind a…
Piano Piano
Bureau B reissues Piano Piano by German keyboardist Hans-Joachim Roedelius, originally released in 1991 on the Italian label Materiali Sonori. In classical music, "pp" (piano piano = pianissimo) is a dynamic indication of particularly soft music. And Piano Piano is a very soft, quiet album. Roedelius assumes the role of a fairytale character with his piano music, transported to a strange, fantastical landscape where, filled with awe and amazement, he tries to get his bearings. What he see…
Selbstportrait - Vol. II
This is the fourth solo album by German keyboardist Hans-Joachim Roedelius, originally released in 1980 on Sky Records. With Selbstportrait, Roedelius gave unequivocal confirmation that he no longer was treading the hitherto common paths of electronic music. Selbstportrait - Vol. II corroborated the findings: for Roedelius, electronics would no longer be a means of creating abstract, noise-like music in the future, nor of generating utopian, mechanical rhythmic structures. His own utopia was …
Lustwandel
180 gram LP version. The third studio album by Hans-Joachim Roedelius, originally released by Sky Records in 1981, fulfilled a dream he had long cherished. A series of chamber music pieces, with grand piano solos taking center stage in some places, archaised percussion patterns in others. Lustwandel represents a logical progression, following on from Jardin Au Fou (re-released on Bureau B in 2009). Both albums were recorded at Paragon Studios in 1979 and produced by Peter Baumann (Tangerine Drea…
The Diary Of The Unforgotten (Selbstportrait VI)
LP version. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl. The Diary Of The Unforgotten is a collection of recordings from the years 1972 to 1978 and was first released in 1990 (with different artwork). Between the years of 1972 and 1978, Hans-Joachium Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, later joined by Michael Rother, lived out on a country estate in the idyllic, diminutive settlement of Forst in the Weser Uplands. It was here that the Harmonia albums, legendary recordings with Brian Eno and various splendid Cluster …
Jardin Au Fou
LP version; includes all the original album tracks. Composer/poet Hans-Joachim Roedelius (Kluster, Cluster, Harmonia) is one of the most prolific musicians of the German avant-garde and a key figure in the birth of Krautrock, synthesizer pop and ambient music. Jardin Au Fou is his second solo album, originally issued in 1979 on France's Egg label, and produced by former Tangerine Dream member Peter Baumann. This record was all the more noteworthy as it bore no resemblance whatsoever to what…
STUNDEN
""stunden" is a unique record. it sounds new and unprecedented. this is instrumental music: no one sings or speaks, yet it tells stories from the present, writing them in the wind. in twelve miniatures with titles such as "liebe", "das eine" and "country", hans-joachim roedelius (cluster / harmonia) and stefan schneider (to rococo rot / mapstation) unfold images that come across poetically, glorifying tranquility. despite the use of synthesizers and amplifiers, they are closer to the text…
Wasser im Wind
LP version on 180 gram vinyl. Of all the Hans-Joachim Roedelius solo releases, this is the one which most closely resembles the work of Cluster. Wasser Im Wind sees Roedelius use a wide variety of musical and sonic ingredients hitherto associated with Cluster, almost as if he sought to erect a monument to the group. Right from the word "go," the familiar sound of the Drummer One rhythm machine can be discerned on the opening track, like a wood gnome crashing his way through the shire; then we he…
Grosses Wasser
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…
Cluster 71
2016 repress; 140-gram LP. Cluster's self-titled debut was originally released by Philips in 1971; this edition is the first reissue to restore the track running order of the original Philips release. Includes liner notes by electronic avant-garde pioneer Asmus Tietchens. In 1998, The Wire listed Cluster's self-titled debut as one of "100 Records That Set The World On Fire (When No One Was Listening)." Very few albums from Germany can lay claim to this honor. Cluster is a monster; it cont…
Qua
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…
Geschenk des Augenblicks / Gift of the moment
LP version, on 180 gram vinyl. This is the tenth solo album by German keyboardist Hans-Joachim Roedelius, originally released in 1984 on Editions EG. On Geschenk Des Augenblicks - Gift Of The Moment, Roedelius broke away unequivocally from purely electronic music. If Lustwandel (BB 055CD/LP) and Jardin Au Fou (BB 023CD/LP) had seen the process set in motion, this was the album that completed the transition. Following the Selbstportraits, which had at least been created through the use of electr…
Works (1968 - 2005)
This is an epic 'best of' from the great Hans Joachim Roedelius one of the pioneers of Krautrock and early electronica. What's more, he's 74 years old and still producing music, now how's that for commitment to the scene? Working with Kluster, Human Being, forming Cluster with Dieter Mobius and working with Mobius and Michael Rother as Harmonia - the man has covered a lot of ground in his time, and that's never been as evident as on these two discs. We've got squelchy synthesized Krautroc…
Live
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…
Neverless
What could be a better title for our follow-up to
Roedelius' "Evermore" than "Neverless"? Two avantgarde heroes have
teamed up for a unique collaboration that was started by Hans-Joachim Roedelius in Austria and then processed by Morgan Fisher in Japan. Ambient soundscapes with an Asian touch, meditative, repetitive and very seductive. The masterminds behind Cluster and Mott The Hoople united for the first time. 'How
about a collaboration between a former member of Cluster, and the
keyboard …
Cluster II
Beautiful legit 2010 remastered reissue on Brain, deluxe gatefold cover, including a digital download coupon...Cluster II is the second full-length album by German electronic music group Cluster. It was recorded at Star-Studio in Hamburg, Germany in 1972 and was the first release for the legendary Krautrock label Brain Records, a relationship which would last until 1975 and include the subsequent album Zuckerzeit as well as the first two Harmonia albums, a group which included both remaini…
DeLuxe
Beautiful legit 2010 remastered reissue on Brain, including a digital download coupon, truly a brilliant little album from Harmonia – quite possibly their greatest record ever, and a set that's wonderfully balanced between progressive and electronic modes! There's a live drummer on the set – Mani Neumeier of Guru Guru – and although he still plays with a spare, circular mode that recalls the Harmonia rhythms of before, there's also a slight bit of propulsion here too – one that pushes the keyboa…