Cluster

Origins

Cluster were a German electronic duo, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, who grew out of the Berlin group Kluster. Roedelius, born in Berlin on October 26, 1934 into a dentist's family, co-founded the Human Being commune in 1968 and, with Conrad Schnitzler, the Zodiak Free Arts Lab in Berlin. Moebius, born in St. Gallen, Switzerland on January 16, 1944, studied art at the Akademie Grafik in Berlin, worked as a restaurant cook, and designed cover art for Cluster and related releases. Kluster was formed in 1969 by Schnitzler, Roedelius and Moebius; Schnitzler left in 1971 and the remaining pair renamed themselves Cluster and moved to Forst, in Lower Saxony, where they built their own studio.

Their collaborators included the producer Conny Plank, Brian Eno, and Michael Rother, with whom they formed Harmonia in 1973; AllMusic called Cluster the most important and consistently underrated space rock unit of the 1970s.

The records

Cluster '71 came first, then Cluster II in 1972, their first album as a duo and the first for the label Brain, produced with Conny Plank at Star-Studio in Hamburg in January 1972. It moved from the discordant proto-industrial Kluster sound toward electronic music, with relatively short named tracks. Zuckerzeit followed in 1974, recorded in January of that year at Forst, with Rother credited as co-producer for lending equipment: Farfisa instruments, a four-track recorder, a stereo mixer and an Elka Drummer One drum machine. Each track on it is a solo composition, the two recording separately on different days; The Quietus called it two solo EPs masquerading as a joint release.

Sowiesoso, the first record for the Sky label, was made in 1976 in two days at Harmonia Studio in Forst and mixed at Plank's studio in Wolperath. Cluster and Eno followed in 1977, After the Heat in 1978 and Grosses Wasser in 1979, produced with Peter Baumann. They split in 1981, reunited from 1989 to 1997, again from 2007 to 2010, and disbanded at the end of 2010. The Harmonia reunion concert in Berlin on November 27, 2007 was the first live show by that group since 1976. Moebius died on July 20, 2015, aged 71, of cancer.

Cluster are cited as an influence by David Bowie, Alex Paterson of The Orb, Coil and Mouse on Mars. Julian Cope's Krautrock Top 50 lists Cluster II, Zuckerzeit and Sowiesoso, and Pitchfork ranked Zuckerzeit 63rd among the best albums of the 1970s.