Selected Studies Vol. 1

How curious it is that this collaboration should come about so late in the day and how marvelous that it transpired at all. Lloyd Cole, this most ingenious of British singer-songwriters, and Hans-Joachim Roedelius, a patriarch of German electronic music, did not actually meet in the studio, choosing instead a mode of material exchange more in keeping with the age, sending files across the ether for the other to complement. How did they come to work together? Lloyd Cole released Plastic Wood in 2001, an instrumental, electronic album -- most unusual by his standards. Listening to Plastic Wood, one can clearly hear that Cluster's Sowieso album (1976) is one of Cole's all-time favorites.