DZIEKUJE POLAND (WITH RAINER BLOSS)

Klaus Schulze ventures off through the veil of the Iron Curtain and pulls off a series of very memorable concerts with collaborator Rainer Bloss. One of the cool things he did was preparing a piece named after each individual city he visited and the best of these can be heard here. These compositions were rather different and a little bit more upbeat, rythmical and heavier than the material he was coming up with in the early eighties on albums such as Audentity and Trancefer.

Each track sounds as if they were improvised to a certain extent over sequencer programs but they really move and don`t get into any grey areas as does a lot of electronic music. The stand out track is the final track a musical tribute to the city of Gdansk with an almost mezmerizing constant pounding synth generated beat. Lodz which begins the side sort of conveys, musically, melancholic, dreary Eastern European daily life during the cold war especially with the erie introduction which sets the mood for the piece. Similarily the other tracks have the same effects with the exception of the bonus tracks which don`t really jive with the original album. Side four on the LP (or the end of CD 2) is definitely the best side which wraps up with introductions by Klaus of everybody from his stage crew to his truck driver with some freaky synth complementing his spoken words.

One of my favourite Klaus schulze LPs, I was just getting into his music when I bought the vinyl edition back in `83. Because of the long running time of the CD ( over 2 hours ) one might want to make a date with oneself when listening to this magnificent live album. 3 gold stars and ½.