ZERO SET is the perhaps the most bewildering entry in the Cluster-and-related catalog. Moebius teams up with wunderkind producer Conny Plank and Mani Neumeier (from seminal krautrockers Guru Guru) to essentially wreak studio havoc, messing with mixing boards, electronic relays and subjugating synths to conform to the trio's own twisted logic.
"Speed Display" lopes a somersaulting rhythm track over curlicue electronics and moist buzzes; "Pitch Control" sounds like a symphony for food processors, as synths spit digital batter across formica-hard beats; "Recall" brings to mind nothing less than an electronic jamboree in the Sudan, tribesmen banging away on wheezing synths while their elders, unable to program their drum machines, let the built-in beats work their singular magic. Alternately tinkertoy and towering edifice, ZERO SET's six exercises in aural ecstasy represent Germanic experimentation at its most radical and freeform.
