Anniversary synthesis on Klaus Schulze's career

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This is mainly (and plainly) a sort of study or, as already mentioned
in the title, a small synthesis on Klaus Schulze's music, that I wrote
on the 4th of August 2008, to honor Schulze's 61 Birthday. I posted it
originally on a Progressive Romanian Forum, but since I finally managed
to translate it in English and perhaps plan to post it on my MS
account, I figured it's decent to post it here too. I wrote the whole
thing throughout the entire morning of that day, mainly collecting all
my knowledge and (moreover) impressions on Schulze's music, along
extracting some infos about the pre-solo career years.

(It's long overdue to wish Schulze Happy 61 anymore, alas I'll keep the "anniversary" tag...)

Klaus Schulze - A small, small anniversary study

         Klaus Schulze,
one of the most illustrious exponents of the kraut-electronic musical
current, was born on 4th of August 1947, right in Berlin, the heart of
the entire action. Before getting to know him as a master of electronic
music, Schulze proved to be a skillful and talented young musician (with studies in modern composition at the Berlin University),
hard to recognize (nowadays, perhaps) in the underground scene of the
60s. He first of all learned to play the guitar, starring afterwards in
several bands as a bassist or a percussionist. His evolution in these
ensembles can't be considered essential, still shows the consistency of
moving up ahead: from the Düsseldorfian dance group Les Barones and
cover-bands frenzied about Rolling Stones to the rock group Psy Free
and, finally, to the moment when, from being invited by Edgar Froese to
perform as a guest in his band (I don't think we're talking yet of
Tangerine Dream, perhaps The Ones) - covering the absence of the
original drummer -, he became a full, "registered" member of the group.
TANGERINE DREAM's debut, though officially a first solid album launched
three years after the band (or the concept of it) started to form, is Electronic Meditation,
the only one including Klaus Schulze. In a nebulous, experimental work,
noisy and stoned, such as this one, the best thing we can notice is how
Schulze adds flavor and intensity, through hallucinating percussion
cliques, to a music that's anyway minimalistic, chaotic and instinctual.

          Immediately
after his singular appearence in Tangerine Dream - a specific moment
also turning out to be unique in TD's music - the next big step for
Schulze is founding the band called ASH RA TEMPEL, together with two
other young masters of that time, Manuel Göttsching and Hermut Enke.
The boys bought equipment that was very similar to that used by Pink
Floyd, a super-band for which the three had, apparently, a special
affection, yet the Ash Ra Tempel debut is much more "drenched",
being a stimulating example of kraut-rock, on the space, slow
experimental, acid side. Many concerts follow afterwards. Schulze
leaves though again after just one year, due to some disagreements
about orienting towards blues, a style in whose popularity Schulze
couldn't recognize himself. Although Ash Ra Tempel don't visibly slip
towards that style which was desired by the other two founding
musicians, it seems, anyway, that the album on which Schulze
contributed is one of the band's best, if not actually the top one.
Göttsching and Enke stick to Ash Ra Tempel for the next years, Schulze
making a return only in 1973, in a "reunion album" called Join Inn, which is good, although perhaps arriving too late, after Seven Up,
branded clearly by Göttsching, Enke and Timothy Leary, that's superior
in every way. Instead, once stepping outside Ash Ra Tempel, Klaus
Schulze is closer than ever to electronic music, which is exactly the
next, "progressive" step, done by most "kraut-rockers", soloists or
not. The electronic music of the renowned Berlin School (or, perhaps
more broadly, of the German cult) flourishes powerfully, and Schulze is
in the front line, subscribing to the current.

          Many
could imagine how the move from playing guitars, drums and bass towards
using synthesizers and the pure electronic mechanics happened, so we
shan't meditate at all over how Schulze created his universe of
instruments and techniques (from the first synthesizer to the great
Moog, up in 1974 or 1975), we can more likely cover the music itself. A
first phase, composed of two albums that don't sound at all like
initiating works but, on the contrary, unimaginably hard and minute,
keep Schulze in the space-kraut-acid zone, much alike Tangerine Dream
having quit their "underground expressionism" and bringing forth
immediately cosmic, abyssal, electro-psychedelic and tensioned music.
Schulze stays under contract with the Ohr label, releasing in 1972 Irrlicht,
a drone album, tough and impersonal, experimental and processed at the
same time. Bomb #2 is dropped a year later - and we're talking about Cyborg
- a monumental double-album, in which the same rough drone language
has, this time, a more mechanical, robotic, metallic, somewhat
lifeless, still intense and severely hallucinating sense. Out of
personal experience, I can comment that the first album is a hostile
one, the finale of the Satz:Ebene epic being a compressed apocalypse for the human ears, whilst Cyborg
is even more of a challenge, given the force of four epics that exceed
20 minutes and adopt, separately, four expressions, rhythms and
agressive atmospheres from the same machined and hard-hitting style.

Schulze eases on the drone style after these two works, although the
same happens to many groups of the fresh electronic genre. The valences
of the synth music are fully discovered, attenuating, as we could
critically say, the old psycho-acid art. Schulze steps from Ohr and Brain to Island. Picture Music
is announced in some places (including the official site) as the third
album, dating 1974, while in other places (including...the official
site!!) it is mentioned as the fourth, released in 1975. Nothing to
comment if the first mentioned order is the good one, but in the spirit
of evolution, Blackdance keeps the dark flavor, while Picture Music
is mellow. In fact, this album has nothing special whatsoever, soaking
a lot of expressionistic electronic sound with the repeatability that
inspires reveries, hallucinations; worse, though, is that both of the
album's epics come from the same material, which is really dull.
Looking back (or forward?!) to Blackdance, here recitative
vocals are introduced, an element sure to displease the electronic
purists, though a lot less controversial than Cyclone by
Tangerine Dream, four years later, or even unremarkable in comparison
with, I should say, the total transcend into songs, regardless of
styles, made by Ash Ra Tempel, when they introduced the famous Rosi.
Anyway, though, Blackdance contains some savoring percussions, dark electronic "sequences", plus has a more special piece, called Voices Of Syn.

During this period, it can be mentioned that Schulze contributed, as a
collaborator, in the works of other artists such as SERGIUS GOLOWIN,
WALTER WEGMÜLLER and especially THE COSMIC JOKERS, aka the band that in
a single year, and after a lot of LSD, came with a fabulous sequence of
kraut-rock albums, easy to rate from incredible to miserable. Schulze's
involvement in CODE III's sole album is a bit bigger, that brave
experimental music having a bit of "electronic pattern" easily
creditable to him. In 1975, Schulze's biography reminds us that he
produced two albums of FAR EAST FAMILY BAND, a group which included
KITARO, a much more simplistic and "aroma-therapeutic" future
electronic soloist.

          The year 1975 is, though, grand
for Schulze's solo music, as much as it was a referential year for
electronic by and large: Rubycon and Ricochet by Tangerine Dream, Heaven and Hell from Vangelis, just to mention. Schulze composes Timewind,
doubtlessly among his three fundamental creations. The album receives
the French prize "Grand Prix International", in detriment of Edgar
Froese's own nominated album of that year, Epsilon In Malaysian Pale. Bayreuth Return and Wahnfried 1883 are the two pieces from Timewind
that, most likely, any big Schulze fan can comment upon on the spot.
The sequencing is soft, hidden, glacial, much like how it sounds in Rubycon
by the Tangs (and, off-topic, I often find enough similarities between
that band's evolution and Schulze's own, during the 1972-1975 years,
meaning I've often complied to parallels between Irrlicht and Alpha Centauri, Cyborg and Zeit, Timewind and Rubycon...);
meanwhile, the space-synth atmosphere utterly dominates, not at all
fevered or dry, but in true ambient, ethereal forms. There's already a
noticeable conceptual impulse towards Wagner, a thing that's under no
circumstances incidental. The impulse towards Nietzsche will arise soon
enough too. If the first piece contains dynamics, the second side of
the album is in a complete gassy state, gathering sounds, effects,
impressions and "inner voices".

          In 1976, Schulze releases Moondawn, following the same cosmic, synth-loaded style. He also releases the soundtrack for an erotic film called Body Love, a score that's not to be missed, especially for its sequence-loaded epic P.T.O.,
which sounds absolutely stunning. In this period, Schulze joines the
big project led by Stom Yamash'ta, Steve Winwood and Michael Shreeve, Go, the album itself, plus a beautiful live, Go Live From Paris, being released that year.

          1977 is again a year of reference, thanks to the second album of, most likely, the top three: Mirage, an album that's belissimo,
and in which the synthesizing, sequential and ambient-marked electronic
touches unbelievable expressions. After a non-vertebrate Velvet Voyage, aerial and yet sunken in an encumbered ambiance, Crystal Lake
is of great interest, with a polyphonic sequence that brings more alike
percussion - bells and xylophones - and leaves you breathless. Also in
1977, Schulze launched Body Love Vol.2, as good as the first one.

1978 is perhaps, in the view of the majority, the last major year for
Schulze's electronic Berlin-school music, when he releases a conceptual
(programmatic, I'd say) and ambitious X, considerd an
electro-symphonic work thanks to the adding of a string orchestra and
through the seductive sound of the cello, mastered by Wolfgang Tiepold.
Many memorable things in this third essential album, starting off
directly with Friedrich Nietzsche, where the combination of
sequences and percussion (played by Harald Grosskopf, member of ASHRA
that time around) is tumultuous, continuing with the short Georg Trakl, where the repeated rhythm solely crowns the moment, then with Friedmann Bach and Heinrich von Kleist, dark-ambient pieces. Ludwig II von Bayern
is for me a masterpiece, although many will discover that, after an
elaborate ambient-symphonic start, the middle 10 minutes are reduced to
a soft and "langsam" vibrato that repeats endlessly and without
variations; it's perhaps a tough moment to survive, or it is perhaps a
musical moment in which you have to look inside simplicity and
stagnation. Anyway, at the end, in comes Grosskopf with the drums,
making the finale a fantastic one.

           Starting with Dune, from 1979, Schulze creates his own label, IC.
The album itself, the only one that year, is beautiful, dark-ambient,
matching up with the desert loneliness from Arrakis, but developing
much more music-derived sentiments, through the weep of the cello (the
same Tiepold playing it) on the first part ("side") and with Arthur
Brown's lyrics on the second one. The great Brown becomes a friend and
a collaborator of Klaus Schulze even starting 1977, though it results,
from more selected recordings, that the two didn't approach a
fantastically rich repertoire at all. Important remains the already
mentioned Dune, as well as possibly Time Actor, the
first album of the RICHARD WAHNFRIED set, a side-project launched by
Schulze that's far from the glow of his "own products"(?!), still makes
you look into certain collaborations with certain big names: Brown,
Tiepold, Shrieve, Michael Garvens and...Santana, as rumored! Time Actor is, very likely, one of the two better albums released under Wahnfried. 

           In 1980 we finally get an official live, called just like that: ...Live...,
the recordings from 1976, in Berlin, and 1979, in Amsterdam and France
(later, during the 90s, Schulze & manager & co. will get back
on their classic database of concert recordings, stretching from 1974
up in 1979-80, issuing them in huge box-sets). The music is fantastic,
a piece to try being the mega-saurus Sense, that lasts 50 minutes and is charged with A-class sequences.

If the rhythms of this kind, from this live, sound suspiciously open
towards a more commercial (or, anyway, light-dynamic) electronic,
nothing compares to the upcoming pleiade of beats and synthes
from the 80s, years in which many classic bands faint for good, a thing
that Schulze can't be accused of, even if his music isn't as good as
back in the old great days anymore. Dig It (1981) adventures with prejudice into electro-digital, registering only here and there a combo of ambiance and synth-pop. Trancefer (1982) makes us suffer with the same uninspired stagnation that, in the middle of a full career explosion, Picture Music presented, but it's generally more experimental and concentrated. Things reach Audentity (1983), a double album that means a lot, including an avant-garde piece called Sebastian Im Traum. Besides this, one more work, a soundtrack actually, titled Angst,
is released in 1984, sounding diffuse and simple, but having a dark
color, with a pop expression that's, after all, electronic.

          We stop to mention two new Richard Wahnfried albums, the rock-oriented Tonwelle and the disastrous Megatone. Schulze collaborates also with RAINER BLOSS, coming with Drive Inn, Bloss being also mentioned in the live album that samples a tour in Poland from 1984, Dzekuje Poland,
though not even to this day I don't get what's Bloss's big
contribution, since the music that's played is by Schulze, and Schulze
plays it. Released in 1984 are also Aphrica, reuniting the efforts of Schulze, Bloss and Ernst Fuchs, an excruciatingly bad album, and Transfer Station Blue,
an album oriented towards synths + guitars, done together with the
Shrieve brothers, something reminding of Ashra and sounding nice 'n'
easy.

          Schulze can yet again be accused of having stepped too hard into electro-pop when he creates Inter*Face, in 1985, but his next work, Dreams,
is remarkably profound, consenting to refined electronic programming
and containing an eclectic-ambient epic. A fourth Richard Wahnfried, Miditation, finally sounds more like good Schulze music, going on ambient and old-stuff.

          At the end of the 80s, Schulze launches a very interesting conceptual album with Andreas GROSSER, titled Babel,
a 60 minutes epic in three big parts, given the concentrated,
sequential repetition of the themes, plus releases his 23th solo album,
En=Trance, very consistent. Also, shockingly, he is a
co-producer for Alphaville! This is a period of many interviews,
retrospectives, limited edition samples and other diverse stuff. After
disbranching of the independent labels IC and Inteam, a return to Brain is made.

          The next decade debuts both awkwardly, with an annoying Miditerranean Pads, and very good actually, given a new studio/live combo, The Dresden Performance,
which is a hard listen but also tells you a lot about Schulze's new
idea of a style: I don't know if it's globally acknowledged as
"sampling", but anyway that's how I always call it, because it brings
out the collage of sounds, mixes, voices and effects of all sorts, all
paving a full way of expression and artistic experiment, a heavy
alternative to the banal "digi-sequencer" dynamics and to the so-simply
melodic, New-Age or ambient music. Almost every album up until 1996 - Beyond Recall (1991), Royal Festival Hall Vol.1 & 2 (1992), The Dome Event (1993), Wagner Desaster (1994) and the massive In Blue (1995) (with Göttsching as a guest, playing guitars) - are "sampling" albums - launched by Virgin, except the last two, which are released udner XYV,
a private label, I think. From my point of view, in a really retro or
new-age-y decade, what Schulze has chosen for his music keeps in mind
artistic, representative, sometimes weird and sometimes insinuating
valences, even if it's not the best music to endure and understand.

          Less valorous albums of this period are the Moulin de Daudet soundtrack, though miniaturist, the electro-opera Totentag, flawed in its depth, and especially the transpositions from Goes Classic,
where Schulze really hits a low, achieving nothing by comprising the
essence of classical music works in the shallow variety of keyboards,
MIDIs, Moogs and others. All three released in 1994!

Since 1993, Schulze collaborates with PETE NAMLOOK, a modern exponent
of the eclectic electronic music, creating the mega-project Dark Side Of The Moog,
that stretches so far to 11 albums. This style of project-music belongs
more to Namlook, yet Schulze perceptibly contributes in the music,
although tasting forbidden stylistic fruits such as techno and
environmental. The project is tangently programmatic by paraphrasing a
lot of works by Pink Floyd, as the name of the project(=of the album
titles) suggests itself.

          A sense of daringness is
manifested in this period with the release of two box-sets, each made
out of 10 CDs filled with music till the last minute! Silver Edition
is a fastidious incursion, meant more for an expert than for a novice,
in more "sampling" works of the 90s, culminating with the biggest
concept epic ever, Picasso geht spazieren, summing in its total
160 minutes, but being logically split on two CDs of the compilation;
the Edition also offers, however, two sessions of Berlin electronic
music, from 1975-6 concerts, plus from older recordings, dated 1972.
The third CD, Was War Vor Der Zeit, is superb, highlighting great music from the mid 70s. Two years later, in 1995, Historic Edition
is released, very inspired in offering, this time, an incursion into
the pure, self-referenced as Golden Age concerts and compositions.

Schulze's next stylistic mutation is also his most commercial, as he
finally leans on trance-techno clear variations and on electric-infused
music, alike "dub" and "dance" (sometimes). Are You Sequenced? is a pretentious, virtual-centric double-album, while Dosburg Online
is surprisingly more acclaimed, though, in a true sense, weak. But
anyhow, summing all the official albums, we've reached Schulze's 80th
album!

          Three Wahnfried albums from the 1994-1997 period don't rehabilitate the modest quality of the side-project, Trancellation being a dangerous lick of trance-dance, Trance Appeal being artistic, but lacking any..."appeal", so that only Drums 'n' Balls is, in a late hour, the good-rate fusion of trance, ambiance, new-age and mixes, sounding relaxing, typical, nice.

          A third box-set, Jubilee Edition,
is released in 1997, marking, indeed, 25 years of solo career with...25
albums, which cover everything! Sure, we can talk already about
exaggerations, but the essential is that every Edition, in its
own way, uncovers facts about how much music Schulze truly composed, in
25 years, even if sometimes relying purely on stereotypes and
programmed sounds, from the beginning. The level of the schulzerian art
isn't reduced, this way, to just concrete albums, but to music
composed/recorded tirelessly, for all tastes, inspired in deep steps or
born out of simple impulses and experimentall results.

         The Trailer compilation, from 1999, is solid, but basically announces the launch of The Ultimate Edition,
the compilation of all compilations and the box-set of box-sets, one
year later, all the 45 albums from the previous three Edition being
re-issued, the extra thing consisting of 5 new CDs, one of them
offering "alternative versions" to the classics Friedrich Nietzsche and Georg Trakl from X, both longer than the original. An excellent recording, under any circumstance!

       The taste for huge compilations doesn't stop here, but, true,
tempers, when two new Editions of (just [sic!]) 10 CDs each, called Contemporary Works,
bring color in Schulze's 2000, respectively 2002 activity. The
difference is, however, that Schulze already thinks in terms of present
music, offering a new millennium style, which can largely be described
as modern ambient, trance and meditational.

          In 2000, the ASH RA TEMPEL reunion takes place, with a live adn a studio being released (Gin Rosé + Friendship); it isn't at all surprising that Schulze and Göttsching agreed on adopting a mdoern-ambient largo language, because both worked on this style during the same contemporary period (Göttsching released Die Mulde).
The live is of a good quality, while the studio can divide its
listeners. They're, nonetheless, of the same caliber, no matter from
what perspective you look upon them.

          In modern tempo, Schulze plays his own live concerts too, releasing the double offer Live@KlangArt Vol.1 and Vol.2, music that's generally very good. A new studio, long awaited, is Moonlake,
unfortunately it inspires an artistic coldness, affecting especially
the marks of sophisticated, modern ambient and sequencing.

    Major health issues push forwards a hiatus, sort of, from 2004 to
2007, Schulze being even forced to stay away from the stage. A massive
re-release of the previous official albums kicks-off, under the Revisited Records SPV
brand, a banal act, if the beauty of it wouldn't consist of original
bonus tracks, taken out of the archives almost every time. Right now,
almost all the official albums have been actualised, a thing that
practically doubles the collection of old fans & experts or
refreshes, effectively, the offer for those who are just discovering
(or want to discover) this music. A bit more arguable, for me, is
decomposing the previous Contemporary Works collections into individual albums (Vanity Of Sounds, The Crime Of Suspense, Virtual Outback, Ballett 1-4 so far), although the original box-sets were, indeed, all!, limited.

          Klaus Schulze finally came back with new music though in 2007, releasing acclaimed Kontinuum,
where the feeling of old 70s is precious, but there's also modern
music, with more attention given to details and outlines, with more
richness implemented in the essences and dynamics, making out of the
album something worthy.

          2008 was equally inciting, first off with the unexpected 11th Dark Side Of The Moog (done, of course and as always, together with Namlook. In addition to a random compilation (Muting The Noise), another round of re-release focuses this time on rearranging and offerring once
more the valuable but expended materials from the Editions, in a cycle of compilations titled La Vie Electronique.

          But
even bigger and better than expected ended up to be the collaboration
with singer Lisa Gerrard (ex-Dead Can Dance), whose primary result was Farscape,
a double-album presentation from what both artists called a serie of
long, valuable, ad-lib improvisations, with a primarily mutual and
ultimately surreal level of artistic expression. The album resorts to a
languid ambient enclosure. What's truly big about this collaboration is
the follow-up (though not necesarrily connected) Rheingold,
foremost a testimony of Schulze's grand return to concerting (within the
Lorelei summer festival), while assuredly an extremely-well received
and incredible to hear electronic exposé, shrouded in the mysticism
of the concept, and the deep aura and surround to which Schulze capably
resumes, most of elegantly, preeminently. The more operatic, absorbing, impassioned and ensorcelled
vocal poems done together with Lisa Gerrard represent in their own likely, almost beyond doubt, the real peak of the kind of matching artistry and vital essence that was sought after.
This Lorelei concert was also released on DVD, Schulze's first ever,
completing the experienced with a biographical story and interviews.
The collaboration continues to this date, its fruits being apparently
well savoured. Dzekuje Bardzo-Vielen Dank (2009), as a third
release of this kind, is of the same ambitious caliber (if tad less
profound and spot-on), highlighting two concerts in Poland and Germany.
The touring fever itself hasn't yet gone cold - and the same can be said about Schulze's sparkling enthusiasm.

Edited by Ricochet - September 06 2009 at 08:49