Tracks and Traces has a somewhat unusual birth cycle. After two albums, the pioneering German electronica/Krautrock band HARMONIA had already discordantly split up when contacted by BRIAN ENO to have a jam. The trio – HANS-JOACHIM ROEDELIUS, MICHAEL ROTHER (NEU) and DIETER MOEBIUS – reunited for some four-track recording with Eno, the results of which then sat in a vault for 20 years. (It was never intended for release, after all.) It was first edited and issued in 1997; this edition gives those tracks a remix and remaster and is considered by its creators to be definitive.
Tracks and Traces moves through evocative synthesizer washes and melodies (back when synths had to be played by hand, rather than programmed into numb repetition) that take the brain into a cosmos within and without. Atmospheric cuts like “By the Riverside” and “Weird Dream” are too odd to function as mere background sound – they’re more like the organ noodling that precedes a church service, if said service took place in limbo. “Vamos Companeros,” “Les Demoiselles” and the appropriately chirpy “Welcome” boast strong enough melodies to support vocals – indeed, the lovely ballad “Luneberg Heath” does just that. The mammoth “Something in Autumn” comes off like the soundtrack of a short film, and a fairly unsettling one at that. Too ethereal to be pop music, but with way too much backbone to be mere ambience, Tracks and Traces is an exploration of inner and outer space that sounds as fresh and relevant now as it did 33 years ago.
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