Harmonia
Musik von Harmonia
CD / 8 tracks / 42.35 mins
Play Sample:   56K Dialup   Broadband
Download Sample:   500K   1.5Mb
(Excerpt from track(s) 'Dino')
'Watussi' is an excellent opener as it is an ideal demonstration of what 'Harmonia' are all about. They comprised Roedelius and Moebius from Cluster plus Michael Rother, an early member of Kraftwerk but more importantly for this project a member of Neu! In many ways you can see elements of both Cluster and Neu! here but the melding of the two genuinely created something new. Electronic drums mix with a melodic loop and slow silken lead. The overall feel is extremely synthetic and in 1974 it must have seemed somewhat radical and mechanical sounding. Growly guitar type drones reverberate underneath whilst all manner of other electronic detail comes and goes over the mesmeric pulsating backdrop. It's best to just let your body and mind go with the flow. Even today it sounds rather unique. I wonder how easy it would be for the modern Electronic Musician to create something quite like this.

'Sehr Kosmisch' calms things down a little but this is no simple drifty piece. A very deep slow bass throb can be heard underpinning everything. It's very much like a heartbeat around which calming washes of sound flow, some more melodic than others, being a mixture of strings with a metallic edge and very processed undulating organ type sounds. These sounds swell and subside as bass rumbles shudder underneath. The heartbeat has now departed to be replaced by another rhythm. The range of frequencies is tremendous and should really provide a good workout for your hi fi. 'Sonnenschein' is as rhythmically powerful as the opener, if not more so, coming over as a vast wall of sound but without the softening electronic washes. Heady exciting stuff. 'Dino' also develops into a rhythmic groove but maybe a little gentler than the previous track and certainly more melodic with some nice restrained guitar colouring. I find it impossible to keep my feet and head still whilst listening to this one, the beats are just too infectious, the melodies simple but exquisite. 'Ohrwurm' snarls into life. This is the weirdest collage of sounds so far, it sounds like abused string instruments being attacked by buzzing cyborg bees!

After this rather strange interlude 'Ahoi!' takes things in the opposite direction. Gentle little guitar licks float in the air. All is then change as melodic loops combine with a rather chaotic backing to give us a gentle shake back to wakefulness before moving to 'Veterano'. This track is a little similar to 'Dino' but with a slightly harder edge to the rhythms. To my ears 'Hausmusik' is the most experimental track here and didn't really work as well as some of the others but overall this is an album that meant a lot to me when I first heard it and still does. Quite how they managed to create these awesome sounds with the equipment they had available is something of a mystery. There is a magic to these recordings. I know no other Electronic Musician who is producing albums today that sounds quite like it and yet it doesn't come over as dated. Modern musicians might be able to replicate the structure (though that can be quite complex) though I reckon it would be a real challenge to also recreate the sound palette. (DL)

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