Live Music Review: Michael Rother and Kogumaza at the Rescue Rooms

This is Michael Rother’s first ever show in Nottingham. Like may of his 1970s contemporaries making experimental music in Germany, the former Neu! and Harmonia musician’s profile has risen considerably in the last few years. Despite being ignored at the time, alongside the likes of Can and Kraftwerk, the the music Rother made, either as a member of Neu! alongside Klaus Dinger or with Cluster in Harmonia, has become an influence over consecutive generations of musicians - from Bowie to Sonic Youth to Radiohead, they all owe a debt to Michael Rother.

It makes sense that Kogumaza should be asked to support tonight; both sets of musicians are concerned with making the type of music that has no beginning or end, music that creates a mood and a feeling through rhythm and repetition.

If Kogumaza are feeling a little rusty after 18 months away from the stage, they needn’t worry as any concerns about their recent lack of live action are immediately dispelled as soon as they start to settle in to a rumbling low tempo groove. It is an immediate mood setter as Chris and Neil’s duelling guitars tersely twitch around Katy’s ominous call-to-arms drumming. Songs snake in to one another with the band laying down their fuzzy droning riffs.

There’s a change in the band midway through, they flick a switch and these cosmic space jams eventually hit lift-off and the band take flight. Heavy, guttural and circling around on themselves, Kogumaza sound like a punk band attempting to do ambient. There are moments where I feel my insides vibrate, it's as if my guts are about to be flipped inside-out. Slowing things back down towards the end of their set, the band tease out ping-ponging shards of glassy sound from their guitars as they bring us back down to earth. Tonight is a reminder of just how good this band are. Hopefully, we won't have to wait for so long next time to see them play again.

Michael Rother is joined on stage by two other musicians: Franz Barhmann, a former member of Berlin-based Camera on guitar, and Hans Lampe, from La Dussledorf and who also appeared on Neu! 75, playing an electronic drum kit that looks like it is made out of flying saucers (which feels apt for music that so often feels as if it came from outer space).

Wearing his guitar and stood behind a table with a laptop and a jungle of wires, Rother leads his band through a career-spanning set that takes in solo material as well as selected Neu! and Harmonia highlights. The night goes from the crunchy new-age techno of more recent output through to his more familiar 1970s work. The one thing that binds them all together is the obsession with a pulsating driving rhythm, something that gets the not-quite sold out Rescue Rooms grooving on this damp and cold Tuesday evening.

Rother holds things down either picking out free flowing melodies on his guitar or leaning over and tweaking his laptop and synths to generate squelching electronic loops. Much of the first half of his set is given over to solo works, including the gliding slide guitars of Feuerland from his debut solo album Flammende Herzen receiving its UK debut. Eventually, the band hit their motorik groove, a driving hypnotic trance, as the band lock-in and fire-off a run of Harmonia and Neu! tracks - Dino, E-Musik, Hallogallo - that have that now well-known and much copied irresistible chugging rhythm that has made much Michael Rother’s music so influential.

Over forty years later since he first emerged as a groundbreaking musician, Michael Rother is still at the cutting edge of music.

Michael Rother and Kogumaza were at the Rescue Rooms on Tueaday 25 April 2017.

Read an interview with Michael Rother on LeftLion