Just

Following the disbandment of the short-lived synth pop group Yazoo, former Depeche Mode member Vince Clarke formed Erasure in 1985 with singer Andy Bell. Like Yaz and Depeche Mode, Erasure were a synth-based group, but they had stronger dance inclinations, as well as a sharper, more accessible sense of pop songcraft, than either of Clarke's previous bands. Furthermore, Erasure had the flamboyantly eccentric Andy Bell – one of the first openly gay performers in pop music – as their focal point.

In life it's like music: some people think that in the past everything would have been better. Others say the best is yet to come. It works in both cases and the same for everyone: Only here, only now. "Every moment is of infinite value, for it is the representative of a whole eternity," it says in a Goethe aphorism. When Nils Wülker calls his beautiful seventh album "Just Here, Just Now", it has less to do with philosophy and nothing at all with esotericism.

Just Music was the moniker for a rotating West German collective whose musical “happenings” were a nascent challenge to mainstream sociopolitical strictures. Although the classical training of these musicians is readily apparent from their technical prowess, the opening outburst tells us we’re in for something less rule-bound. Alfred Harth tears the ether with his sax amid wordless chanting as a cornucopia of musical ideas is thrown into our ears. That said, these two 20-minute free-for-alls weave a quietude broken only by the occasional peak of intensity.