#roedelius

Yet Roedelius was the most unlikely of all Krautrockers. Born in 1934, a few years before his comrades, he already had a crazy German-German history spanning three regimes behind him when he decided in West Berlin in 1967 to permanently switch from the healing arts to the tonal arts. His father was a dentist and, through that, came from Berlin to Lusatia before the war. The child star in UFA films had indeed already made his first appearances but still had the Hitler Youth ahead of him.

After he was trained as a nurse and physiotherapist in the GDR (East Germany), he opposed the state and conscription into the NVA (National People's Army). He was imprisoned instead of beginning medical studies. He was put in prison with criminals and had to perform forced labor. Nevertheless, after his release, he pursued his profession for a few more years before a summons to appear at the Stasi moved him to a hasty and final departure to West Berlin.

Because his exam was not recognized there, he landed in 1967 in the environment of an artist scene that founded the Zodiak Free Arts Lab in Kreuzberg. With experimental musician Conrad Schnitzler and Dieter Moebius, he founded Kluster (without Schnitzler, he operated with Moebius as Cluster until 1979, and without him later as Qluster). After five albums ranging between industrial and everyday noises, sine and cosine waves, something like a melody can be heard for the first time on "Zuckerzeit" from 1974.

The American music portal Allmusic considers Cluster the most important and consistently underrated space rock formation of the seventies. After drug-filled years in the exciting electronic scene and the move from Berlin, they came to rest in the Lower Saxon forest and started the project Harmonia with Kraftwerk and Neu! guitarist Michael Rother, which radiated internationally and created milestones of Krautrock on two albums and a later-released live recording.

However, Roedelius left his paradise on earth for the Lower Austrian homeland of his wife when more and more leukemia cases appeared near a [local] nuclear power plant. His three children grew up near Baden near Vienna. Roedelius curates an avant-garde festival there.

The collaboration with Moebius ended for a while with the move; Roedelius found generous supporters in Austria and presented a rich ambient body of work in the eighties—somewhat more piano-heavy than before. The autodidact remains active to this day, cooperating with artists ranging from Tim Story to Stefan Schneider (To Rococo Rot) to Cole. His countless albums in various constellations stand out and always sound like Roedelius: delicate, connected to nature, impressionistic. On this Saturday, he turns ninety years old.