TIMEWIND

Klaus Schulze's fifth studio album is another lengthy expose of extended electronic soundscapes that take the listener to another world musically. They are very sparse, they are very indulgent on Schulze's part, and they can sometimes get a little too excessive in length. This album, released in 1975, while a good album, is riddled with sections that do no less than bore and some editing could have been done on both tracks, but other than that, this is another aural voyage that takes the listener through a desolate landscape of sparse percussion and majestic synthesizers. I don't see Timewind as an album that will be remembered as a masterpiece of modern electronic music, but that does not mean I dislike the album, it still has some very redeeming qualities, in the end.

The first of the two songs on the album is the expansive and lush Bayreuth Return, a 30 minute synthesizer experiment that dabbles in minimalistic expressions and sentiments, and for the most part comes off successfully. Beginning with the use of a wind machine, a sparse synthesizer becomes the main focal point for the first part of the piece until simplistic bass synthesizer notes create the basic mainframe of the song while Schulze pulls out all the stops on the atmospheric edge. My main concern with this piece, though, is not the fact that the music is performed wonderfully, but that the music tends to become over-ambitious and thus from that drag on to the point of massive boredom. Still, though, there are plenty of interesting bits in this piece that really help it more than destroy it, like a "solo" so to speak towards the 14th minute that while being a bit low in the overall mix, relays the main theme of the piece quite well.

The second piece is Wahnfried 1883, a 28 minute piece that relies more on atmosphere than sheer bombastic nature. It starts out quicker than Bayreuth Return, but it retains that slow but steady pace Schulze always seems to play at. It begins with mixed noises and a desolate feeling much like the first, but the feeling is more open and more improvisational than the first piece (even though this piece is not an improv). Schulze's synthesizer chords on this piece are lush and diverse, adding more and more layers of mystery and desolation to the mix. I'm quite fond of the section that takes place between the fifth and twelfth minute, where the lead synthesizers hit their critical mark and really are quite moving. But much like the first piece of the album, it takes forever for the song to reach a conclusion and it at points fails to truly grasp my undivided attention. Despite that, though, as with the first song on the album, there are many incredible breathtaking sections that somewhat redeem the piece from being a flatout blunder.

In the end, Timewind isn't a bad album musically, but there is a lot (and I mean a lot) of filler sections that could have been shortened and would have made the songs more concise and to the point, rather than rambling on with the same theme and buildup for 10 minutes until deciding to change the mood of the piece entirely. And at the end of the day, this album does rank highly in the bore factor. It's not a bad album, it's quite good, but I wouldn't call it a masterpiece in any way, shape, or form (or maybe I just don't get ambient electronic albums altogether). 3.5/5.