KLOPFZEICHEN

The second side of "An Electric Storm" and sides three and most of four of "Tago Mago" are all proto-industrial, but Kluster had to be the first project to wish to make music that actually sounded like machines. Holed up in a church, free to enlist the help of choir singers, they threw down three albums in a short amount of time, and then lost Conrad Schnitzler and so renamed themselves Cluster and balanced more down to earth electronics with more usual krautrock. But the damage was done and four years later we had two groups of punks calling themselves Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire who seemingly wanted to make music specifically to make girls run in terror. So as an industrial person as much as a proghead I owe just about everything to these three crazed geniuses and their lovely, word twisting singer. And "Klopfzeichen" stands as an excellent album in its own right, and stands the test of time as well. There isn't too much to the music, with it being carefully constructed loops of dour, gloomy, at times mechanical electronic soundscapes that aren't the most lively. But it still works, creating something between dark ambient and "After Cease To Exist" a whole six years before the latter and a whole eleven before an example of the former were themselves put to wax. And it was groundbreaking. Especially in light of its year of creation: Kraftwerk were still doing krautrock at this point; electronic music in general was still in its infancy. On top of that Runge's singing adds a strange and eerie quality to the record, especially early on as the band multi-tracks her on top of herself several times over. And as previously mentioned, her lyrics are heavy on some juicy wordplay. This isn't so much a milestone of prog or even of non-industrial electronica, but it is a lost classic and a major foundation for a whole other genre. Industrial people need to listen to this to get in touch with their roots; prog electronic fans need to listen to this to get a whole new experience under their belt.