LUNZ – A PROFILE
March 23rd, 2005 by rui
“If you want a record to stop time, this is it.” The Times
“A beautiful train ride of a record.” The Edge, U2
Lunz is the brainchild of two composers; Hans Joachim Rodelius (Germany) and Tim Story (US) and Lunz/Reinterpretations is a two disc release of original compositions and remixes treated by fans and contemporaries. Named after a lake in Austria and following a two-year crusade Lunz brings to the listener rich instrumentation, both authentic and synthetic, of the highest quality. The list of names that comprise the accompanying disc is almost as diverse as the record itself; Alias, Ulrich Schnauss, Lloyd Cole, Faultline, Elbow, Munk, Adem, Icarus and Half Cousin amongst others, all congregate to remix the original compositions.
The protagonists of Lunz each have a story as rich and as interesting as the textures that weave through their music. Tim Story, a keen student of his counterpart Roedelius, has nearly twenty years worth of ambient soundscape and electronic work in his wake, which notably includes a Grammy nomination for his soundtrack work and a Naird “Album of the Year” award for his solo album “Beguiled”. Roedelius on the other hand has a story that would be more appropriately set to film than music, so extraordinarily does it read.
Born in 1934 Berlin, Hans-Joachim Roedelius endured the twin trials of a prodigious childhood and enforced membership of the Hitler Youth during the war (‘Hitler went crazy. He wanted us all to be child soldiers in the Hitlerjugend and go off to fight the Russians.’). Eventually escaping from East Germany he then faced imprisonment even before his musical career might have been considered formative.
Roedelius’ first prodigious steps into creative life began in his childhood, when he found himself thrust into roles as a child actor in six German feature films before the age of ten. The War and its aftermath then presented particularly difficult times to Roedelius’ life, with his family forced to evacuate toward the Russian border in 1943. The post-war atmosphere became less friendly still with a sinister new civil police known as The Stasi marshalling the then shaping East Germany. Uncomfortable and incongruent Roedelius fled this regime, selling fake jewellery and living in a single apartment with refugees for company. Only to be arrested and interrogated as he attempted to cross the border to visit family in 1952.
Given time and freedom, Roedelius found himself in the creative outskirts of the different new society in which he was now immersed. Eventually in the 1960s, following hippy expeditions (at one time he was masseuse to the President of the French Republic. “I used to go in and out of the Elysée Palace barefoot – it was part of my “Hippie Healer” outfit, along with the long hair and sheepskin jacket.”) and various dabblings in almost-jazz, Roedelius set out as a professional composer, indulging in experiments with sound that he described as ‘anarchic musical actionism’. Taking aboard the political and social climate of the re-emerging nation in which he found himself, Roedelius has oft been credited as one of the ubermeiesters of what became known, affectionately, as Krautrock.
But to define his oeuvre in this way would be to perhaps ignore his overall impact across many a genre, because the list of his colleagues and collaborators reads more as a who’s who across the generation From founding Kluster in 1969, with Conrad Schnitzler and Dieter Mobius, who’s eponymous debut pioneered the brick-a-brack approach to electronic music. To Cluster, where the spelling of the bands name would not be the only change, inspired by Schnitzler departure Roedelius recruited luminaries such as Brian Eno and Michael Rother (NEU!) to fill the vacant position. Later Roedelius continued such impressive collaborations by working with Holger Czukay (Can), Conrad Plank (Krautrock producer extraordinaire) and reuniting with Mobius to form Harmonia. He even dabbled in spatial art with Gilbert Bretterbauer and has formed alliances with some of the most interesting names in modern-day composition (Fabio Capanni, Jurij Novoselic, Hiroshi Kobayashi, Andres Gil to name but a few).
“I’ve been a coal miner, shepherd, toilet cleaner, roofbuilder, carer for the dying, jewellery salesman, masseur…my university was life itself” – Roedelius
A fluid, soothing balm of a record, Lunz and its followers have both a history and present more than worthy of your attention.
