Released
25 years ago today, on November 4th, 1997, the material for Harmonia
& Eno’s “Tracks and Traces” album was originally recorded in 1976,
but remained shelved for over 20 years before it was salvaged from
oblivion and finally published.
After hearing Harmonia in the
early 1970s, which was a collaboration between Cluster’s Dieter Moebius
& Hans-Joachim Roedelius and NEU! guitarist Michael Rother, Brian
Eno proclaimed them the “most important group in the world.” Eno
promised to come work with them and finally kept that promise in 1976,
though they’d already split up by then. Nonetheless, they agreed to
reunite with Eno and began recording together. At the time, those
recordings ended up being set aside as Eno moved on to his collaboration
with David Bowie for what would become the “Berlin Trilogy” albums:
Low, "Heroes" & Lodger.
In the 1990s, Roedelius retrieved the
master tapes from Eno and did a bit of work on them to create the 1997
edition of the album. Further to this, Michael Rother contributed
additional material from his cassette archives for the 2009 reissue.
Those tracks could now be included because the digital restoration
process was sophisticated enough that Rother’s tapes could be cleaned up
to remove noise and enhance the sound quality. This resulted in three
bonus tracks being added to the release.
Stylistically, the
collaboration with Eno traded some of the flair of the previous Harmonia
albums for a more muted ambience, but it was a fair trade-off and the
results were a kind of music that was well ahead of its time, being
produced by four creative masters who were in their prime. It's only
frustrating that it took two decades for these recordings to finally
find the light of day.
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