CYCLES

Wolfgang Bock's debut album Cycles is a perfect representation of a more accessible Berlin school style electronic album. This album contains the floating analog synths and repetitive percussive loops that would be expected from music of this sort by the likes of obvious forerunners of this style, Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, but Cycles has a certain energetic attractiveness that fans of even more modern electronic music would be able to easily comprehend without finding the music boring and long-winded.

The first half of this album, containing the title track and a portion of "Robsai Part 1" rely on the aforementioned repetitive percussive loop that drives on as the floating synths create and explore the soundscape given. A wonderful and attention grabbing (long) introduction to this journey.

"Robsai Part 2" is an electronic organ type of interlude that is similar in sound to the organ- enhanced music of Klaus Schulze's fantastic album Cyborg. Very brooding yet ethereal, very dark yet uplifting. A fantastically moody, though short track. This leads into "Changes" which trades out the electronic percussion of the first movements of this album for organic and almost tribal sounding percussion as nearly imperialistic or royal sounding synth melodies fly above, but at the halfway point the track takes a turn for low-register, dark, brooding rumbling that morphs into choppy and forceful synth patterns.

The last movement, "Stop the World", starts off with gloomy but energetic synth loops exacerbated by steadily driving percussion as dark cascading synth melodies and solos take the forefront that make this track sound like an epic final battle scene of a horrific sci-fi film. The track eventually dies down into somber organ noodling that sounds similar to the electronic music portion of The Mars Volta's track "Asilos Magdalena" that floats atop airy and spacey ambient droning, until finally ending with the sounds of electronically manipulated church bells that fade off into the distance.

Even though Cycles by Wolfgang Bock is one of the lesser discussed albums, by a rarely discussed artist, I would feel very comfortable recommending this album to be one of the first if not the first Berlin School electronic album that someone unfamiliar with this genre should hear (ProgArchives collaborator Guldbamsen mentioned in his review that this was one of his first progressive electronic albums). Because of its perpetual energy and overall accessibility compared to other great albums of this genre, I think that Cycles is an important and standout album of this era even if it is mostly ignored.

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