Cluster: Sowiesoso (50th anniversary edition, 180g) [BUREAU B]

Why you'll love it

This Bureau B 50th anniversary edition is pressed on 180g vinyl and numbered, limited to 1,000 copies. Pitchfork gave the album 9.2, and Julian Cope put it in his Krautrock Top 50.

This edition

• 50th anniversary edition
• 180g vinyl
• Numbered, limited to 1,000 copies
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

By 1976 Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius had swapped West Berlin for the farmhouse quiet of Forst, and it shows. Recorded in just two days at the Harmonia studio there and mixed by co-producer Conny Plank at his studio in Wolperath, Sowiesoso was their first album for Sky Records, the label they'd call home for the next decade.

The harsh electronics of their early records have melted into something warm and pastoral: gentle keyboard loops, soft percussion and the occasional murmured vocal. The title track sets the easy pace, "Halwa" and "Dem Wanderer" drift through the countryside, and "Zum Wohl" and "In Ewigkeit" stretch out into near-stillness. You can hear Brian Eno's influence from their Harmonia days in its calm, unhurried sound.

The Quietus called it an electronic suite to pastoral living, which is exactly right. Sowiesoso is German for anyway, about as relaxed a title as an album has ever had, and the music agrees with it.

Also at Kops: more Cluster on vinyl · browse Electronic

Tracklist

Listen

On Bureau B / Sky (cat# BB039), a reissue of the 1976 album.