kluster: zwei osterei

Zwei Osterei is the second half of a recording session which took place on a single day in November 1970. Klopfzeichen is the first part. Yet the uncompromising Zwei Osterei surpasses the earlier Klopfzeichen album by some distance in terms of its harsh noisiness and near brutal sonic attacks. Everything that was left of the revolutionary verve of the late 1960s seems to have been distilled into this music with a burning glass: aesthetic destruction to liberate the mind and ears for utopian designs; the definitive coalescence of art and pop into something completely new; unbridled musical freedom, coupled with a love of noise. Zwei Osterei is all of this. How unsettling Kluster's music must have been for the professional avant-garde of the period (music journalists, critics etc.). Kluster turned pretty much everything associated with so-called progressive pop music on its head. No song structure, no rhythm, little more than muffled pulsation. No heroic poses, no transfigured gestures on stage. This attitude, or rather anti-attitude is particularly in evidence on track two of Zwei Osterei. Still no electronic instruments, just guitar, drums and non-musical sonic sources as Kluster unleash a sound spectacle which anticipates the industrial artists who emerged some years later. Conny Plank played a pivotal role as sound engineer with the relatively limited studio equipment available to him. His meticulous reading of the band's intentions led to the creation of pure, electroacoustic music -- loud, violent, real-time improvisation. Shrill feedback, tape echo loops and layers of sonic cascades dominate this section of the album. This was no longer psychedelic, nor "progressive." It was more like sonic warfare, waged against all musical categories and conventions. Many a listener posed the rather helpless question "What is that supposed to be??... art? Music? A happening?" According to statements made by the band, none of the above. It was simply Kluster. A lofty claim which Zwei Osterei fulfills one hundred percent. Translated, the statement is nothing more nor less than a challenge to ignore the accumulated theory of art and music, with all the risks and side effects this entails. Back in 1970, Kluster could not have known that they were setting in motion a process which would endure until the present day. But they no doubt hoped as much.