Chance Meeting
Friday October 25th, 2024 with Heavy Ben
Roedelius: music therapy and the importance of Nazis not controlling your radio station

Chance meeting on a cluster of a self-portrait and undoctrination CKCU's Funding Drive starts today. Please contribute! https://www.canadahelps.org/en/charities/CKCU/p2p/fundingdrive2024/page/chance-meeting Happy 90th birthday Hans-Joachim Roedelius, born October 26, 1934 in Berlin, East Germany October is Library Month and our incidental music is from Parry Music Library's "New Dynamics" to motivate donations to the station. Turing 90 and going strong, Hans-Joachim Roedelius has led a long and extraordinary life, which has taken in Nazi Germany, postwar turmoil, the birth of Krautrock and working with NEU!'s Michael Rother, Conrad Schnitzler, Conny Plank, and Brian Eno. Hans-Joachim Roedelius is among the oldest surviving practitioners in rock/post rock and, more remarkably, still producing work of vitality and contemporary relevance. He was born a few months before Elvis Presley, in 1934 and, before his relatively late start in music lived a varied and extraordinary life, buffeted by the rise and fall of the Nazis and the postwar cleaving of Germany. As a child, in the pre-war Nazi era, he appeared in propaganda films such as "Faded Melody" (Viktor Tourjansky, 1938) and "Riding for Germany" (Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1941). He was an unwilling member of the German Youngsters in the Hitler Youth, membership being mandatory for all boys from the age of ten. For those "found to be racially acceptable", they were brainwashed with Nazi propaganda while being enticed with sports and camping. It's remarkable for anyone to escape the "Deutsches Jungvolk" with sanity and a moral compass. During the war, Roedelius and his mother found solace and refuge in East Prussia, striking up an affinity with nature that would be lifelong. After the war, he was arrested by the Stasi in East Germany as a supposed spy before making it back to West Germany just in time, before the Wall went up. He served two years in prison before managing to escape over the border into West Berlin in 1961. He worked as a physical therapist and masseur. Soon thereafter he gave up his day job to pursue a career in music. “I worked a long time as a beauty therapist,” says Roedelius. “It’s a hard job listening to customers every day, listening to their stories. These were people of all kinds, everything from politicians to wine merchants, every kind of social circle. I worked with old ladies in their beds, first thing in the morning. I was really able to connect with them, I had a gift for it. So I worked first as a therapist, then as a therapist through music.” A turning point in his life came when he met Conrad Schnitzler, the great outsider artist, sonic brutalist and incorrigible maverick, with whom he would go on in 1968 to found the Zodiak Free Arts Lab in West Berlin, one of the cradles of Krautrock, in which he became involved in various noisenik happenings and loose free Improv collectives. “Conrad took care of me when I went over from East Germany to West Germany. I really appreciated the care he took of me, made me part of his family. He taught me a lot; so much so, that without Conrad Schnitzler, I would not be where I am today. He was also quite a strange person. He left the Arts Lab shortly after its inauguration to work on other projects and yet it was he who invented it. He invented Kluster with a K, a whole stream of music with his power, energy and talent.” Roedelius teamed up with Schnitzler and Moebius to form Kluster, later (minus Schnitzler) Cluster who would evolve from untutored but inspired purveyors of abstract, industrial noise into a gentler but no less radical proposition. Throughout the 70s they created first drafts of a putative new mode of pop, based on deceptively unassuming loops and evocative use of the new electronic palette. Brian Eno, whose thoughts were turning in a similar direction post-Roxy Music, sought them out in West Germany and they would record a number of albums together, like minds in tandem, including Cluster & Eno, "After The Heat", and, with Harmonia, Tracks And Traces. “Brian Eno was a great help on our way. When he came over to meet us, to work with the already-split Harmonia it was very much according to the Cluster principle – playing music in the moment, with no overdubbing. It was great to see him play as part of this four-man group. Because it was recorded on a four track machine, no-one thought it could be a record afterwards. It needed 20 years to bring it to the market. But it’s a very important milestone in all our careers.” “I think I come out of the great German Romantic tradition. It’s part of my inner experience. Beauty, optimism, hope – I can’t save this crazy world but I do want to bring to this world some peace, some release from the constant strain, especially in times like these which can feel really, really hopeless. Artists are responsible for the health of the world. Brexit!” he exclaims, in despair at Britain’s present pass. “That is such a horrible idea. How crazy to get rid of Europe.” A new 4-LP box set of previously unpublished material recorded between 1968 -1980: https://www.soundohm.com/product/roedelius-90 https://www.roedelius.com/ https://thequietus.com/interviews/strange-world-of/roedelius-interview-cluster-harmonia-brian-eno/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Joachim_Roedelius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsches_Jungvolk https://www.goldminemag.com/interviews/what-was-old-is-neu-again-with-krautrock-vinyl (to embiggen the show icon, right-click and choose "Open image in new tab")