MUSIK VON HARMONIA @ 50

 

 

Celebrating its golden jubilee this month is the debut release from the super-group formed by fusing NEU!'s Michael Rother with Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius of Cluster, with Musik von Harmonia being released in January of 1974.

It was a magical musical union that began when Rother approached Cluster about the possibility of backing him up for a live version of NEU!. Once the trio began to explore their potential, via jamming at Cluster's rural studio in the German village of Forst, it quickly became apparent that a new entity had been given birth. Rother claimed that "it was sort of a musical love at first sight, really... it was just something I hadn’t experienced before." Abandoning his plans for NEU!, Rother stayed on in Forst with his new collaborators and they began recording the material that would end up on their debut LP.

Though the sound of the album clearly contains the DNA of both NEU! and Cluster, there is also a distinct sense that its totality is indeed more than the sum of those parts. It's no wonder the trio were so keen to pursue their partnership when it resulted in an album that has gone on to be considered one of the quintessential titles in the realm of so-called "Krautrock".

The album so impressed Brian Eno that he proclaimed Harmonia as "the world's most important rock band" at the time. In fact, he would end up coming to Germany to work with them, releasing a number of albums from their collaboration. That influence would extent to Eno's work with David Bowie during his acclaimed "Berlin" era, as well as set him further on the path towards developing his concepts for "ambient" music.