Prior to HARMONIA’s appearance at All Tomorrow’s Parties festival, guitarist and Krautrock/Kosmiche Pop guru MICHAEL ROTHER discusses artistic freedom with ANDREW TUTTLE.

Featuring current and former members of Cluster, Neu!, and Kraftwerk, German cosmic pop trio Harmonia (Michael Rother, Hans-Joachim Moderius, Dieter Mobius) recently returned to live performance after a thirty year hiatus. Originally active from 1973 to 1976, Harmonia released three studio albums and collaborated with Brian Eno, solidifying a sound that was closer to Cluster’s synthesised soundscapes than to Neu!’s motorik-rock.

Harmonia’s formation in 1973 was quite by chance, with the original chemistry between the three drawing Rother away from Neu!, his legendary but notoriously fractured duo with Klaus Dinger.

“Harmonia started by chance, when I first went to visit the two [Moderius and Mobius] the idea was to find out whether they could help Neu! with a tour of the UK, as we weren’t able to recreate the sounds we did on the album on stage alone. I jammed with Moderius and it was a magic moment. The combination of my guitar and his piano, and later when Moebius joined in it was a complete music we could create on the spot. The approach with electronic drums and processing we did was something that interested me more than Neu! at the time.”

Rother explains that Harmonia’s reformation has come about through a similarly organic and unexpected process. 

“I was still surprised by the freshness of that music which we did so many years ago and I was also surprised by the great positive reception we got for it. It’s funny to see that the basic ideas haven’t changed, we still struggle within the band because each of us have a very clear idea of the music and so we leave it to the public to decide whether this combination of ideas, this clash of ideas, is something they wish to hear.”

Harmonia’s recently released Live 1974 is an outstanding audio document that Rother explains was belatedly released to provide an insight into the flexibility of Harmonia to improvise in live performance.

“The idea and the concept changed over the three years we worked together, so this is the document that shows the early stage of Harmonia, when there were hardly any pre-meditated structures. It was very spontaneous music, with very little structure that you could rely on. Some nights when we weren’t in a good shape, it led to a lot of searching and not finding. [However] the freedom also lead to very exciting moments because if you’re searching you can find something and if you’re not searching you won’t find anything.

“The idea now is to combine all the techniques, all the styles, to combine the sounds of thirty five years of making music. [We will be] combining old songs, old structures, and old techniques with the possibilities that are around these days. The idea is not to sound like we did in 1973 or 1974, that would be nostalgic and it wouldn’t make me happy, it would be a step back.”

HARMONIA play All Tomorrow’s Parties at Brisbane Powerhouse on Tuesday Jan 13. More info: www.michaelrother.de/en / www.atpfestival.com

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