Clúster
Argentine singer
Buenos Aires • b. 2003
Biography
Clúster didn't start with synthesizers. They started with a contact mic and a pile of scrap metal in a West Berlin gallery. Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius were part of the Zodiak Free Arts Lab crew, which was less of a music scene and more of a collective nervous breakdown. Their early work as Kluster—with a 'K'—was purely industrial noise recorded on a shoestring budget for the Schwann label. It’s the sound of a construction site being fed through a distortion pedal, and honestly, it’s a tough listen if you aren't in the mood for sonic warfare. Everything changed when they moved to the rural village of Forst and swapped the chaos for a Farfisa organ and a cheap drum machine. They dropped the 'K' and brought in Michael Rother from NEU! for a stretch, which finally gave the noise some structural integrity. By the time they hooked up with Brian Eno in the late '70s, they weren't just making background music; they were inventing the vocabulary for half the ambient and synth-pop records that clogged up the bins in the eighties. They could be maddeningly repetitive, but when they locked into a groove, they found a warmth that the Kraftwerk robots could never touch.