Cluster
Qua
Label: Bureau B
Genre: Electronica / Ambient / Experimental
Availability
- LP €19.99 Out of Stock
<p>Moebi had brought along some of his wonderfully quirky loops, but the rest was simply an embrace of the technology and toys that they found in the studio. Old drum machines, a gaudy orange Farfisa (solos on which Achim would always seem to center around the one temperamentally unreliable note), cutting edge keyboards and processors, a cheap Yamaha Omnichord.<br />The results were, to my ears at least, stunning. Seventeen miniature worlds, some icy, some warm, all infused with that Cluster elusiveness and unpredictability. Playful, dark, funny, human, Qua captures that deceptive Cluster heartbeat - unmistakably modern but utterly timeless. Adorned later with Moebi's slyly nonsensical titles (Putoil for example, which features a "solo" made from Moebi's recording of our squeaky bathroom door), and his cheerfully Dada cover, Qua's evolution was a true privilege to witness.<br />Achim told me recently that he considers Qua the perfect swansong for Cluster. At the time, though, the album's freshness and open-ended creativity seemed like simply another alluring dispatch from a conversation that would pick up again many more times, as it had for four decades. But Moebi's passing in 2015 gives Qua a finality that contradicts the music's transitory, slippery otherworldliness. The album's closing track Imtrerion, with Moebi's deeply stirring loop embellished ever so gracefully with Achim's spare accompaniment, never fails to choke me up.<br /><strong></strong><em></em></p>