APE wrote:
Yes! They made it all without sequencers, which gives it that wonky feel. It's a great album - ignore all the tent-dwellers pushing the boring ambient poo.
Why on earth would they use sequencers?
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"In 1973, the pair left the industrial environs of Berlin and Hamburg to live in the rural German village of Forst and establish a private studio. They were joined by guitarist Michael Rother of the German avant-pop group NEU!. Cluster's next release, Zuckerzeit (1974), (recorded with instruments "borrowed" from Rother while he was away) clearly reflected the change of locale.
The short, tuneful tracks are outright toe-tappers in comparison to the foreboding sounds of their previous albums. With persistent rythmn-machine grooves at the front of the mix on almost every track, Zuckerzeit reflected and perhaps anticipated the electronic pop sound that would soon be popularized by Kraftwerk on their album Autobahn.
Moebius and Roedelius also collaborated with Rother as Harmonia on two albums, Muzik von Harmonia (1974) and Harmonia de luxe (1975) blending Cluster's avant-garde tendencies with NEU!'s pop sound. Both Zuckerzeit and especially Muzik von Harmonia, made a great impression on recent Roxy Music departee Brian Eno who contacted the group and played a live date with them at the legendary Fabrik in Hamburg.
In 1976 Eno and Harmonia recorded a studio album [Harmonia '76] that clearly presages such future relases as Eno's Another Green World and Cluster's 1976 album, Sowiesoso.
Sowiesoso marked the beginning of a nearly exclusive relationship with Hamburg's Sky Records that would last eight years. Though it was recorded in just two days, the album introduced a fully realized marriage of electronic sounds with a pastoral warmth."
http://www.thing.de/delektro/www-eng/cluhist.html