De Luxe

Harmonia's superb 1974 debut Musik Von Harmonia had set a high standard for the group to follow with any subsequent work, and, as it had been such a boldly adventurous outing in the first place it might have seemed they would have difficulty in showing any kind of musical progress on the album that followed. That they did indeed attempt to build on the work of their first album - and the work done by Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius in Cluster - says much for the talent and audacity of the three men involved.

What we have here is an album made by three people very much at the top of their collective game. Much like Musik Von Harmonia, this album blends Moebius and Roedelius' pretty and adventurous synthesiser work with Rother's carefully created guitar lines. The title track unfolds over nearly ten minutes of throbbing electronic melodies, using slabs of Rother's treated guitar to emphasise - and contrast with - melodic progressions. However, unlike on the previous album, there are vocals here, a mantra-like repetition of "immer wieder rauf und runter / einmal drauf und einmal drunter / immer wieder hin und her / kreuz und quer, mal leicht mal schwer", seeming to reiterate the almost childlike simplicity of the supporting keyboard melody. In fact, the lyrics themselves seem to add to this sense of simplicity, referring to repeated, simple movement. But despite this, the subtle electronic rhythms and waves of synthesiser noise only add to the song's sweep, taking a relatively straightforward melody on some kind of intergalactic trip.

Another major difference to the band's debut album is the addition of a human drummer for some of the songs - Mani Neumeier of Guru Guru doing the honours - adding a different rhythmic sensibility to music that had hitherto been driven mainly by electronic beats. He plays a significant role on both 'Walky-Talky' - where he plays a subtly repetitive supporting rhythm, as minor key guitar figures, keyboards and harsh treated guitar riffs circle and interact around his musical anchor - and 'Monza', where he plays in a style not dissimilar to NEU!'s Klaus Dinger. On this latter track, Harmonia sound as much like NEU! as they ever would, Neumeier attempting to mimic Dinger's famous 'motorik' beat, and Rother playing his guitar in a way that is very reminiscent of his outings with NEU!. The main difference is the widespread use of squalls of synthesiser noise and the repeating of the lyrics from 'Deluxe', but this time more in the style of a cheery singalong.

The remainder of the album is more redolent of Musik Von Harmonia; driven largely by synths, sequencers and drum machines, it matches both the ambient beauty of the first album's best moments on 'Notre Dame' and its airy spaciousness on 'Gollum' (where Neumeier again adds understated and sympathetic support). The closing track, 'Kekse' ('Biscuits'), is another very Cluster-ish moment; it starts with a typically pretty keyboard melody and a rhythm that seems like it was written by a five year old as additional melodies are added to it and various squeaks and squawks bubble to the surface, eventually subsuming the melodies and allowing the album to fade to its close in a muddle of running water and the chirruping, croaking sounds of nature.

While this album doesn't quite match the inspiration of the first Harmonia album, it deserves to be applauded for the attempts that it makes to develop the band's musical palette - the addition of a human drummer for instance - and further efforts to make songs that sound like they are a true fusion of NEU! and Cluster's respective sounds. For this listener though, it lacks the sense of wonder that seems to be present on Musik Von Harmonia. Having said that, this is an undeniably great and underrated album - as pretty much all the records made by Rother or Moebius and Roedelius around this time are - and as such deserves far more attention than it has ever received, because this level of musical adventure and invention doesn't come along very often.