KLUSTER

Klusterstrasse 69-72

Deluxe 8LP Box

Boomkat Product Review:

**Heavyweight 8LP boxset with four gatefold/ double album jackets including liner notes by Conrad Schnitzler, housed in a huge heavyweight canvas box and limited to 500 copies** Kluster were one of the most radical, influential and catalytic components of Germany's "new music" aktions. Established in 1969 by former sculpture student and Joseph Beuys alumnus, Conrad Schnitzler, together with Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Kluster grew out of West Berlin's Zodiac Free Arts Lab to generate a commune of groups also including Tangerine Dream and Eruption (who are retrospectively known as Kluster), all sharing a common link through the late Schnitzler. Whilst they adopted the experimental techniques and concepts of Stockhausen's Cologne school and Italy's Nuova Consonanza ensemble, they at once rejected any inherent snobby attitudes. They preferred a more democratic, free-thinking approach inspired by the morals of psychedelic rock and '60s counter-culture, rehearsing in the run-down spaces of West Berlin on DIY instruments and homebuilt FX with the intent of shaping the music of the future in line with it's rough, chaotically exciting present. The music on 'Klusterstrasse 69-72' comprises many tapes recently discovered in a suitcase by Freudigmann and documenting their unprecedented, magical aktions. It's impossible to sum up the wealth of sounds inside - there's at least 4 hours of restored and remastered music on offer - ranging from ritualist future-primal meditations to haunting dronescapes and prototypical Industrial sound sculptures, but if there's one common thread, it's their purposefully slow, tactile and expansive approach to improvisation, always allowing each unique sound to grow and travel uncluttered through time and space. It's an aesthetic which can be clearly traced through myriad strains of DIY Industrial, post-punk, minimal wave, techno and electronica to come and can be considered a pivotal moment for music whose influence still resonates now, forty years later in the music of everyone from Demdike Stare to Ricardo Villalobos, to Æthenor and Pan Sonic.

Deluxe 8LP Box (3)