The wonderful debut-solo album from Michael Rother who started a joint venture with Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit at that time. Rother's melodic guitar play and Liebezeits driving drum beats a fitting perfect together. They are also
distinc NEU! roots in the music. Originally planned as a Soundtrack for the same named television play,became something independent..
Michael Rother was the guitar and
keyboard playing half of the groundbreaking Krautrock group Neu, and
earlier, a founding member of Kraftwerk. Flammende Herzen (Flaming
Heart) is his first solo album, recorded by and produced by Conny Plank
in 1976 and issued at the dawn of punk in 1977. Flammende Herzen is, in a
sense, the complete and utter flowering of a vision Rother held from
Kraftwerk through his work with Klaus Dinger in Neu and through his
short-term collaboration with Moebius and Roedelius in Harmonia.
Rother's signature guitar sound is twinned with an analog delay, the
simple mechanical or "motorik" percussion all wound around simple, yet
transcendent, melodies that are nearly anthemic in their strident
execution. With percussion assistance from Jaki Leibzeit of Can, Rother
crafts a driving, soaring ride into the sonic abyss that is rich with
melody and rock & roll rhythm. For Rother, music is a thing filled
with light, and tracks such as the title, "Zyklodrom," and "Karussell"
feature a cylindrical weave of electronic and organic percussion, opaque
but insistent synthesizers playing chord progressions, and, of course,
acoustic and electric guitars either chiming in single- and
double-string Brucknerian motifs or churning on two or three chords
hypnotically into the ether. While some of the themes presented here
later became the foundation for a ponderous kind of new age disc music,
there is plenty of spaced-out psychedelia and churning rock & roll
ellipsis here ("Feuerland") for fans of early Krautrock. This remains
one of Rother's strongest and most visionary records. (allmusic)
