BLACKDANCE

Blackdance is a hidden gem between the avant-garde Ihrlicht and Cyborg and the more commercial Timewind. I was very pleased to get this record on vinyl together with three other lp's of Klaus Schulze, two records of Tangerine Dream and some work of Kraftwerk. It putted me in the progressive electronic music, which also was in some way part of the Krautrock scene, that already got my full attention.

"The Ways of Changes" got some hypnotic drones. Very spacy. What I do like about this song is the someway sinister sound and the percussion in it. No computer drums, but real percussion. Klaus Schulze began his musical career as a drummer after all. The sound becomes really psychedelic, but stays abstract all the time. This song takes about 18 minutes for gettin you hypnotized, but it doesn't bored me for a minute with it's spacy glitterings and magic. A masterpiece!

"Some velvet phasing" is a more harmonic synthesizer piece and fit's more into the symphonic scene. Beautifull tones, but a bit too long. The last composition is based around a men bass operah vocalist. It's called "Voices of Syn" like there are voices coming out of some Egypt crypt. The synthesizers seems to be build upon those vocals. I do like the sound effects Klaus Schulze uses here: a constant tone is getting from high pitch to low pitch and goes back again. Between the high pitches the tone is getting more intense, like the bass tones is getting towards the listener. This composition gets also spacy and psychedelic. This composition is only also too long.

Throughout the record there is always some dissonance and darkness, except in "Some velvet phasing" which keeps the record in balance. This is the best synthesizer record I've heard till now and my only complain is that two of the three compositions seems a bit stretched. Still it's a very nice listening and I often listen it while studying. Four stars for sure!