The Quietus, "From Neu! To Kraftwerk: Football, Motorik And The Pulse Of Modernity" by John Duran, published January 6th, 2010.
TAZ. "Grönland schreibt noch keine schwarzen Zahlen". Feature (in German) by Benjamin Weber on Grönland, Herbert Grönemeyer´s small record label that has released albums of Michael Rother´s group projects NEU!, Harmonia and Harmonia & Eno ´76. Published on 17 Dec 2009.
Style And The Family Tunes, issue 4/4 2009: "Krautrock - Kraftwerk, NEU!, Harmonia - Die Vorgeschichte eines aktuellen Nachlebens". Feature in German and English by Sami Khatib on Michael Rother´s projects und collaborations of the 70s including an interview by the author with Michael Rother und photos from his studio in Forst.
Ink19, "Michael Rother - Harmonia Convergence". Feature on the album "Tracks and Traces" by Harmonia & Eno ´76 plus a long interview by Matthew Moyer with Michael Rother. Published in December 2009.
MOJO Magazine (UK). "Tracks and Traces" by Harmonia & Brian Eno ´76 was selected by Andrew Male for MOJO´s list of "Reissues Of The Year" 2009.
SOUNDS (Germany), "Der Pionier im Spielzeugland", feature on Michael Rother´s music and his projects NEU! and Harmonia (in German) by Chris Wiesner with quotes from an interview. Published on 06 November 2009 in edition No. VII of the magazine "Sounds by Rolling Stone".
The Quietus, "Kosmische Polymath Michael Rother: Neu! Harmonia, Eno, Bowie & Making Peace With Dinger", long interview by Dr. Rock with Michael Rother. Published on 03rd November 2009.
BLURT Online. An exclusive interview (in 2 parts) with Michael Rother by Wilson Neate, published on 17 September 2009.
CLASH Music, "Personality Clash", Harmonia Vs Fujiya and Miyagi. Michael Rother and David Best talk about music and their projects Harmonia and Fujiya and Miyagi.
BLURT Online by Fred Mills about an interview with Michael Rother about NEU!.
Exclaim, long interview by Brock Thiessen with Michael Rother on his current projects and coming releases.
UNCUT Magazine, UK, Oct. 2009: "My Life in Music" with Michael Rother and a review of the album Tracks and Traces by Harmonia & Eno ´76.
MOJO Magazine, The Wire, Record Collector (all UK, Sep. 2009): reviews of the album Tracks and Traces by Harmonia & Eno ´76
RAVE Magazine (Australia), 10th August 2009, interview by Matt Thrower with Michael Rother on his current projects and the compilation "Brand NEU!".
Pioniere aus Duesseldorf, article in German written by Tim Caspar Boehme and published in TAZ on 28th July 2009.
dB Magazine (Australien). Written by Patrick Lang. Article about Michael Rother and the compilation "Brand NEU!" and featuring excerpts from an interview by the author with Michael Rother. Published in dB Magazine, Australia, # 471 of 14th July 2009.
The Quietus. Ben Hewitt writes about the new album "Three Fact Fader" by the Engineers. For their track "Clean Coloured Wire" the British band used a sample of Harmonia´s track "Watussi" from the album "Musik von Harmonia".
Exclaim.ca. Brock Thiessen writes about the rerelease of the album "Tracks and Traces" from the 1976 collaboration of Harmonia with Brian Eno which will be out in September 2009 on Groenland Records.
1LIVE. Article (in German) by Frank Karch about the compilation "Brand NEU!" with excerpts from his interview with Michael Rother.
The Dwarf.com.au. Review of the compilation "Brand NEU!" by Nat Salvo, 26 June 2009.
"The In Kraut", an article on NEU!, written by Nathaniel Cramp with excerpts taken from an interview by the author with Michael Rother and published in NME (New Musical Express U.K., issue of 29 May 2009).
"Auch Oasis ehren NEU! - die Paten aus Deutschland". The article written by Markus Wesselmann (in German) on the compilation "Brand NEU! was published in Der Tagesspiegel on 24 May 2009 and features quotes from an recent interview by the author with Michael Rother.
The Guardian - Music Weekly of 15 May 2009 by Paul MacInnes and Rosie Swash. The podcast features interviews by Rosie Swash with Jarvis Cocker and Michael Rother.
"Hofknicks vor den Krautrock-Königen", an article (in German) on NEU! and the compilation "Brand NEU!", written by Christoph Dallach and published on 15 May 2009 in SPIEGEL Online.
Q Magazine (UK), issue June 2009: "How To Buy: Krautrock". Article and recommendations by Richard Harris.
"Musical tribute to krautrock band NEU!"
, an article by Richard Clayton published on 10 May 2009 in Times Online on behalf of the release of the compilation "Brand NEU!" and featuring excerpts from an interview with Michael Rother. Some of the musicians who feel inspired by NEU! and who have contributed tracks to the album explain their views on NEU!.
The Independent, review on the compilation "Brand NEU!" of 02 May 2009 by Andy Gill.
"Kraut Of This World", published in AU Magazine, Northern Ireland, (issue #56, June 2009) and written by Chris Jones. The article on Krautrock features excerpts from a new interview with Michael Rother. Musicians and bands who feel influenced by NEU! (i.e. Faris Badwan/The Horrors, David Holmes, Benjamin Power/Fuck Buttons and David Best/Fujiya & Miyagi) give comments on the question why the experimental music from Germany of the early 70s still inspires them today.
Michael Rother talks about his projects NEU! and Harmonia in an interview conducted by Michael Kucyk for the first issue of
Mountain Fold Music Magazine, Australia, published in April 2009 and featuring new photos of Michael Rother by Stefan Marx. More information at TwoThousand.
"Krautrock". An eight page long feature on NEU!, Harmonia and other experimental German bands of the early 70s. Written by John Doran and published in Record Collector in February 2009. The article also features parts of an interview by the author with Michael Rother.
Selected reviews on ATP Australia and on Harmonia´s concerts of January 2009 in down under: DiS (Drowned in Sound), by Rebecca Pellman on ATP Australia Rave Magazine, by Andrew Tuttle on Harmonia´s concert in Brisbane Rhythms, by Brian Wise on ATP Mt Buller Gee muses, by Mike Gee on ATP Australia.
For links to more articles and interviews in German on the Michael Rother website please see here. (created:
07/01/2010 )
New booking contact for Michael Rother Peter Fast, Berlin/Germany, is the new booking contact for Michael Rother concerts and live projects in Europe for 2010. For enquiries: p@peterfast.com. (created:
08/11/2009 )
German/French tv station Arte features Krautrock
On October 30th, 2009, at 11.15 pm (CET) the Arte tv magazine Tracks will broadcast a feature on the growing interest in German bands of the 70s like i.e. Michael Rother´s projects NEU! and Harmonia. The feature includes interviews with Michael Rother and the Krautrock fans Fujiya & Miyagi, Tortoise and DJ Riton.
Information (in German) by Arte tv on their feature: Krautrock.
(French page). (created:
31/10/2009 )
BBC documentary film "Krautrock - The Rebirth Of Germany"
On 23 October 2009 the BBC will broadcast a documentary film on German music of the early 70s: "Krautrock - The Rebirth Of Germany". For the documentary Ben Whalley and his BBC team filmed and interviewed Michael Rother in his studio in Forst by the river Weser. More information coming soon.
See a clip on NEU! with Michael Rother (due to copyright restrictions the clip is only available in the UK, sorry):
Krautrock – The Rebirth Of Germany
New series
Friday 23 October
9.00-10.00pm BBC FOUR
This documentary film examines how a radical generation of Krautrockers rebuilt a new German musical identity out of the cultural ruins of war.
Overlooked in their own country, these bands were grouped under the unsympathetic heading of Krautrock by an inquisitive British music press, when Dad's Army and war jokes were the lingua franca of the times. Nearly all of the bands objected to the term, apart from when it helped to shift records.
Today, Krautrock is one of the coolest influences any band aiming at credibility can drop.
Devotees include The Fall, Franz Ferdinand, Radiohead and Kasabian.
In 1968, the world was in the grip of a youthful revolution, and nowhere were the stakes higher than in Germany. Despite a post-war economic boom, the youth of the country felt that nothing had changed for a generation growing up in the aftermath of war. Power was still in the hands of an older generation and Germany's once magnificent artistic culture lay trashed and looted, much of it sullied by Nazi associations. For young people in cities like Berlin, Dusseldorf, Cologne and Munich, it was time for something new.
Between 1968 and 1977, bands including Neu!, Faust, Can and Kraftwerk looked beyond Anglo-American pop to create some of the most radical and original sounds ever heard in the country. The experiments of Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk and Cluster would give the world its first taste of electronica.
By the late Seventies, some famous English and American ears took notice as David Bowie, Brian Eno and Iggy Pop decamped to Germany in an attempt to tap into the Zeitgeist. Meanwhile, in a studio overlooking the Berlin Wall, Iggy and Bowie would record Low, Heroes and Lust For Life, taking the sound and feel of Krautrock to the bank and to the world at large. (created:
05/10/2009 )
Harmonia and Brian Eno collaboration "Tracks and Traces" to be reissued
18th September 2009 will see the rerelease of the album "Tracks and Traces" by Harmonia and Brian Eno. The new version of "Tracks and Traces" features three previously unreleased tracks dating from their 1976 collaboration.
The cd booklet contains liner notes written by Stephen Iliffe and photos showing Brian Eno together with Michael Rother, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius in Harmonia..s studio in Forst. The album will be available in Europe, USA, Japan and Australia on Gronland Records .
More information on Michael Rother´s MySpace page here.
Front cover (promo version)
Read the official Groenland Records press info on "Tracks and Traces" by Harmonia & Eno ’76:
Magical moments cannot be fabricated at the push of a button, they simply come to be. In the late summer of 1976 such a moment of revelation befell the musicians of Harmonia as if by chance. The band had made two albums up to then, Musik von Harmonia (1974), and Deluxe (1975). Both works are now considered classics of krautrock and electronic music; nonetheless, afterwards the creative core went its separate ways. All three musicians were tireless and set to work on solo projects. Michael Rother would later release Flammende Herzen, Hans-Joachim Roedelius Durch die Wüste and Dieter Moebius Lilienthal. But then Brian Eno waltzed onto the scene. He had long been aware of Harmonia, and had even spontaneously joined in on a session with the band at a concert in the Fabrik in Hamburg in 1974. The musicians were not shy about expressing their interest in further collaboration and exchanged numbers. Two years later Eno called the members of Harmonia and asked, “Is now a good time?” The answer, “Well, not exactly – we kind of broke up – but sure, as good a time as any.”.
At that time Eno was on his way to Montreux to work with David Bowie on the album „Low“. A man well-traveled in the beau monde of rock music, he entered the studio in the rural hamlet of Forst in Germany’s Weserbergland region with no pretenses. To quote Rother, “Eno didn’t come across like an aloof pop star at all; on the contrary, he was very pleasant and inquisitive. We worked as equal partners and were a collective that simply wanted to make music, with no thoughts of commercial success and without the pressure of having to record an album. To me those are the best working conditions you can have.” “Eno brought a great intellect, boundless pleasure in making music and a font of experience in the realm of popular music, and that clearly opened a door that was already closed,” adds Roedelius. Despite this, the general public heard nothing from these recordings for a long time; in part because they were not made for commercial purposes, but also because Eno’s original tapes were long considered lost. Luckily, Roedelius and Rother had both made copies of the four-track tapes.
Out of the blue in 1997 Harmonia released the album Tracks & Traces, which included clips from the legendary 1976 recording sessions. Roedelius probed the material in his possession and had it remixed using an elaborate technical process. “I did nothing more than technically remaster the original material (one of the three four-track tapes that we had recorded) with Austrian sound engineers and enhance it so it would be digestible for other listeners besides ourselves,” recalls Roedelius. Rother explains more precisely, “Due to discord within the band, Achim put the music together on his own. The new tracks recorded in 1997 are therefore an expression of his personality in their atmospheric emphasis. Möbi and I weren’t happy that Achim went it alone, but we had to admit that he had done a hell of a job. All the same, we came to a consensus on the title and the artwork, so Möbi and I were in a sense involved (laughing). But you really can’t say a bad word about the music, it’s wonderful.” One can do nothing but agree with that assessment. In “Vamos Compañeros” a brazen groove hisses to the fore in the form of a looped steam engine sound. The idyllic detour provided in “By the Riverside” abruptly gives way to an abstract experimental phase with a gloomy undertone. A cautionary finger is raised admonishing, “Don’t get lost on Lüneburg Heath.” After a “Weird Dream” the mood again brightens and the listener is treated to warmer, pop-like harmonies and the slide guitar familiar from Eno’s later works, although, in this case, it is Rother playing it. But, of course, it does not end there.
Rother himself had a copy he had had stashed away in his studio since 1976 as well. One day he decided to digitize the 27 fragments contained on it. Although the material could have filled an entire album, they agreed to add three of the songs to the reissue of the 1997 album. “Initially I asked myself what made sense musically; which of the many tracks I particularly liked and which reflected the broad musical scope of our collaboration with Brian Eno the best. The next step was about how best to integrate the selected tracks into the existing album. Instead of the normal practice of tacking them on to the end of the album as bonus tracks, I proposed changing the structure of the album and the order of the tracks. Luckily everyone involved agreed on that.” The album now builds up gradually with the intro “Welcome” and the second track “Atmosphere” before proceeding to “Vamos Compañeros”, from whence it gains the trusted momentum of the original release. It is rounded out with “Aubade”, a track that reinforces the impression of a reconciliatory conclusion.
As they say, good things take time. And now, 33 years after these recordings were created, we finally have an all-around satisfying version of a long believed lost treasure of the krautrock era. In all likelihood this project signals the end of the Harmonia era. Although the band reformed two years ago and performed some highly acclaimed concerts in Berlin, Great Britain, the USA and Australia in the wake of the release of the celebrated concert recording Live 1974, Rother and Roedelius both jointly declared that there would be no continuation of the live performances – even if doing so would be lucrative for them in many ways. But the 1970s German avant-garde never let itself be a slave to commercial interests. Its credo remains as it was then: Good music is what is born of the unadulterated soul of the artist, not something fabricated with strategies and intellectual games, whatever their nature. And, as one can tell from Harmonia & Eno 1976 – Tracks and Traces, quality does not lose its luster in such conditions – not even with the passing of decades. So, please, seek out the traces!
Harmonia & Eno ’76 / Tracks and Traces: Cat. No. CDGRON102 (created:
09/09/2009 )
