kluster 6lp box

Kluster and Friends - 1969-1973

6xLP Box

Qbico Records (Italy - QBICO94)

2009

 

(black vinyls/black labels/black inner sleeves) box, spray painted (stencil/lettering by Troglosound)

in gold or silver or bronze (3 versions) and with clear plastic insert (rare photos). UNRELEASED MUSIC!

 

Label Notes:

 

Here is a big one for you Qbico is going out with a BIG!!! BIG!!!

BANG!!!

 

when i mailed the news about the closure of qbico in 2010, some

friends and musicians wrote me back... one was Conrad Schnitzler

wondering if i wanna close with THE BOMB ! i said "yes, why not !?".

so Con sent me 6 CD-R of UNRELEASED Kluster music, rec. in 1969-73

(along with Klaus Freudigmann and Wolfgang Seidel) ! he said to choose

yr favourite 40 (+/-) from the 1 hour lenght of each CD-R, so to

adjust to vinyl format... well, that's was one of the most joyful

experience of my life ! this 6LP box collect that music which it's

simply some of the most outstanding and revolutionary music that i

ever heard !!! One of the most legendary release on Qbico ?! YES

(screaming)!

 

More about Kluster:

 

Kluster was never over. There is KLUSTER until today. If we friends

met, we didn't think about, under which name we met. It is the style

of the music which comes out. No other group made such music. This is

Kluster-music,it is a style. It is an invention of Konrad Schnitzler

1969 Schnitzler/Freudigmann/Seidel & Friends, was before Achim

Roedelius came to the band and after.

 

I founded the music group Kluster after my exit 1969 from the group

GERÄUSCHE (Zodiak with A.Roedelius and Boris Schak). Between 1969 to

1972 I worked with different friends, with Tangerine Dreams among

others. With them I tried to perform the music of my imagination.

Finally Klaus Freudigmann and Wolfgang Seidel remained at the work

continuously over the years. In addition there were several actions

with A.Roedelius and D.Möbius where the LPs KLUSTER

Klopfzeichen,Osterei and Eruption were made. Instruments, amplifier

and effects I gave D. Moebius because he had had no own equipment. I

didn't want the music to remind of the normal. My criterias were not

folk music, not rock music, not pop songs and not dance music. The

idea for "Cluster" later "Kluster"(I wanted to avoid Americanisms) is

not only a name for a group but a form of music. I had amplifier,

instruments, contact mikes and effects, that could used by the others,

too. Klaus had tape machines and microphones. In addition he

constructed instruments and electronical sound generators, which made

the most undescribable sounds. Wolfgang had everything connected with

drum and base and in addition amplifier and effects.

 

Klaus had rooms where we could work out our music performances. The

tapes "Electric Meditation" with TD were made in one of those spaces.

Most of the performances happened with friends who took part in the

actions; therefore Conrad, Klaus,Wolfgang and friends. For special

activities we used the name ERUPTION. The idea was to make sounds

without melodies, sounds comparing to industrial noises. I had

different friends with me to play. No money was to be earned with this

music. No fame, to attain with it. By the way I'm not a musician; I'm

an intermedial artist and composer. With the different Kluster groups

we did some live concerts. 'Eruption' (Ausbruch) is the title of the

LP. Of that I had produced an edition of 100 LPs. Later the Gallery

Block had made another edition of 100 LPS of it for the 'Block Box'

with a label without Moebius' and Roedelius' names though. Later in

1996 Joe (Marginal Talent) produced a CD of it. I The group `Kluster-

was a conglomerate of total different players and artists over several

years. But all those years Klaus Freudigmann was involved sometimes as

player, or as sound engineer or even as inventor of instruments. It

was him, who taped the last Kluster Concert. Therefore he was named

equally to the others on the label. After and previously off the

splitting from R+M. I still did a lot of activities with the group

Kluster there was Kluster befor and after Achim Roedelius+Dieter

Moebius It was not popular music Kluster did. Not many people were

interested. Therefore, No photos of Kluster, or posters, or tickets,

or newspaper cuttings, or anything related left. It is about 35 years

ago.

 

Wolfgang Seidel about Kluster:

Summer of Love? Kluster was formed in West-Berlin - much closer to

Siberia than to San Francisco, Haight Ashbury and Golden Gate Park.

What came to Berlin with a two years delay were only the outer fringes

of the "Summer of Love". Its blossom would have died soon in the Cold

War breeze. And 1970 a lot of the optimism of the mid 60ies had

already ceased. It became obvious that creating a better world needs

more than flowers in your hair. But the political movements of the

late sixties were a child of the same optimism that fuelled the rapid

developments changing not only the material side of life but also

arts, music and the way people interacted. The new left and the hippie

movement where all these ideas concentrated wasn't the result of

poverty but build on the belief that with modern technology there is

enough for everybody. It's only a question of a fair distribution.

 

That optimism had a soundtrack that was based on the same technology.

From the electric guitar, reverb and echo units to the first

synthesizers, everything was welcome that sounded as if it came from

the future. Future meant space travel - so it's quite natural that the

first effects wildly used where those who send you to a space you've

never been before: artificial reverb and echo. A lot of people had

their first encounter with this new music at the movies - watching

scifi-film like Forbidden Planet with the electronic tonalities of

Louis and Bebe Barron (1956 - and their work wasn't called music to

avoid paying royalties and having to quarrel with the conservative

musicians trade unions). For a few years rock music was the most

popular of new sounds and for a lot of people the door opener. It was

one of the rare moments when you could be at the same time avant-garde

and mainstream. But this did not last long. Pop music quickly became

old music with new instruments when it turned into highly standardized

entertainment. And the use of the electric guitar developed rules like

any other traditional instrument.

 

Amongst that people that met to form Kluster were Klaus Freudigmann

and Wolfgang Seidel, who both grew disenchanted with pop music and

Conrad Schnitzler who came from a complete different direction as

sculptor. While the others discovered the new territories of sound via

psychedelic music Schnitzler was a fan of Stockhausen, Cage etc. but

was distracted by the highbrowed elite attitude with which this music

surrounded itself in Germany. What met was the self empowerment of

early rock music with the search for new sounds and structures of 20th

century avant-garde music.

 

That Kluster made simple music on DIY instruments, droning and banging

on one note for half an hour, did not mean we were into any kind of

primitivism. We hated the bongo playing hippie and his backward dreams

of tribal 'healthy' societies (forgetting that hunger, war and

oppression were not invented this year). To us the longing for sweet

melodies was a regressive refuge from a world that isn't sweet. We did

not want to go back. If the future was inevitable, we wanted to shape

it - at least sonically. That we preferred slow tempos sometimes gets

mistaken as 'dark'. We just gave every sound enough time to be

listened to. And we wanted to draw a line between us and the 'look I

am the fastest' guitar heroes that began to rule the stages. What we

did was getting rid of the schemes of pop and popular classic and find

out, what else we can do with our tools, polishing and lubricating

them for a future music.

 

But no matter how far your mind is in the future - your stomach is

still on earth and demands feeding. When things got tougher in the

70ies, the people that met under the labels Kluster and Eruption had

to look for ways to earn their living. Conrad Schnitzler started his

long solo voyage, Klaus Freudigmann took part in the squatter’s

movement, and others took ordinary jobs and surfaced now and then with

some new piece of music. What's left are some tapes and a few minutes

of film documenting an installation Conrad Schnitzler sat up at

Galerie Block (1970) reflecting the ideas behind Kluster. Violins that

had bought cheap from the flea market were equipped with contact

microphones and plugged into radios that had been mounted to the wall

as amplifiers. The visitors (hopefully no musicians) experimented

collective with the sounds from the violins hearing themselves in the

radio.

 

 

::... so kids, ..forget those silly warpoxsets, this is it. the it (!)

sumsumririri

yes i have heard.. the whole thing

 

and i like it, and its all unreleased, ..i think

 

so thats what its all about