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.
