Album by album
Cluster
Hans-Joachim Roedelius traces his path with Dieter Moebius from Cologne to communes to Austrian monasteries
“WHAT I miss most about Moebi,” explains Hans- Joachim Roedelius, “is his weird kind of humour. Our partnership was very special, and based on the same roots as my solo work: curiosity, interest, friendship, love.”
Across 40 years, multiple albums and collaborations with the likes of Michael Rother, Conrad Schnitzler and Brian Eno, Roedelius and his creative partner Dieter Moebius crafted the music of Cluster and helped define the sound and aesthetic of kosmische synth music. Moebius passed away in 2015, but Roedelius, now 87 and still prolifically composing and releasing music, is the eager guardian of the duo’s legacy, answering Uncut’s questions from his home in Austria. “The last year or so has been rather exhausting because of all the bad and difficult circumstances within the Covid situation – but it has been very interesting working on music with [American collaborator] Tim Story from both sides of the ocean.”
Whatever the outside circumstances, the gentle channelling of inspiration “out of the belly” has been Roedelius and Cluster’s long mission. “Thought is only to control the whole process,” he explains. “I see my work as one long continuous thread and it will continue until I have to leave the soil of this planet.”
TOM
PINNOCK
Construction time again: Roedelius (left) and Moebius in the studio circa 1970
Krautliers: Roedelius and Moebius in Austria, 1980, while recording Curiosum
KLUSTER KLOPFZEICHEN
SCHWANN AMS STUDIO, 1971
Formed as a trio with Conrad Schnitzler, their music overlaid with various religious texts
HANS- JOACHIM ROEDELIUS: My musical experience started with me as a bushdrummer in the macchia of Corsica, when I lived there for some time. At the beginning, I got in a trance hitting an old iron oil barrel around midnight, ending with bloody fingers in the morning. There were no drugs at all, not even alcohol, just heavy interest and fun. Then I got involved in free improvisation in Berlin in the late ’60s and we went along this way until Conrad Schnitzler left Kluster and Moebius and I continued in the same experimental way as Cluster. Did we have a strong bond from the start? Well, it was an adventurous journey from the first moment, because we wanted to do what was impossible to know in detail at the beginning. I was a physiotherapist and masseur and Moebius was a graphic