Eno, Moebius, Roedelius - After The Heat (1978)

The second Cluster & Eno album (link to first one below), this time credited to their three individual names - perhaps with the more pervasive Eno influence, this one was felt to be a truer three-way collaboration.  

 

After The Heat is well named: there's a fair amount of cold and dark among the drifting ambient atmospheres on this album, and in the more rhythmic tracks like Foreign Affairs and The Belldog, the latter with a suitably unsettling Eno vocal.  Eno sings on two more tracks, Broken Head and the reversed vocal of Tzima N'Arki, which is also anchored by a Holger Czukay guest spot.  And of course, there's the requisite amount of Roedelius piano gorgeousness on Luftschloss and The Shade.

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG: Cluster & Eno

Cluster & Eno - s/t (1977)

The first fruits of Brian Eno's collaboration with Moebius & Roedelius to be released (Harmonia sessions from 1976 would stay in the can for two decades), Cluster & Eno took the loveliness of Cluster's maturing sound on Sowiesoso and made it even lovelier.  The album opens, like Sowiesoso, with a simple monochordal pulse, but made much more delicate and less overtly electronic, with Roedelius on piano.  Holger Czukay, who'd have been on the brink of leaving Can at the time, drops by for a relaxing busman's holiday.

The second track, Schöne Hände, is barely there at all - just a gentle breeze of synth that whispers across an open field, causing small stirrings in the flora & fauna.  Even more than on the previous Cluster album, the move to rural Forst was working wonders on Moebius & Roedelius' sonic outlook, as was the addition of Eno's unique lightness of touch. 

The album continues in this meditative mode until it picks up a little in the second half with the more rhythmic Selange and Die Bunge, before taking a turn into the more Eastern-sounding One, featuring guest appearances from Moebius' Liliental bandmates Asmus Tietchens and Okko Bekker.  The most gorgeous track is saved for last, the shimmering sunset magnificence of Für Luise.  I've often though of Cluster & Eno as a winter album, but been trying to mix things up a bit of late, and it works just the same magic at any time of year.

link
pw: sgtg

Can - Soundtracks (1970)

R.I.P. Holger Czukay, 24 March 1938 - Sept 2017

Danke schoen, Holger, for all your great music; for a full life packed with phenomenal, metronomic bass playing, pioneering short wave radio and tape work, great production, inspired collaborations, and so much more.  Sorry that I spent the second half of the 90s thinking your surname was pronounced Kazooki - I'd just never heard anyone say it, and had much less access to information back then.  Speaking of which, I still remember the first ever webpage I searched for when my high school got its first internet-ready PC: nice to see it's still available 20 years later.

Folks, it's time to celebrate the music of yet another true pioneer who has sadly left us.  For starters, may I recommend turning up Mother Sky as loud as possible.  If you don't have access to it, grab it right here.

link

Previously posted at SGTG: Canaxis and Monster Movie

Can - Monster Movie (1969)

R.I.P. Jaki Liebezeit, 26 May 1938 – 22 January 2017

Just like last year, all the great legends continue to leave us... I suppose 78 is a good age to get to; even so, this is a sad day for losing one of the greatest drummers of all time, who by all accounts was still active and even planning to work with Malcolm Mooney and Holger Czukay again, I read today.  Both of them first appeared on record with Liebezeit on this groundbreaking record.  

I was  16/17, and had been listening to The Velvet Underground, starting to get into Kraftwerk, Faust and Can... but the opening minutes of this album were like the Velvets upside down and inside out, and sounded like nothing else on earth.  And then there was the first side-long Can epic hypnotic ritual - if you haven't heard Yoo Doo Right, you're in for something special. Download now!


link

Previously posted at SGTG: Nowhere

Holger Czukay & Rolf Dammers - Canaxis (1969)

I remember buying this album, nearly twenty years ago, along with Can's Monster Movie and Delay 1968, and considering the recording chronology in mild bemusement.  Canaxis sounded so much more sophisticated and complex than the garagey pulse of the other two.  What I didn't know then was where Holger Czukay was coming from, studying under Stockhausen before the formation of Can, and already had a keen aptitude for tape music and what would become known as sampling, which he'd continue to develop in later solo work.

Side One of Canaxis, 'Boat Woman Song' (originally titled 'Ho Mai Nhi' on the initial LP 'Canaxis 5'), weaves together loops of a motet by Adam de la Halle with recordings of Vietnamese singers to great effect, with bits of additional instrumentation creeping in as the piece develops.  Listening to this piece with my 2016 ears, it's every bit as accomplished as contemporary work by more formal composers, whilst retaining a raw, lo-fi charm that makes it even more engaging.  Side Two is taken up by the title track, which sounds more recognisable as a solid piece of electroacoustic composition that takes the influence of Stockhausen and others to a place on Czukay could take it.

link