There are two ways you can approach reissues. One way is that you can haphazardly pick an album because the artist’s name means something to an audience (or part of it), hopping on a current interest in the artist or a musical trend/genre, and hoping for a solid cash-in. The other is that you carefully examine a catalogue of an artist, look at what it meant for the time it was released in, as well as the meaning it might have for current musical trends and interests.
Sifting through the reissue catalogue of Hamburg’s Bureau B records, you can immediately see that the intention is to bring back some of the key krautrock releases, mainly from the seventies, a genre that, with all the predictions of its demise, never went away, spread to other shores that are not Germany itself, and is in a way currently gathering further steam.
And luckily for all old fans of the genre, and others yet to fully delve into it, Bureau B is taking the latter approach above, carefully selecting their reissues by their worth and meaning, both then and now.
Cluster, the duo comprised of Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius, has a special place in the development of krautrock’s key phase, as does their album ‘Zuckerzeit’ (Sugar Time) from 1974.
Moving away from Berlin into the country, compared to their previous work, particularly their ‘Cluster II’ album (1972), the duo has audibly changed their concept, focusing mainly on time-limiting their electronic experiments and introducing distinctive rhythmic patterns to their music. This was possibly done under the strong influence of guitarist Michael Rother, the co-producer here, and later co-member with the duo (along with Brian Eno) in another seminal krautrock band Harmonia.
What is also audible is the difference in the approach to the joint concept by the two, later exhibited in the solo work of each, as well as their other collaboration, as Harmonia, Eno or elsewhere.
Yet, the key here is that the music of Cluster has that timeless quality, making it indiscernible whether it was recorded in 1974 or yesterday.
