Top 100 Albums of the 1970s - #63 - Cluster - Zuckerzeit (1974)

Before they were Cluster, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius were Kluster, a German experimental band that churned out three albums of noisy, metallic, experimental music full of tape loops and cacophony before the name change. C is inherently more gentle than K, and the new Cluster reflected that, although their first album was still mostly spacey drones and electronic swoops with little resemblance to what most people consider music (they didn't even bother with song titles, simple using the track lengths as identifiers).

By the time they got around to Zuckerzeit, which translates as "Sugar Time", the duo had started leaning more towards traditional song structures and actual melodies. They ditched Krautrock legend Conny Plank as producer and brought on board Michael Rother, another Krautrock legend famous for his work with Neu!, and the difference is immediately apparent.

None of this is to say that Zuckerzeit is in any way normal. The music is still wildly experimental and sounds distinctly homemade, constructed as it is from clunky analogue synthesizers that are charming in their own way, but not exactly built for slick, highly produced pop singles. Still, the gang gives it their best attempt.

The songwriting duties are split evenly here between Moebius and Roedelius, and there is an immediately evident difference in their styles. Roedelius has a gift for melody, and embraces the chugging Motorik rythms Michael Rother is known for. His compositions like Hollywood, Marzipan, and Heisse Lippen sound almost radio-friendly.

By contrast, Moebius is obviously the more experimental of the two. His tracks seem to focus on playing around with loops and rhythms. This makes them less immediately accessible to modern listeners, but I find them a fascinating counterpart to the honey-sweet electro-pop of Roedlius. Although Zuckerzeit is a distinctly electronic record, the Moebius track James is mainly built from guitar loops.

The albums longest track, Rota Riki, is a Moebius composition that I find particularly interesting.  It sounds an awful lot like the early sequencer experiments done by Raymond Scott in the 1950s. It's an abstract study in synthesized rhythms and changes in tape speed, and while Scott's work was used for sound effects in advertisements, here the same style of music is presented for active listening.

Zuckerzeit is undeniably crude by today's standards, but that doesn't make it any less fun or charming. Additionally, its influence on later electronic music is pretty clearly felt. I would be hard to imagine modern IDM or ambient electronica without pioneers like Cluster.