Hans-Joachim Roedelius & Lloyd Cole: Clustered Commotions.

Hear the Echoes Interview with
Cluster’s Hans-Joachim Roedelius & Lloyd Cole in the Echoes Podcast.

In alternative rock circles, German bands from the 1980s are considered pioneers of sound.  Kraftwerk, Can, Neu, Harmonia and Cluster are consistently name-checked by everyone from David Bowie and Brian Eno to Stereolab and Radiohead. Hans-Joachim Roedelius, a founding member of Cluster and Harmonia, will be 80 in 2014, but he is still as prolific as ever.  He recently teamed up in an unlikely alliance with 80’s rock musician Lloyd Cole, best know for Lloyd Cole and the Commotions.  Their album together is Selected Studies Volume 1.  I talk to Lloyd Cole and Hans-Joachim Roedelius about their cross-generational collaboration tonight on Echoes.

Key Highlight;
Lloyd Cole: I am the anti-Moebius.

Hear Hans-Joachim Roedelius & Lloyd Cole in the Echoes Podcast.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

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Lloyd Cole & Hans-Joachim Roedelius.

It’s A Meeting of an 80s’s Rocker and 70′ Electronic Pioneer.

Tonight on Echoes, Cluster‘s (or Qluster) Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Lloyd Cole talk about their electronic collaboration.

In alternative rock circles, German bands from the 1980s are considered pioneers of sound.  Kraftwerk, Can, Neu, Harmonia and Cluster are consistently name-checked by everyone from David Bowie and Brian Eno to Stereolab and Radiohead. Hans-Joachim Roedelius, a founding member of Cluster and Harmonia, will be 80 in 2014, but he is still as prolific as ever.  He recently teamed up in an unlikely alliance with 80’s rock musician Lloyd Cole, best know for Lloyd Cole and the Commotions.  Their album together is Selected Studies Volume 1.  I talk to Lloyd Cole and Hans-Joachim Roedelius about their cross-generational collaboration tonight on Echoes.

Key Highlight;
Lloyd Cole: I am the anti-Moebius.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Sign up for Echoes CD of the Month Club. With the Echoes CD of the Month Club, you get great CDs like Rachel Zeffira’s The Deserters.  Follow the link to the Echoes CD of the Month Club and see what you’ve been missing.

Now you can go Mobile with Echoes On-Line. Find out how you can listen to Echoes 24/7 wherever you are on your iPhone, iPad or Droid.

Join us on Facebook where you’ll get all the Echoes news so you won’t be left behind when Dead Can Dance appear on the show, Tangerine Dream tours or Brian Eno drops a new iPad album.  Or Follow us on Twitter@echoesradio

Shoegaze Ambience with Manual – Echoes Podcast

Interview with Jonas Munk a.k.a Manual in Echoes Podcast

In the early 2000’s a new sound in electronic music emerged.  It mixed German Space and Progressive Rock, with Shoegaze guitar and contemporary Electronica.  Two of the leading lights in this sound were Manual and Ulrich Schnauss.  Manual is Danish musician Jonas Munk and he’s carved a unique path into modern electronic space. He’s released several albums ranging from drone zone spaces to anthemic electronic flights.

Just nudging into his 30s, Munk’s musical sources come from a time before he was born.  He cites German electronic music like Cluster and Kraftwerk.

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“In German electronic music from the ’70s, there was a more organic vibe present,” enthuses Munk, speaking from his home in Denmark. “Cosmic is a bit overused, but there was involvement with nature somehow, which I kind of liked.  There  was also a very warm feeling in a lot of those recordings by Harmonia,  Cluster or early Kraftwerk and all their stuff.  It’s very, very warm and organic sounding, which is something that always turns me on.”

Ulrich Schnauss & Jonas Munk

Jonas Munk merges that sound with the Shoegaze style of Rock that spawned in the 1980s with groups like Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine and especially, the Cocteau Twins with guitarist Robin Guthrie.  As a guitarist himself, Munk gravitated towards the ringing, layered and reverb drench sound of these groups.

“Especially around that time,” he explains. “Ascend, Lost Days, Azure Vista [Manual albums], all the stuff that was composed between 2002 and 2006, 07, 08’ish, it’s very inspired by Robin Guthrie’s guitar work, but also the Cocteau Twins productions.

He’d go on to collaborate with Robin Guthrie and cover a song by Slowdive called “Blue Skied An’ Clear.”

Hear more of Jonas Munk’s interview on the Echoes Podcast.

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John Diliberto

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Conrad Schnizler Unplugs: R.I.P. 8/4/2011

Conrad Schnitzler, a founding member of both Tangerine Dream and Cluster has passed at the age of 74.  Schnitzler was one of the true conceptualists of electronic music .   He was a member of Tangerine Dream on on their debut album, Electronic Meditation and founded Kluster with Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius.  They switched their name to Cluster shortly after Schnitzler’s departure in 1971.  Since then, Schnitzler has been extremely prolific.   While his contemporaries took paths that made their music more accessible, Schnitzler remained an experimenter till the end, He died on August 4, 2011 after a bout with stomach cancer.    You can read more in Rock Edition.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

Cluster Converges and The Foundry Founders

Some bands last for the long haul, some labels struggle.

Roedelius & Story (photo-jeff towne)

Philadelphians got a surprise performance from the legendary German electronic band Cluster this past Saturday at St. Mary’s Parish Hall as part of The Gatherings series. The show was originally billed as a concert by Tim Story, Dwight Ashley and original Cluster member Hans-Joachim Roedelius (A.R.S.(e), the other half of Cluster, but Dieter Moebius, was flown in at the last moment.

Cluster was always one of the quirkiest and idiosyncratic of the German electronic bands. At once more avant-garde and more D.I.Y, they could be as charming as an electronic music box and as strident as a Stockhausen encomium. For me, their best albums remain Sowiesoso and Grosses Wasser. In this performance, their first in the U.S. since a 1996 tour, they struck a balance with Roedelius bringing in simple, Satie-like melodies while Moebius dutifully twiddled knobs, tweaked sequences and made funny noises. It was avant-garde, but with a welcome mat that invited anyone inside. The two musicians, now in their 60s and 70s, sat next to each other at a table covered with electronic detritus, only occasionally exchanging glances. From the middle of the house, they looked like two aged clerks, pouring over blueprints or maps.  And by the way, they both looked much more vigourous than any of their Wikipedia photos.

Cluster at The Gatherings (photo-Jeff Towne)

The concert opened with a set from A.R.S.(e) that probed ambient terrain over darkly minimalist rhythmic pulses. Then Story and Roedelius then played music from their two wonderful CDs of ambient chamber music, Lunz and Inlandish.  (Lunz was a CD of the Month a few years ago). As Roedelius played out his keyboard melodies, I had a thought that he might be the true Godfather of ambient chamber music, mixing an almost nostalgic sense of classicism, with thoroughly abstract sounds. At eh end of the set, all four musicians got on stage for a surprisingly controlled electro-jam that reminded me of sets you’d see in the 60s at places like the Knitting Factory and Painted Bride.

All in all, the most welcome return of a 70s electro-icon this year. And the good news is the reason Roedelius and Moebius are both here is to record a new Cluster CD at Tim Story’s studios.

On a sad note, I relate the passing of Foundry Records, an American label that was the spawn of these early electronic sounds.  Since 1997, Foundry trawled the darker, dissonant regions of electronics, especially enjoying the drone zone. But they’d occasionally pop to the surface with albums like “Vast” by Saul Stokes, an Echoes CD of the Month in April of 2006. (  Listen to a profile of Saul Stoke’s new album, Villa Galaxia). It’s tough enough running a record label these days. Even harder when you shred the borders of music convention. If you go to their website, click on the logo next to the R.I.P. to see what they had to offer. Fond farewell to Michael Bentley, who also recorded on the label.

http://www.foundrysite.com/

Echoes Top 25 for July: Marconi Union first Download recording to crack Top 5

Ambient chamber music still dominates the Echoes Top 25 for August, but for the first time, a download only album cracks the the Echoes Top 5. That CD is the purely ambient A Lost Connection by Marconi Union. Their album, Distance, from 3 years ago was among our favorite CDs that year, and A Lost Connection was definitely worth the wait. The album is full of plaintive electric guitar lines draped across a mesh of subtle, insinuating beats, synth pads full of melancholy and glitchy effects dropping in from the fringes. This album is more poetic and almost classical in spots compared to their first two albums. The mellotron-like flutes of the “Endless Winter” lend a somnolent chamber music sound across the insistent, but downtempo bass thud. Expect to hear that  song frequently on Echoes Winter Solstices to come and A Lost Connection frequently on Echoes. Right now, the only place to get A Lost Connection is from the Marconi Union website.

To my ears, there’s a very short distance between the classical Ahn Trio and the ambient Marconi Union.  In that light, ambient chamber music remains strong, although only 10 out of 25 discs fit broadly into that camp, compared to 14 last month. The Ahn Trio, Ronn McFarlane, and Jami Sieber remained important players this month.  Ottmar Liebert’s The Scent of Light made an impressive debut at #14. Look for that to be number 1 for August since it’s our CD of the Month.   You can read a Print Review  here, including an Audio Review with music.  Over all, there was a 50% turn-over in the Top 25 for August.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

ECHOES TOP 25 FOR JULY  1 – Sacred Earth (Peter Kater, Joseph Fire Crow, Arvel Bird) – Wind of the East (Print Review or Audio Review)

  2 – Ahn Trio – Lullaby For My Favorite Insomniac <Listen>

 3 – Marconi Union – A Lost Connection

 4 – Biomusique – The 10000 Steps <Read Review or Listen>
5 – David Cullen – Guitar Travels 

6 – David Arkenstone – Echoes of Light and Shadow

 7 – Kevin Bartlett – Glow in the Dark

 8 – Ronn McFarlane – Indigo Road

9 – Michel Banabila – Traces
10 – Jami Sieber – Unspoken < Listen>

11 – Eldad Lidor – Closer
12 – Hans-Joachim roedelius & Tim Story – Inlandish

 13 – California Guitar Trio – Echoes (Read Article)
14 – Ottmar Liebert – The Scent of Light (Print Review or Audio Review)

15 – Skala – Tundra
16 – Kaki King – Dreaming of Revenge
17 – Balmorhea – Rivers Arms

18 – Under the Radar – I Was There But I Can’t Remember When
19 – Hammock – Maybe They Will Sing for Us Tomorrow
20 – William Ackerman – Meditations

 21 – Niyaz – Nine Heavens
22 – Fernwood – Almeria
23 – David Pritchard – Vertical Eden
24 – Joan Jeanrenaud – Strange Toys

 25 – Don Peyote – Peyote Dreaming