It became my late night drunken weekend listening for a while, being my helpful guide into dream world.

Harmonia were a German rock super group, consisting of D.Moebius and J.Roedelius of Cluster and Michael Rother of Neu. Cluster's music was all experiments in electronics, often forsaking beat for fluid meanderings, while Neu become known for their driving motorik rock mixed with subtle guitar and keyboard effected layers. All of these elements were brought to Harmonia to create as unique a record as you were likely to hear from a seventies progressive rock band, if that is the limited term that we are meant to apply to them. Opening track 'Watussi' fades in with a looped four note keyboard riff that stays put until the song's finish. The first three notes descend the scale in four four time, then the fourth note skips the beat, and that note is higher than the others creating a fabulous sensation of awareness. Many layers of guitars and electronic bleeps, and who knows what, filter in and out and around the loop until the whole thing's awareness becomes more and more hightened, so much so that I don't want it to end.

But it does, fading out in the way it started. 'Sehr Kosmisch' is eleven odd minutes of beautiful ambient metamorphosis. It starts quietly with a heartbeat rhythm and several keyboards swirling around until eventually the heartbeat fades away, leaving the keyboards to be joined by more other- wordly sounds. Then what sounds like a steam train from an undiscovered planet comes rolling into the mix for several minutes, pre-empting more weightless sounds, and, before you know it, the heartbeat has returned and we are back to the beginning of the journey. I think I have drifted happily off to sleep to it many times. 'Sonnenschein' evokes an ancient march to some heroic war and 'Dino' has the air of celebration, with it's motorik Neu drumming and choppy, happy one chord phased guitar.

Track 6 'Ahoi!' is the blueprint for a couple of the tracks on Eno's Apollo LP, with it's minimalist picked guitar and simple piano runs. The remaining two tracks give us more lovely intertwining and looped pianos, electronics and hypnotic beats merging in and out with each other. I love a lot of the German rock from the late sixties and seventies, but this is my favourite because of how honourable it's positive intentions appear to be. And not in any hippy way, but in terms of creating a fantastic mix of genuinely calming and euphoric music. 

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