Cluster ★★★★
Zuckerzeit
BUREAU B. DL/LP
German electronic benchmark gets a 50th anniversary re-airing.
Moving, alongside their sometime Harmonia bandmate Michael Rother from Berlin to an idyllic artist commune in Forst, Lower Saxony, would transform the music of Cluster’s Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius. With endless hours to kick back and experiment, Zuckerzeit (‘sugar time’) found them largely discarding the dense, metallic signature of earlier albums like Cluster II in favour of skittering drum machines interlaced with by-turns impish, dolorous and soaring synthesizers, in the process forging an almost cartoonish primary colour palette – as much an analogue for teeming nature as gleaming futurism. Itchy, effusive essays like Hollywood and the almost electro-pop Heiße Lippen marry whimsical melody with frisky rhythm and mysterioso texture, while the elegant Rosa and gently burbling Marzipan signpost the bucolic pastoralism of 1976’s Sowiesoso, arguably Cluster’s best, and their subsequent work in tandem with Brian Eno.