Moebius & Plank - Rastakraut Pasta (1980), Material (1981), En Route (rel. 1995)

Happy new year!  Wishing you all a good one, and a huge thanks to all of you who read/follow/download from this blog and leave comments, thanks for four great years.  I believe I did say a year ago that things might be winding down round about now, but on reflection, I reckon I can make it another year.  Five feels better than four.  After that, I'll definitely take an extended break, then come back with occasional posts.

With that out of the way, here's two albums (and one further archival album) by the bleep & tweak master of Cluster, and the sound sculptor whose importance is impossible to overestimate - Moebius & Plank.  Their original records of the early 80s proved that the offbeat, accessible-avant-garde spirit of krautrock was still alive, and they began with Rastakraut Pasta.

The September 1979 downtime in Conny's Studio that created the first Moebius & Plank album was an exercise in just having fun with strange sounds, and sculpting them over chugging, wheezing rhythm tracks - dub by any other name.  By the third track, Holger Czukay has dropped by to add fitting spare basslines to the next three songs.  And it's the second side of Rastakraut Pasta that I love the most - vocodered nonsense reggae, then a gorgeous melodic call & response with a stunning Rother-esque coda, and ending with two more experiements in mixing simple sounds into deepest outer space.

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The follow-up to Rastakraut Pasta was the more streamlined, uptempo Material.  Its first side, only two tracks long, was dominated by the lengthy motorik groove of Conditionierer, in which layers of guitars were accompanied by the occasional sax squak and fun little bits of percussion.  In creating more danceable music, Moebius & Plank were on the way to their spectacular collaboration with Mani Neuemeier, Zero Set - which previously had its own post here.  The next track, Infiltration, returns to slower, dubbier waters, with bits of morse code, wispy synths and other sounds swimming around in the mix.

On Material's second half, Tollkühn is a neat distorted sequencer vehicle, then Osmo-Fantor is another pulsing soundscape that sets up for the gorgeous finale of Nordöstliches Gefühl.  A slow rhythm track carries along beautiful synth work that could've almost sat on one of the Cluster/Eno records.  Overall, Material is an even more minimalist record than Rastakraut Pasta in terms of ideas, but in Moebius & Plank's hands the ideas on each track are never less than brilliant.

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Moebius & Plank's final duo album was shelved after recording for whatever reason, and first saw the light of day in 1995.  It was recorded in 1986, a year before Plank's death, so may have been abandoned due to his declining health - or perhaps 1983 if you believe one of the reissues, but as all the others state '86 the odd one out is most likely a typo.

In any case, the sound has certainly been updated from the two official Moebius & Plank albums, opening with a nice electronic groove, before a sharp left turn into almost EBM harshness.  There are still more ambient experiments in sound, such as Echaos (although even that gets taken over by synth stabs towards the end), but overall this is the brightest and most upbeat Moebius & Plank record.

Muffler A in particular is a nice guilty pleasure that comes with a ghostly dubversion in Muffler B that ends the album before three slightly unneccesary remixes...YMMV.  Even if En Route is an archival release that lacks the feel of a coherent, finished album, there's still lots to love - the little bits of vocoder in The Truth, the crazed sequences in Pick The Rubber; there's more than enough flourishes of Moebius & Plank individuality to give En Route a deserved place in their slim discography.

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Moebius-Plank-Neumeier - Zero Set (1983)

Possibly Dieter Moebius' best work of the 80s?  Working again with Conny Plank, who was always so much more than just a producer, Moebius lays down a top-notch selection of synth sequences, then weaves in his customary offbeat, wobbly electronics.  These are then further blurred and smeared by Plank, as are fragments of garbled speech added to the mix at times, and in one instance a lengthy vocal sample of a Sudanese singer.  The late mixing desk wizard's unmistakable touch is all over Zero Set, even in the track titles - all taken directly from the recording console.

But the undisputed star of Zero Set is Guru Guru drummer Mani Neumeier.  A long time friend of Moebius, who'd featured on Harmonia's second album, Neumeier plays live drums throughout, giving this album a unique organic feel in an era taken with the possibilities of drum programming.  Reacting to the rhythm of Moebius' synth sequences, Neumeier subsequently plays across the beat, adding fills and whatever else he feels like.

At its most effective, this combination infects the two fantastic tracks at the album's centre with a jittering funkiness up there with Eno & Byrne's collaborations of the previous couple of years.  When the rhythms wind down in Zero Set's closing minutes, keep listening closely (as I overlooked this on early listens) for the jungle-like ambience.  Then listen to the whole album again, several times.  Utterly essential 80s German electronica.

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Liliental - s/t (rec. 1976, rel. 1978)

A krautrock supergroup of sorts that existed for the grand total of six days in the summer of 1976, Liliental came about purely by chance, and wrote and recorded one track per day throughout their existence.  The results were eventually released two years later.

It's a fascinating story to ponder over, especially in terms of what might have been.  The original plan was for Dieter Moebius, on a break from Cluster and Harmonia, to record an album with his friend Asmus Tietchens (who at that time had yet to be heard on record) and Tietchens' friend Okko Bekker (who had released a couple of solo albums).  Conny Plank was to produce, because, let's face it, who else?  Once in the studio, they ran into two members of krautrock/jazz fusion band Kraan, who had just finished up their own recording session and were spontaneously invited to join the project.

The result was this great little album.  What might've been a solid, quirky electronic record from Moebius/Tietchens/Bekker is given room to breathe and expand into languid, sometimes Pink Floyd-esque extended drifts (most of Side 2), super-catchy earworms like Wattwurm, and a comedy closing track that, had the instrumentation been a bit less smooth, might've sat comfortably on a Faust album.

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