Michael Rother
was the guitar and keyboard playing half of the groundbreaking
Krautrock
group
Neu
, and earlier, a founding member of
Kraftwerk
.
Flammende Herzen
(Flaming Heart) is his first solo album, recorded by and produced by
Conny Plank
in 1976 and issued at the dawn of
punk
in 1977.
is, in a sense, the complete and utter flowering of a vision
Rother
held from
through his work with
Klaus Dinger
in
and through his short-term collaboration with
Moebius
and
Roedelius
Harmonia
's signature guitar sound is twinned with an analog delay, the simple mechanical or "motorik" percussion all wound around simple, yet transcendent, melodies that are nearly anthemic in their strident execution. With percussion assistance from
Jaki Leibzeit
of
Can
,
crafts a driving, soaring ride into the sonic abyss that is rich with melody and
rock & roll
rhythm. For
, music is a thing filled with light, and tracks such as the title,
"Zyklodrom,"
"Karussell"
feature a cylindrical weave of electronic and organic percussion, opaque but insistent synthesizers playing chord progressions, and, of course, acoustic and electric guitars either chiming in single- and double-string
Brucknerian
motifs or churning on two or three chords hypnotically into the ether. While some of the themes presented here later became the foundation for a ponderous kind of
new age
disc music, there is plenty of spaced-out
psychedelia
and churning
ellipsis here (
"Feuerland"
) for fans of early
. This remains one of
's strongest and most visionary records. The CD reissue features two remixes of the title track from 1993. ~ Thom Jurek