Rother Rather Good
Tom | London | 08/05/2002
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Michael Rother's first (and best) solo album carries on pretty much from where "Isi" from Neu's last album or Harmonia's "Deluxe" left off. Left to his own devices and outwith the influence of Dinger/ Roedelius/ Moebius, Rother tends towards the bland but there is enough of the old Neu propulsion on this album to outweigh this tendency. Of course, it helps if you hire Can's Jaki Liebezeit as your drummer and then get him to play EXACTLY like Klaus Dinger as Rother does on most of this album - in fact, I would go as far as to say that not even Klaus Dinger sounds as much like Klaus Dinger as Liebezeit does on "Zyklodrom"! To some extent one listen to the title track tells you all you need ever know about Rother's solo career: layers of soft electric guitars, bassless motorik beat, rather sickly sweet melodies. Rother continued rewriting this track throughout all his solo albums but never bettered his first attempt at it. "Karussell" is the other melodic gem on the album, based on an insidious repeating keyboard motif, the track takes off every time the bass kicks in at the start of each verse. "Feuerland" is closer to Rother's work with Harmonia, though a little more aimless while "Zeni" is the only occasion when Liebezeit varies the Dingerbeat and it somehow doesn't work for that very reason. However the stand out track on the album is "Zyklodrom", which is aptly titled as it's cyclical (pun intended) chord sequence recalls cyclists endlessly rotating round an indoor track and it also sounds like theme music from a sports programme! Rother pulls a number of old Neu! tricks on this track: firstly he gradually increases the volume of the track so it doesn't actually reach it's maximum until about 4 or 5 minutes in, by which time the drums are doing serious damage to your bass bins; secondly he phases the ENTIRE track towards the end, psychedelia was still alive and well in Germany in 1976!Rother virtually cloned this album on his next release, "Sterntaler", and none of his subsequent albums (thought they have their moments) are its equal."
A Kraut-Electronic Standard
M. Starr | Kansas City | 06/26/2004
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Michael Rother is best known for his work alongside Klaus Dinger in the kraut rock duo known as Neu. However, did you know that Rother and Dinger were also two of the founding members of Kraftwerk? It's interesting to see all the projects, side-projects, and collaborations that resulted from a small handful of these German musicians. You could almost compare it to the way many musicians played musical chairs with each other on the CTI jazz label in the 1970s. Flammende Herzen, which means flaming hearts, is Rother's debut album and is pretty recognizable music by early kraut-electronic standards. Gliding keyboards , semi-organic sounding drums, and guitar sound as though this were supposed to be some type of futuristic experiment. The same could pretty much be said for all the early kraut-electronic albums, though. But while Flammende Herzen isn't necessarily the best the genre has to offer, it's certainly enjoyable nonetheless."
Track Listings (5) - Disc #1