Cluster & Eno

Cluster & Eno

(Water)

Record Review by Daniel Brody

As the grandfather of ambient electronic music, Brian Eno has fashioned a career discography full of dreamy soundscapes and exquisitely produced classic rock albums such as U2's The Joshua Tree and the Talking Heads' Remain In Light. Cluster was a krautrock duo that sprang from the same scene as bands like Neu! and Can. Ambient electronica and krautrock share many of the same features: droning textures, repetitive motifs, and loose song structures. On paper then, Cluster & Eno read like the honeymoon period of a marriage.

How much one likes this album depends on one's proximity to a digital recording software manual. You might be a Cluster & Eno fan if...using ProTools too much gave you a nasty case of carpal tunnel! This is definitely music for the heads out there who know what effects Cluster & Eno use, and who, if they had to in a pinch, could give a PowerPoint presentation on how the album was made. For laypeople who don't think about those processes as much whilst listening to music, the album can be tedious and make you stir crazy. When the sixth track, "Selange," gives the listener some beats to chew on, it feels like a cool glass of lemonade in an arid audio desert. There's not a whole lot of flash and pizzazz; "Die Bunge" and "Fur Luise" have a classic Eno beauty to them, but the rest of the album sounds like it was made in a dank, windowless German basement, with Cluster & Eno locking themselves inside until an album got made.

Only Eno fanatics, Aphex Twin wannabes, and Germanophiles need purchase this record; the rest of us can make do with Eno's Music For Airports for those times that a soundtrack is required for staring into space.