Wenn Der Südwind Weht

Hans-Joachim Roedelius is the connective tissue of all of Krautrock. He was in Cluster with Dieter Moebius; in Harmonia with Cluster plus Michael Rother of Neu!; he made Cluster & Eno (1977) and After the Heat (1978) with Brian Eno directly. That last connection is the one that makes him indispensable: Roedelius is one degree from Eno, two degrees from Bowie’s Berlin trilogy (Low, Heroes, Lodger, all Eno-produced), and a co-founder of practically every “ambient electronic” lineage that exists.

Wenn der Südwind Weht appeared in 2010 on Bureau B — the Hamburg label that has reissued most of the Sky/Brain/Cluster catalogue. Roedelius was in his late seventies when he made it. The Bureau B note that this is worth recording: a founding figure of the Berlin School, still making records in the same register fifty years after the formation that defined him, as if the project were genuinely unfinished. Which it is.