Hypnagoge
Latest Reviews last update: 3/31/08
Tim Story and Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Inlandish
From the first graceful notes, it is clear that Inlandish is going to be a work of pure, calming beauty. As it moves along, however, what becomes even more clear is that it is an amazing, almost alchemical blend of growing intrigue, perfectly matching Story’s signature electronic twiddle and atmospheric manipulations with Roedelius’ straightforward, melodic piano. The opener, “As It Were,” comes across as a simple duet for piano and cello. At the edges are hints of electronic augmentation but it resides unobtrusively in the background. With the title track, those augmentative elements begin to increase—but slowly and purposefully, wrapping themselves carefully around each new piece. It’s as if Story is saying “Here, let me try...this,” and then having it all work effortlessly. The playfulness, the back-and-forth between artists, continues through each new track. I’m particularly fond of the duo of “Serpentining” and “House of Glances,” where Story makes his sound-sculptures slither, bop, and curl through Roedelius’ work like anxious animals. “Downrivers” features an unusual array of sounds—one bringing to mind a frantically worked pair of scissors—acting as percussion without actually being percussive while a distant voice sings a quiet aria. “Riddled” is the most upbeat track on the disk, intermittently throwing a crisp beat over a tireless piano riff and Story’s urgent cello. It drips with delicious drama. The final track, “Intermittent Haiku,” is contemplative, easing along on a lightly distorted, almost music-box style piano and hushed voices. It ends the disk like a cleansing sigh. Inlandish is quite simply one of the best, most perfectly constructed pieces of work I’ve heard in a while. It demands repeat listens not to discover layers or things missed on earlier passes, but simply for the sheer pleasure of hearing it again. Inlandish is a Hypnagogue Highly Recommended CD.
Available from Tim Story's web site.
Ars Errata / Nepenthemusic.com
Attempting to chart the history of the Dwight Ashley/Hans-Joachim Roedelius/Tim Story triad would easily fill a chapter in any encyclopedia electronica, so it’s sufficient to say that between the three of them they make one helluva brave noise. Ashley and Story already have a number of excellent collaborations between them, including the minor classic A Desperate Serenity on the defunct Multimood label (well worth seeking out); Story and Roedelius have recorded together as Lunz, with two worthwhile discs to their credit. Now the three are an item, their debut Errata credited to the puzzlingly nicked A.R.S. If you discard whatever ridicule (or irony) might be gleaned from that abbreviation, you’d discover the well-wrought potential met and delivered on the trio’s first long-player. Who does what is difficult to discern, which often makes for the best combinations: both Story and Roedelius no doubt contribute most of the acoustic piano parts, but all three masterfully tweak their electronic gadgetry in blissful anonymity. Basically, there’s nothing else out there that sounds quite like this. “Incubator” reincarnates early Cluster thanks to its chimera-like structure, one part quacking pulse, one part purring background noise, numerous parts strangely flanged electronics. On “Gefallig”, someone’s tickling the ivory plains under a shuffling, fading sunset of a rhythm while faux horns blow and delicate if tenebrious effects phosphordot the landscape. Both “Inclement” and “Squiggle” chart murky terrain, peculiar electronic doodles zipping about like elfish simulacra; squishy rhythms become a gamelan orchestra conducted by astronauts as stabs of rasping synth wail in protest. For reasons unknown, the closing “Ruminator” brings things back to “normal”, its Budd-ing pianos suggesting early evening come down from those atmospheric highs. Quasi-chilling but not chilled, this is a trio light on its feet, nimble of phrase and savvy in composition, trading dark and light with extraordinary finesse and crystal clarity. DARREN BERGSTEIN • www.nepenthemusic.com
http://www.eiaudioverite.blogspot.com/
Sunday-Times 25th January
Brian Emo, Robert Fripp, Harold Budd, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Robin Guthrie, Stars of the Lid, Tim Story
Back in the 1970s, when Brian Eno came up with the idea of music that should be “as ignorable as it is interesting”, the genre seemed destined for a limited life in a world with ever-decreasing attention spans. Low-key instrumental music with no great ambition to get anywhere? Next! Yet ambient music persists, in its own quiet way. Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works and albums by the Orb gave the genre a boost in the 1990s, and its influence spread throughout related areas: you can hear the influence of ambient on the likes of Air, Boards of Canada, Royksopp, Sigur Ros and pretty much anyone who learnt from ambient that you could leave quiet bits in there and people wouldn’t stop listening. Pure ambient music is still heavily populated by the 1970s generation, with Harold Budd, Robert Fripp and Hans-Joachim Roedelius all still making exceptional music, alone and in collaboration. Occasionally, newer faces appear, notably Norway’s Geir Jenssen, whose albums as Biosphere seem to reflect the fact that his home is in the Arctic Circle; the British duo Marconi Union, who bring a darker edge to things; Japan’s genre-hopping Susumu Yokota; the drone-heavy Texans Stars of the Lid; and the Ohio-based Tim Story, whose collaborations with Roedelius are breathtaking. Mark EdwardsMark Edwards
ESSENTIAL RECORDINGS
Recent: Marconi Union, Distance (2006); Stars of the Lid, And Their Refinement of the Decline (2007); Robert Fripp, At the End of Time (2007)
Classic: Brian Eno, Music for Airports (1978); Harold Budd, Luxa (1996); Biosphere, Substrata (1997)
Key track: Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Tim Story, Downrivers (2008)
www.amazon.co.uk
After a 14-year stretch of releasing only live albums, the duo of Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Mobius more succinctly known as Cluster has emerged from Tim Story s Ohio studio with another Cluster classic, Qua. It s like having a cup of coffee and a donut in the middle of a Martian shoe factory, says Story of his first experience producing a Cluster session. Moebi and Achim always have the incredible knack of carving a bit of warmth and humanity out of the most unlikely elements. On Qua, there's a surprisingly melodic solo that Moe performed on our squeaky bathroom door, and a virtuoso performance playing the feedback from the unplugged end of a guitar cable. Meanwhile, Ach plays a bass line on our old orange Farfisa organ and naturally centers his riff around the one note that's broken. The squeaky-door solo is one of many mysterious sounds on the 17-track Qua that Cluster and Story hav e sewn together to make seamless, artful music out of what others hear as noise. Story muses: It s what makes Cluster absolutely unique taking the debris of life, and the sounds most other people would tune out , and turning them into supremely odd, but engagingly human poetry. A happy marriage of Dada and romance. That happy marriage (albeit with its on-again, off-again moments) has continued for nearly 40 years so it would be a natural to assume that the music resulting from Cluster s return to the studio would have been something of a nostalgia trip. But at an age when other musicians are making bank on old ideas, Cluster is making music that is in every way new.
5.0 out of 5 stars Simple Brilliance, July 2, 2009
By
Vinnie C. "Electronic musician" (Columbus, OH USA) - See all my reviews
I came into this album after only hearing a mite bit of what Cluster had produced in the 70's. I was immediately captured by their sound, as it was seemingly the beginning of the ambient/experimental music that I have been obsessed with these days. Upon first listening to their 2009 release, I am cert ain that these guys are some of the most important musical minds of the last 50 years (at least for me). It amazes me that Cluster has released such a unique album after all (and I mean ALL) of the years of writing music. I always thought that after being at it for so long, a "kraut rock" group was supposed to move on to New Age music! Apparently not these guys.
At first glance, the music in Qua felt to be like a minimal "world" music, but as I listen more and more, it is indeed very other worldly. It is atmospheric, to be sure, but beyond simple background music (a term that I have never been a fan of). The subtle textures developed through an immense knowledge of analog synths combines with very restrained percussive elements, and the songs tend to pulsate, inflate, and deflate rather than move from point A to point B. There is nothing more that I can say to describe the sound, but it seems to be very true to what the duo has always done, and that is record very innovative, provocative music.
Again, having known very little about Cluster when writing this review, I can at least say that as a fan of experimental music, as well as ambient, these guys get it. They have a very adventurous approach to music, and it really works. I find that with some experimental music, the songs seem to have little to say or accomplish. Much of today's avant garde evokes little emotion in me (it sometimes bores me to tears), and I have been searching for something muc h more lucious and dream-like. What a welcome album this is for me. I hope others will pick it up and enjoy it. There is just nothing else quite like it.
http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/5123
Cluster - "Imtrerion" (Qua)
It’s easy to overstate Cluster’s influence. Yet, after just a casual dip into their discography, it’s hard not to come up hearing traces of their sound in most fields of electronic music. In comparison to their krautrock peers – though, unlike your Fausts and Neu!s, it’s nearly impossible to tell when the band is engaging with rock music -- and their most famous collaborator, Brian Eno, Cluster’s discography has tended towards a quasi-classical, austere sense of development. Qua, their latest work, is also their first studio releas e since 1994’s One Hour. Throughout, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius continue their dogged evolution without – thankfully, it should go without saying – too clear a sense of where it should go. Unlike dueling rock songwriters (à la Hüsker Dü), it is difficult to untangle Moebius’ and Roedelius’ respective contributions. Although the solo careers they financed with money from their Eno collaborations give a sense of their personalities in isolation, it’s unclear whether the sense of incompleteness that runs throughout the album is a deliberate strategy.
Qua is structured around pairs, sounds or structures that aren’t binaries, but also refuse to blend. True to its name, Qua is an admixture of ponderous and light, frivolous and highbrow, an album with one foot in a relatively solid past (hence the Latin) and another in an intangible future. At its most cheap and cheerful, Cluster makes a sound here that could be compared to zero-gravity Rugrats music – on “So Ney,” overlapping percussion and fluttering synths have the topheavy waddle of a toddler. At the other end of the album’s spectrum, kitchen-sink avant-garde noises scuff synth patches that bounce between stereo channels, effectively apostrophizing the cosmos and never quite touching upon anything solid (as i n the five-minute drift of “Formalt.”) Recent live performances have had a similar infinity feel, with minimal rhythmic signposting and extended wooshing sounds that suggest a brutal solar wind rather than the serene bubbes of other cosmic-minded artists like Pete Namlook.
Despite all the doublings on the album, you don’t get the sense that Moebius and Roedelius have definitively branched away from one another but rather the feeling that they’re making their creative process less intuitive and more problematic for themselves. (Whether or not a deck of Oblique Strategies was involved is anyone’s guess.) As a result, the album hosts some of the strangest sonic juxtapositions Cluster’s ever attempted. Take the musique concrète-like deployment of a squeaky doorhinge, strung with the endless ticking of a hi-hat and set against neo-classical synth toodling on “Flutful.” The non-electronic sounds scattered throughout these sketches suggest a kind of doubling back on 20th century musical history — and with seven of Qua’s 17 tracks lasting less than two minutes, the album also has the aura of early electronic music studies, particularly Stockhausen’s. Too, Qua can sound more like careful studies of tones and textures interacting than the melodically satisfying story-songs of Zuckerzeit, fo r example, even as the band waxes contemporary with the newly scattershot approach with a Black Dice impersonation on blunt feedback collage “Diagon.”
As you may have guessed, Qua refuses to gel as an album – it’s a vivid listening experience, but a cold one. Part of the difficulty of reviewing this sort of record is that while expectations of Cluster coming out with a reputation-reinforcing record that bests the musicians they’ve influenced aren’t exactly high, it’s hard to escape from an inchoate feeling of suspended embarrassment for the band. It’s an irrational feeling, and the music, to its credit, sounds like it could have only been recorded by a group aware of their influence but eager to continue the spiel they began laying down long ago. But it’s a strange feeling to see a band who had, at their height, so effortlessly bridged a gap between popular music and the classical avant-garde implode their technique in a series of sometimes too-abrupt sketches. Cluster appears to be coming full circle back to the space music of their first, self-titled album, stacking acoustic and electronic space, and producing a serene but threatening realm of their own.
This is appreciably different from the busy sound of much current electronic20music, with the muddy tendency to stack MIDI tracks Tetris-style in your software of choice. The graphical interface of production suites has a sound of its own, and while it’d be naive to think that Ableton had no role in this recording, Cluster are audibly attempting to construct songs where details emerge from negative space instead of being squeezed out between competing loops. This also means that the group has de-prioritized melody and other kinds of warmth in their music – Cluster has always rewarded patience, but Qua plays with scarcity. What makes understanding Qua such a slippery proposition is the play between the murkiness of the duo’s intentions and the clarity of the sounds. Is the listener being chided in a cryptic, icily reproachful way for not having done their homework or expecting kitsch? Whatever the case, Qua is, from a distance, a feat that slips in and out of relevance.
The strongest argument in favor of the album, then, would paint Cluster as phantom modernists – artists who, having established their own third way by drawing on divergent traditions, now insist on difficulty and strangeness-in-itself. The big weakness here is that the initial obscurity and chaos they present on Qua isn’t a portal to objectivity or a filter ensuring that only the select get to come to the party – diffic ulty is the pleasure in itself. They’re creating friction in a void, and it’s more formally admirable than pleasurable. The album’s last track, “Imtrerion,” is a shock, with its twisting, backmasked melodies that swirl around each other with a distant but tangible poignancy, and a reminder of the paths they didn’t take on Qua. It’s the sound of music almost floating out of its context.
By Brandon Bussolini
http://hypnagogue.netfirms.com/
Cluster, Qua
I recognize that, having been into electronic music for so long, I ought to be more familiar than I am with Cluster--the duo of Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius that has influenced an incredible range of musicians from20all walks of rock. And yet, going into Qua, their first CD in a decade, I'm glad that I didn't have foreknowledge of their work. It allowed me to approach the iconic twosome's style with no predisposition to liking or not liking it, no history to judge by. I was more free to explore the intriguing sonic shapes and portraits they create, and their approach to creating music from non-music. For me, that's one of the big draws of Qua, one of the elements that keeps me coming back: the broad range of sounds at work here and the way they're pieced, stitched, slammed and glued together to create new musical noises that feel as if they belonged together the whole time. And, of course, there's the underlying sense of two friends, whose musical trust has been welded across time, just having a damn fine time for themselves. There's a feeling of play blended with the right touch of mischief in the studio, countless games of "What can we do with this?" In press materials, producer Tim Story notes that the sounds on Qua include a squeaky bathroom door (on which Dieter Moebius plays a "solo") and a broken Farfisa organ. It's like a pair of musical hooligans seeing what they can get away with, and the result is a CD that charms and challenges at the same time. There are 17 relatively short tracks here, with even the longest clocking in20at under 7 minutes. It's a dessert tray of sonic goodies, and most people are bound to find a number of treats that suit their tastes. I like the bouncy stride of "So Ney," the slow-moving, shadowy drama of "Xanesra," the oddly catchy robo-funk groove and slithering feel of "Malturi Sa," the light-but-cluttered bop of "Albtrec Corn," the twisted house-music overtones of "Formalt," and the airy, warbling vocal-like float of "Imtrerion." Top of the list, however, is the indescribable "Diagon." It's under 90 seconds long and is based on a very simple repeated chord pattern, but the way the Cluster gents warp and bend this sound just sticks in my head. There's a definite humor to it. Listening to Qua has been an interesting experience for me because while I'm in it part of me keeps wondering, what IS that sound? while the rest of me thinks, Shut up--we're trying to listen to this! Have a listen for yourself, whether you're a long-time Cluster veteran or a newbie like me. There's a reason Moebius and Roedelius have been at it this long, and it's captured here.
www.timstory.com
Just out is the new Cluster CD "Qua" that I was honored to produce. The legendary duo's first studio album in over a decade, I've had a few requests to make the new Cluster "Qua" cd available on my website, so we did! I was able to get some copies from Nepenthe, so while they last, I am putting them up for a pretty sweet price of $11.99, at http://www.timstory.com/disc/qua.html This order page does not link from anywhere else on my site, so it's for my Facebook and MySpace pals only through this link!
From the Press Release:
After a 14-year stretch of releasing only live albums, the duo of Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Mobius — more succinctly known as Cluster — has emerged from Tim Story’s Ohio studio with another Cluster classic, Qua.
“It’s like having a cup of coffee and a donut in the middle of a Martian shoe factory,” says Story of his first experience producing a Cluster session. “Moebi and Achim always have the incredible knack of carving a bit of warmth and humanity out of the most unlikely elements. On Qua, there's a surprisingly melodic solo that Moe performed on our squeaky bathroom door, and a virtuoso performance ‘playing’ the feedback from the unplugged end of a guitar cable. Meanwhile, Ach plays a bass line on our old orange Farfisa organ — and naturally centers his riff around the one note that's broken.”
The squeaky-door solo is one of many mysterious sounds on the 17-track Qua that Cluster and Story have sewn together to make seamless, artful music out of what others hear as noise.
Story muses: “It’s what makes Cluster absolutely unique — taking the debris of life, and the sounds most other people would ‘tune out’, and turning them into supremely odd, but engagingly human poetry. A happy marriage of Dada and romance.”
That happy marriage (albeit with its on-again, off-again moments) has continued for nearly 40 years — so it would be a natural to assume that the music resulting from Cluster’s return to the studio would have been something of a nostalgia trip. But at an age when other musicians are making bank on old ideas, Cluster is making music that is in every way new.
“When we first starting talking about making this record, I imagined a 20th-century version of Sowiesoso or Zuckerzeit,” recalls Story, “abandoning for now the long, freeform improvisations that had been a staple of Cluster’s recent live performances, and revisiting the short idiosyncratic miniatures that we would be able to achieve in a studio setting. But even I wouldn’t have guessed that a total of 17 great pieces would result — each with it’s own inner logic and personality, and all working within the framework of the whole.”
Even20more remarkably, Qua’s 17 tracks aren’t just audio novelties — they have a richness of texture, tone and character unexpected in the electronic music genre. Perhaps the most surprising thing about Cluster’s sound-as-sandbox approach to music — and why they’ve inspired so many other influential musicians — is that they explore inventive and expressive potentials in electronic music seldom realized by others.
Story concludes: “With the humbling honor of being the first Cluster ‘producer’ in several decades, I felt my main duty was to give Ach and Moebi as many good options as possible, then get out of the way, and record their process as transparently as I could. Hopefully, Qua captures the richness and humor and the warmth that made the recording sessions so much fun for all of us.”
Influences
The Universe.
FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO WISH TO BUY H. J. ROEDELIUS, CLUSTER AND HARMONIA CDS PLUS MANY RARITIES. ALL ORDERS CAN BE DIRECTLY MADE TO THIS PROFILE.
Be a supporting member of the association „More Ohr Less“. Purchase a set of three CDs with ambient Roedelius-music containing piano/instrumental-music and songs along with a 40 page-booklet with information and text/poems in a special cassette, as collectors item.It was designed by famous Austrian painter Christian Ludwig Attersee.
The price of € 150,- allows also free entrance to any event of the festival / symposium “More Ohr Less” that happens every year in summer.
Born 1934 in Berlin, nurse, physiotherapist, masseur, escort of the dying, composer, writer, poet, foto-collage-artist, producer, curator.
Foundermember of the artslab "Zodiak" in Berlin(1968) and groups such as : "Human Being","personare", "Kluster","Cluster", "Harmonia", "Friendly Game", "Aquarello" and "Tempus Transit".
Collaborations/co-productions with artists around the globe such as: Dieter Moebius, Brian Eno, Holger Czukay, Susumu Hirasawa, Tim Story, Alquimia,
Georg Taylor, Conni Plank, Stanislaw Michalak, Nicola Alesini, Jurij Novoselic, Conrad Schnitzler, Fabio Capanni, Nikos Arvanitis, Franz Graf, Peter Baumann
Boris Schaak, Norbert Eisbrenner, Beatrix Rief, Michael Rother, Thomas Rabitsch, Yuko Matsuzaki, Bernadette Reiter, Morgan Fisher, Claudia Schumann
Joachim Bock, Toni Morley, Gini Ball, Martin Wagner, Albin Paulus, David Bickley, Dare Mason, Peter Natterer
Timothy O'Keefe, Dwight Ashley, Diane Timmons, John Rose, Kenji Konishi,Toni Gerber, Patrick Pulsinger, Alex (The Orb) Paterson, Hiroshi Nagashim & wife
Christoph Sievernich, Elke Lixfeld, Werner Moebius, Thomas Fehlmann, Ax Genrich, Seiichi Suzuki, Felix Jay, Haeyoung Kim, Richard Heacock, Neill MacColl, Alec Way, John Morissey, Jovanina Pagano, Eric Bonerz, Thomas Johnstone-Grenas, Mani Neumaier, Christa Runge, Clementine Gasser, Jurjen Drenth, Eva Maltrovsky, Laszlo Ropolyi,
Tjitse Letterie, Aarjen Uitenboogard, Jason Lynn, Russell Curry, Broderick Price, Verena Tchirz, Martin Barker, Coen de Neef, Wolfgang Schloegl, Jez Coad, Eric Spitzer-Marlyn, Andrew Heath, Elisabeth Stern, Asmus Tietchens, Dorit Chrysler, Stephan Steiner, Paul Fox, Alexander Czjzek, Bond Bergland, Werner Dafeldecker, Arnd Sebastian, Vesna Kovacevic, Roberto Castello, Alessandra Moretti, Robert Lug, Herman Prigann, Dieter Graf, Peter Grundei, Alexander Binder, Lene Lovic, Les Chapell,
Helmut David, Hermann Hendrich, Christine, Rosa, Julian and Camillo Roedelius, Ronald Vaughn, Maria Hietz, Markus Sovik, Leo Hemetsberger
Hermann Rid, Joao de Bruco, Mark Lintern-Harris, Esther Linley, Caroline Carlsen, Peter Rauscher, Guido Marzorati, Enrico Coniglio, Arlo Bigazzi, Kurt Weckel, Jürgen Ramacher, Christian Einfalt, Werner Pieper, Glen Max, William Wilson, Carl & Michael Solway, Michael Weinberg, Greg Gomberg, Frederick Baker, Deborah Shaffer, Gavin Friday, Tom Green, Lua Virtual, Shannon Hancock, Minou Graf, Magdalena Wiesmann, Jean Jacques & Christian Andreani, Colm O'Donnell, Andreas Steirer, and many others.
More than thousand compositions including text, poetry, dance-theatre-
filmmusic,
radioplays and fotocollages. Approximately 150 records either soloworks or productions in co-authorship with other composers or tracks on samplers, com- pilations. Uncountable concerts/performances/readings all over Europe and in some of the main cities of Japan and the United States.
Music or musical participations at soundtracks for films/documentaries such as “Witness to war” from director Deborah Shaffer, “the room of the son” ( la stanza del figlio) from director Nanni Moretti, “Stalin the red god” from director Frederick Baker, “Y Tu Mama Tambien” from director Alfonso Cuaron.
Together with the Fratelli-Brothers soundtrack for the film “Imagine Imagine” about John Lennon and with Clementine Gasser for the film"Die Motesiczkys" from director Frederick Baker, “FAQ” from Stefan Hafner and Alexander Binder and others.
Participating as composer/musician/actor at " L'Orso e la Luna" from choreografer Caroline Carlsen, at "Teatro e Danza La Fenice"in Venice, "Borges & I", at "Wiener Festwochen" from choreografer Esther Linley, "Utopia of a tired Man"for "Donausfestival","Eurokaz/Zagreb"
"Kampnagelfabrik Hamburg"and "Szene Salzburg" ( Esther Linley ).
Oratorium "Des Pudels Kern" for "Eurokaz" Zagreb and together with Jurij Novoselic"Happy Kitchen"for"Biennale-Zagreb" and Jazzfestival "Moving Cultures" Tirana/Albania and MAK / Vienna
Spiritus rector/curator of the symposion/Festival “More Ohr Less” in Lunz in Lower Austria. Honorary president of the Jazzfestival “Moving Cultures” in Tirana / Albania.
Roedelius Live Performance in Happy Valley
Roedelius Live at the Beatrice Wood Center
Cluster live
Roedelius/Cluster Harmonia's Friend Space (Top 24)
Wie versprochen gibt's Ausschnitte bei youtube zu bewundern (natürlich wie es sich gehört direkt am nächsten Tag ;) ) - der Rest kommt dann per Post als DVD.
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