Despite running a serious reissue campaign for Cluster and related releases, I am surprised that Bureau B have only come around to reissuing the first Cluster LP now. Featuring the core duo of Dieter Moebius and Hans-Jochim Roedelius, their debut also features the legendary Conny Plank both as a performer and as producer. This is the definitive reissue, it restores the original running order of the album and, best of all, it still sounds exceptional.
The opening piece, "7:42," set the template for abstract electronic music for the next forty years. When I first heard this album years ago, I realized that the likes of Brian Eno and Throbbing Gristle were not as original as I had previously thought, Moebius and Roedelius were already leagues ahead of everyone at the beginning of their career as Cluster. That is not to say they emerged from a vacuum as they had already released two similar but inferior studio albums with Conrad Schnitzler as Kluster (although subsequent live recordings from Kluster have shown the seeds of Cluster were already sprouting during Moebius and Roedelius’ tenure in Kluster).
The middle section of the album, "15:43," takes the already incendiary sound birthed in the previous piece and pushes outward and inward simultaneously. Their music captures both the feeling of witnessing an impossibly rare cosmic event and experiencing the deepest spiritual awakening at the same time. They would occasionally reach this sort of zenith throughout their career but never with the same potency and immediacy as they did here. Rhythmic but never straying into pure rhythms and abstract without becoming ambient (despite what has been written about them), this is the ultimate in expressionist electronic music.
The final piece (which occupies the entire second side of the album if you plump for the LP reissue) combines fiery electronic drones with gas-like jets of sound, punctuated with metallic and glassy elements to the point of saturation. It is dizzying, entrancing and perfect. These three Germans could have stopped their respective careers here and still be considered the giants of electronic music that they are today (thankfully they kept going though!). "21:32" still sounds utterly modern, if a band like Emeralds released this today I would be as gobsmacked now as I imagine Cluster's audience were in 1971.
Sadly, Cluster may be no more (as Roedelius left Moebius to form Qluster) but their legacy will live on based on their inimitable back catalog. Having this essential component fully available again has been long overdue but obviously entirely welcome. Out of all the great experimental albums from Germany in this period, Cluster still sound like they have come from the future and on this album that feeling comes through the strongest.
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