cluster and eno

In the summer of 1976 Brian Eno hooked up with Harmonia (Michael Rother, plus the Cluster duo of Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius) and recorded some music that wasn't issued for over 20 years. Eventually issued as Tracks And Traces in 1997, the pieces show the musicians creating some beautiful soundscapes, but the end result is a little aimless at times.  

The following year Eno joined Moebius and Roedelius at Conny Plank's studio in Koln. The results this time were more focused and two superb albums emerged.  

The first - Cluster & Eno - was released just a few months after the June sessions, the second - After The Heat - followed in early 1978. 

Musically these two albums are very like a sort of slightly more intense, slightly more warped, slightly more weird version of Eno's contemporaneous Music For Films. Some of the tracks, like "Old Land" or the angelically pretty "Fur Luise" could easily have fitted onto MFF or Before And After Science - in fact "Old Land" is actually pretty similar to Eno's "Dover Beach" in with its lovely synth washes. But the more rhythmic tracks, like "Oil" or "Die Bunge" have a much more definitely Germanic air about them. They are also pretty odd. More so than any Eno solo pieces from this time. The more traditional musical training of Roedelius shines through too - "Mit Simaen" is classically beautiful. 

Then, at the end of After The Heat, we have the three songs. These are very Enoid, as we would expect, with "The Belldog" being one of the loveliest songs Eno has ever created. I love the spacey-ness of it all, the twinkling synths, the burbling rhythms. Eno's vocal is excellent too. Restrained and perfectly pitched. The other two songs are perhaps not quite as wonderful but both are impressive - "Broken Head" is graced with a superbly deep soundscape, full of relentless swirls and swoops, and I love Eno's deadpan delivery. And "Tzima N'Arki" is just loopy. A brilliantly jumpy backing track, with Holgar Czukay guesting on bass, and the backwards vocals all making for a fantastically disorientating song (and the fact that some of the vocals are the chorus of "King's Lead Hat" but run backwards somehow makes it even better). Yet, listening to it today I was surprised that despite the sheer weirdness of the track I was happily so familiar with it that it felt reassuring and friendly too.

I get that with songs by people like Laurie Anderson or Scott Walker too. A track like "Tzima N'Arki" or Scott's "The Cockfighter" might pop up on shuffle and I love it like an old friend, but objectively I know that it's genuinely weird beyond belief. Sometimes if a track like this crops up in the car and Charley is with me and hearing it for the first time, to her it's mad, bonkers and freaky. To me it's perfectly normal! 

rambling thoughts - weird music

When I was 15 / 16 I had quite a collection of albums that were, for want of a better word, really weird.

How about Fripp and Eno's (No Pussyfooting)? Two long pieces of guitar drones and synth noises. I loved it.

 

I recently dug out another Eno related album - After The Heat, the second album he recorded with the German duo Cluster, and the one with three of Eno’s best (and oddest) songs.

As good as the instrumentals are, and they are all very lovely indeed (tracks like “The Shade” or the very pretty “Old Land” are truly excellent), it’s the three songs that dominate this record.

“The Belldog” is as lush and as rounded as an Eno song ever was. The delightfully burbling synths really compliment Eno’s excellent vocals and the ever so pretty descending piano lines are wonderful.

On the other hand, “Broken Head” is weird and dark and foreboding, and is equally as good as “The Belldog” but just in an entirely different way. In a way it almost prefigures the dark and squelchy sound of records like Nerve Net.

Then we have the sheer oddness of “Tzima N’Arki” – adding all those backwards lines from “Kings Lead Hat” to an extremely jerky rhythm track (with the King of German weirdoes Holger Czukay on bass) and the end result is one of the strangest tracks to close an album ever.

But it’s all rather marvelous - totally unlike anything else. I first heard this record in my mid teens and although it partly baffled me, it intrigued and fascinated me too. It would be nice to think that other 16 year olds might discover this album, but these days I wonder if many would listen to something so leftfield…