Harmonia

Forst

Harmonia was a West German group formed in 1973 by the two members of Cluster, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, and Michael Rother, the guitarist of Neu!. Roedelius and Moebius had met at the Zodiak Free Arts Lab in Berlin, formed Kluster with Conrad Schnitzler in 1969, and carried on as the duo Cluster after he left in 1971. Rother had passed through a short-lived Kraftwerk line-up in 1971 before founding Neu! with Klaus Dinger.

In the early 1970s an antiquarian offered Moebius and Roedelius old farmhouses in Forst, a village on the River Weser in Lower Saxony, where they hoped to start an artists' commune. Roedelius remembered it as a utopia of pure nature, where they chopped wood and tended a garden. Rother recalled a single heated room, the kitchen, and very little money. In the spring of 1973 he took his guitar to Forst and ended up jamming with Roedelius. He had hoped the duo might help him play Neu! live. Instead he put Neu! on hold and moved there a few weeks later, and he has said that he simply fell in love with the music.

Musik von Harmonia

The trio recorded Musik von Harmonia themselves between June and November 1973 in their home studio at Forst, with some live recordings from the Paradiso in Amsterdam, and released it on Brain. Every track is credited to all three. Roedelius later called it the most beautiful record they made, and said that having Rother in the studio changed the focus automatically. Moebius came up with the cover, a large bottle labelled Harmonia, which Roedelius said was meant to catch the eye of people who did not yet know them.

It sold poorly. Rother has called Harmonia a commercial disaster, and in 2010 Moebius and Roedelius put its sales at roughly ten thousand over some twenty years. Critics were kinder in hindsight. AllMusic's Ned Raggett heard a fine new twist on the two source bands, Julian Cope placed it in his Krautrock top fifty, and Record Collector wrote that Watussi and Dino sit in the sweet spot between Cluster's textures and the rhythmic insistence of Neu!.

Deluxe and Eno

The band toured widely, playing long improvised sets. Rother admits they probably bored audiences for hours. A show at the Penny Station club in Griessem on 23 March 1974, which Rother counts as their best, was released in 2007 as Live 1974. Brian Eno joined them on stage at the Fabrik in Hamburg in 1974 and was invited to Forst.

Deluxe followed on Brain in 1975, co-produced with Conny Plank, with Mani Neumeier of Guru Guru on drums and the band's first vocals. Moebius later called it the most commercial record they ever made and wondered whether they should have made it at all. Roedelius described it as more or less a Rother solo album with Cluster as guests. The same year Rother made Neu! '75 with Dinger.

Harmonia split in the summer of 1976. Roedelius said they did not want to rehearse the same pieces over and over. That September Eno spent eleven days in Forst, which Rother remembers as talking, walking, playing ping-pong and recording. The tapes, long thought lost, were found by Roedelius and released in 1997 as Tracks and Traces, credited to Harmonia 76. Roedelius called it the group's swan song. An extended edition followed in 2009 as Harmonia & Eno '76.

Return and legacy

Harmonia played for the first time since 1976 on 27 November 2007, opening the Worldtronics festival at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. Shows followed at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, Supersonic in Birmingham and All Tomorrow's Parties in England, New York and Australia, until Rother said in November 2009 that the project had come to an end again. Moebius died on 20 July 2015, aged 71. Later that year Grönland issued Documents 1975 and Complete Works, a box with a photo book and a pop-up model of the Forst studio.

Eno is widely reported to have called Harmonia the world's most important rock band. David Bowie counted them among the most important German bands of the era, and The Human League cite them. AllMusic's John Bush called the group one of the most legendary in the whole Krautrock scene, and Alex Abramovich wrote in the New Yorker that they laid foundations for ambient music and for generations of rock bands without the blues. Moebius linked Eno's By This River to his days in Forst, watching the river.