DUNE

This album includes two massive tracks, roughly 30 and 26 minutes long. Inspired by the famous science fiction saga by Frank Herbert (appeared in 1965 or so), it features the cello of Wolfgang Tiepold and - only on the latter half of the second track - the vocals of Arthur Brown.

But these things (inspiration source, vocals) aren't making the album as special or different in Sculze's oeuvre as I was hoping. Being familiar to the novel surely helped to visualize the music and imagine the desert planet with its giant worms, but all in all it isn't notably more visualistic music than Schulze in general. For example the double album "X", inspired by men such as Nietzche and, surprise surprise, Frank Herbert, is more thought-provoking and has more sense of drama.

And for the vocals by the same prog legend who sang the manic hit 'Fire' and had the band Kingdom Come... where's the actual singing, one may ask. His voice enters around the ninth minute (before that there's been some synthetic and nearly unaudible voice in the background). He just reads the lyrics in a decent manner. He delivers the endless poem reading well, but his gorgeous vocal potential hasn't been put to use at all. And the rest of the track is really far too monotonous to excuse the 26 minutes. So, if you wanted to compare this album to Tangerine Dream's controversial Cyclone (featuring multi- instrumentalist Steve Jolliffe on rather freaky vocals also), forget it.

The lyrics are written by Schulze and they seem to deal with self-search and ideals of life, distanced quite a lot from any narrative levels. Which is not a bad thing of course, but some closer connection to the novel might have been more interesting.

The first track is slightly better as a whole. The cello is given a big role, almost equal to the synths. But despite some shifts in the level of intensity, the track has too little substance to need all the 30 minutes. To some extent it is a grower on the listener, as it at first sounds like the most boring sonic-experimental music of Vangelis (albums such as Beaubourg or Invisible Connection), having so little melody or rhythm, but it gets better than that. This album however is best left to use as background music, while reading some science fiction for example. I wouldn't dare to drive a car on a highway with this music, especially if I was tired.