Harmonia - ' Live 1974'
(Groenland Records) Catalog no: CDGRON73
Harmonia - ' Live 1974'
(Groenland Records) Catalog no: CDGRON73
From Aural Innovations #39 (May 2008)
Here's one archive live performance I never thought I'd see. Most of you
krautrock fans are quite familiar with Michael Rother's post-Neu! band - Harmonia,
where he had joined up with both Roedelius and Moebius of Cluster. I do seem
to remember reading, I believe it was an article in Alternative Press or perhaps
Spin magazine, back when the long-lost just-discovered ' Tracks & Traces'
CD was released, that Harmonia had in fact performed a handful of live gigs and
someone in their camp was attempting to locate a live recording of one of those
shows. As it turns out, ' Live 1974' is a concert of all previously unreleased
Harmonia material. Very nice. This five track improvised (I'm assuming) performance
took place on March 23, 1974 at the Penny Station Club (a former railway station)
located in Griessem, Germany. I read somewhere that Rother had recalled there
must've been about fifty patrons attending this shindig although you don't hear
a sound from the stoned crowd. However, rest assure the quality of the music
is none other than first rate. Here's the low down track by track, as I was
totally impressed with the opener - the raga tripping "Schaumberg",
the familiar sounding seventeen-minute "Veteranissimo", the out-standing
"Arabesque" (loved the guitar noodling and synthesizer wizardry),
the somewhat stagnating fifteen-minute epic "Holta Polta" and was
nearly blown away by the memorable cosmic magic of "Ueber Ottenstein".
Personnel: Michael Rother - guitar, piano & organ, Hans-Joachim Roedelius
- piano & electric organ and Dieter Moebius - synthesizer & electronic
percussion. Fans of such krautrock artists like Golem, Ash Ra Tempel, Comic
Jokers, Galactic Explorers and early Tangerine Dream will eat this title up.
So extremely highly recommend, it makes my head hurt. Plus, I hear that Harmonia
has reunited recently and are playing live shows once again. Check out their
MySpace page and look for live video snippets on YouTube. Guaranteed to make your
day.
Visit the record label web site at: www.groenland.com
Reviewed by Mike Reed