HALLO HARMONIA

Although the German Top 40 of the late Sixties and early Seventies remained resolutely traditional and cringingly bland, elsewhere this was a highly creative time for German rock music. Beyond the safe confines of radio-friendly singles dwelt tribes of restlessly inventive and determinedly non-Anglo-American musicians creating some of the most interesting and exciting music of the era. 

The British music press caught on, not least through legendary DJ John Peel, with one print journalist allegedly coined the unflattering term 'Krautrock' to describe these confounding yet thrilling sounds. It is a daft label to describe such a diverse range of artists and styles, yet it stuck and so we’re stuck with it. Welcome, meine Damen and Herren, to the first LP by a Krautrock supergroup, Musik Von Harmonia.

Formed in 1973 when Neu! guitarist Michael Rother joined the gentlemen of Cluster—Hans-Joachim Rödelius and Dieter Möbius—Harmonia combined keyboard explorations with guitar momentum and repetitive beats to produce a record that anticipated modern ambient music and electronica in a unique and fascinating way.

The LP fades in with "Watussi", a loop of cheesy organ-synth over a fractured beat, some Rother guitar weaving away in the middle distance. Uncompromising in its repetitive intensity, this opening salvo bears no relation to the early Sixties dance craze; there’s way more machine menace than African abandon. When the pace of the second track slows to a stately base pulse with star drift snatches of melody, the contrast is marked. "Sehr Kosmisch" goes some way to demonstrating why listeners and reviewers attached words like 'space' and 'cosmic' to such drifting synthscapes. Yet it isn’t empty nor is it alien, there is a chilly beauty to the inexorable unfolding across the ten minute duration. 

"Sonnenshein" closes the first side. This piece has always suggested to me an alt-universe cousin of the opening track, having a similar structure but with more distortion and urgency.

"Dino" opens the second side at a gallop. Sharing some DNA with Neu!’s epochal "Hallogallo", it is a classic example of the German motorik beat and could well have inspired the entire career of later electronic/hybrid artists such as Stereolab. That infectious groove is dismantled in "Ohrwurm", suggesting that the band’s track titles were more than a little tongue-in-cheek. The name translates as "ear worm" but there is little to wriggle into your auditory canals here; it is the most experimental track on the LP, but hypnotic none the less. After this comes the swooning, melodic "Ahoi!", glowing with pastoral beauty. It very much signals the direction Rödelius would take in his solo career. 

Contrasts and contradictions abound on Musik Von Harmonia. It is like having a picnic on a grassy tree-lined riverbank then driving down an Autobahn in an articulated lorry with a couple of loose wheels. Something of this was captured in the irony of the cover image. Looking like a advertisement for cheap laundry liquid or some generic cleaning product, it presented a garish yet mundane graphic as far from evoking spaced out jamming as you could get. This cover declared "I’m functional, practical, totally un-cosmic". It looked Modern, with a capital Mmmm.

Half a century later, Musik Von Harmonia still sounds modern.

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Postscript

In April 2024 Grönland Records released a special 50th anniversary edition of Musik Von Harmonia that adds a bonus LP of what the cover calls "reworks". These include re-imaginings of some of the album tracks and other new creations inspired by the original pieces. It is an enjoyable and worthwhile companion disc.

© Bruce Jenkins − August 2024