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Klaus Schulze - Body Love (OST) CD (album) cover

BODY LOVE (OST)

Klaus Schulze

Progressive Electronic


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ZowieZiggy
PROG REVIEWER
4 stars I wouldn't be that laudatory about this album as I was for the incredible "Timewind" (which was a masterpiece).

This album shows a more rhythmic music, as will produce TD some time later. Is the title of the opening number precursory? Needless to say that "Stardancer" has some dance feel, that's for sure. Even if the beat is still digestible. Still, it is not Klaus's facet that I prefer: just a good track, that's all.

I far much prefer the wonderful and tranquil mood available during the imposing "Blanche". It is all melody and purity. A cold ocean of fantasy and beauty. Klaus at his best (but he is often playing great music, isn't he?).

This song is a very elegant and spacey moment which is fully in line with the best of his works. I haven't seen the movie (since this album is a soundtrack for, let's say some "hot" moments, hence the title) but I can imagine some scenes going along with the music?I won't tell more to avoid some problems here (just kidding). A five star piece of music, for sure.

"PTO" is some sort of combination of both previous songs: spacey and ambient at times, while more upbeat during others. The whole being very well crafted, passionate and very strong indeed. A pleasant trip in space, for sure. The closing five minutes are a jewel of electronic moment; believe me! Sideral, exceptional. Well, I 'm afraid I am laudatory once more...

In terms of quality music, Klaus Schulze is certainly on par with the other giant of this category. TD of course (I can't prevent to link both careers). This "Body Love" is again a very good album which I rate with four stars.

Report this review (#238427)
Posted Thursday, September 10, 2009 | Review Permalink
Bonnek
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR
Honorary Collaborator
4 stars I often associate the music of Klaus Schulze with my cats when they are at their most graceful and charming, namely when they're sleeping.

First of all there's nothing more beautiful and irresistible then a sleeping cat. But there is more. If you observe them, they appear to be immobile, completely still and static. However if you look away for a minute and then return your attention to them, you will see that something has happened, a paw is just a tad more stretched then it was, the head is bent in an even cuter posture, the tail not loose now but gently curled around the hind feet, and so on.

So fares the music of Klaus Schulze, seemingly unchanging yet in constant flux, alost by pure instinct it progresses from one gorgeous theme into another, with moogs and percussion serving as waving tails and dabbing paws. In a few cases the sleep seems almost comatose but mostly it is a venture that I can hear for hours.

Right. End trip. Back on my feet again.

Body Love comes in two volumes: "Body Love" and "Body Love Vol 2". Both are excellent. In my review for Vol2 I have given a personal preference for the second album. However, that was before I got the 2005 reissue of Body Love itself, which adds a studio outtake from 1977 that is every bit as good as the regular tracks. The whole package makes this an excellent purchase.

Report this review (#250010)
Posted Wednesday, November 11, 2009 | Review Permalink
5 stars One thing I love about the first ten albums of Klaus Schulze is the quality of the album sleeves, I love the surrealist style of the paintings. Somewhere in my mind tells me that I should like Timewind, Mirage, X, Moondawn, but no, they are excellent albums, but for me, right now, the pornsoundtrack is the best of him.

Stardancer is a great uptempo track, a sample and hold bass line, lead synthesizer lines, very "futuristic".

Blanche is a beatiful downtempo track, with loose piano notes in the first part, a strongish lead synth and then a low volume bass sequence. I think this suites well on the porn vein!

PTO is the last track and iti s a killer, the main sequence is just awesome and it grows and grows along with the drums and lead minimoog until it begins to desfigurate and it suddenly stops with some silly sounds and then you are in a cosmic view ver far, far from earth and it becomes very serious. A really great track

Report this review (#295507)
Posted Friday, August 20, 2010 | Review Permalink
Warthur
PROG REVIEWER
4 stars Robert Fripp might have been irked when artsy porn flick "Emmanuelle" ripped off Larks' Tongues In Aspic Part 2 for part of its soundtrack, but Klaus Schulze seems to have no problem providing music for arthouse sex movies, contributing this soundtrack to Body Love. In terms of Klaus' own work, it's a refinement of the approach taken on the preceding Moondawn, presenting a more gentle, emotional vision of electronic music than the stark, cold, brittle work on the likes of Cyborg. As far as music to get freaky to goes, it's not exactly Isaac Hayes material, but in terms of Klaus' career it's another great entry to his discography.
Report this review (#552693)
Posted Wednesday, October 19, 2011 | Review Permalink
colorofmoney91
PROG REVIEWER
4 stars As per the usual Klaus Schulze standard, this is uber-dramatic Berlin school music at its most epic. But the soundtrack to love? Definitely not with the women I've known.

I've never seen the movie Body Love, though I'm sure I'd probably enjoy it considering that it's a pornographic film and I'm a college student; the two implicitly go hand in hand. Also, Schulze did this soundtrack for the film, which guarantees Body Love to be the most awkwardly and unintentionally nerdy pornographic film since Bikini Cavegirl.

Besides all of this, Body Love is a great album that fits in very well with the much loved classics of Schulze's classic era. The soaring synths that portray spacial travel and the propelling drumming is here just like in Moondawn and X, but here on the track "Stardancer" it seems that the percussion has been done much more tastefully and has worked its way more comfortably into Schulze's classic sound; for this I am grateful, because the percussion in the aforementioned albums were kind of overbearing for my taste.

"Blanche" is my favorite track on the album because of its depressing tone, and everyone knows I'm all about that. I'd have to rank this track as being among Schulze's most emotional (still sufficiently awkward for porn) and beautiful tracks and only clocks in at a manageable 12 minutes, and features a moody piano melody coupled with the classic and recognizable sounds of analog Berlin school synths. The atmosphere achieved on "Blanche" makes me think of lying in the moonlight on a beach on Neptune where lambent aurora paint the skyline (pretty good idea for a porn setting), and the sounds of the close and distant waves crashing onto the sand are easily distinguishable.

"P.T.O.", which I assume to stand for Pornographic Topographic Oceans among other more explicit things, bears the trademark Schulze epic track length (about 27 minutes). I'm kind of underwhelmed by this track mostly because this track is kind of a noisy "balls out" aggressive Berlin school track that doesn't really match up too well with the previous two emotional tracks, although on its own "P.T.O." is definitely a reputable classic track in Schulze's catalogue.

Being a fan of Schulze's work but having not listened to any of it in a long time, Body Love is definitely a great representation of his classic era with a great element of emotion that is probably only a bit stronger and more thought out on Mirage. But because of this album's manageable length and the strength of the material, I'd say that this would be as good a starting place for aspiring Schulze fans as any of his previous classics. Don't expect anything romantic though, because (and I promise this) no woman will ever be turned on by this brand of spacial exploration music, and if she says otherwise then she is lying and is probably a keeper.

Report this review (#623711)
Posted Tuesday, January 31, 2012 | Review Permalink
Neu!mann
PROG REVIEWER
4 stars The first of two matching soundtracks for a Dutch pornographic film (directed by an Italian aristocrat affecting a Scandinavian alias) continued in the same direction as Schulze's best-selling "Moondawn" album (1976), with lots of textbook Berlin School Moog vamps over a rhythmic bed of rock-steady acoustic drumming. The formula wasn't fully realized on the earlier LP, but Schulze refined it here to the acme of synthetic excellence, succeeding where "Moondawn" didn't because of the dynamic urgency of the music.

Maybe he was inspired by the film scenario, which follows a decadent blue-blood couple who arrange to have their teenage daughter deflowered at an upscale orgy on her 18th birthday. If so, it's hard to reconcile the energy and drive of the album opener "Stardancer" with the mechanical dispassion of hardcore movie sex. The swirling Arabian chords and near-eastern motifs were fast becoming common stock for synth jams of this sort, but each long piece is incredibly textured, and the live drumming by old pal Harald Großkopf (like Schulze, another of R.U. Kaiser's Cosmic Jokers) gives the album real muscle.

It's a well-balanced effort, too. The pulse-raising agitation of "Stardancer" segues nicely into the much calmer interstellar drift of "Blanche" (named for the composer's girlfriend). The subsequent tension between the two is then resolved by the side-long (on vinyl) "P.T.O.": 27-escalating minutes of passionate synth-rock foreplay and release, more stimulating (I imagine) than anything in the film itself.

The '05 Revisited Records CD re-issue includes the unreleased epilogue "Lasse Braun", a hyper-drive extension of Schulze's earlier (and flawed) "Picture Music" album, adding twenty-two minutes of quietly bubbling synthesizers and ice-smooth soloing (and name-checking the film's director). Most bonus tracks are superfluous footnotes, but in this case the appendix perfectly complements the original album, looking back in satisfied afterglow while anticipating the second wind of Volume II.

Klaus Schulze was an artist approaching his creative zenith in 1977, and the Body Love albums (both of them) were the final steps below the career-peak plateau of "X", released the following year.

Report this review (#1468581)
Posted Tuesday, September 22, 2015 | Review Permalink
Modrigue
PROG REVIEWER
3 stars No bontempi keyboards here

3.5 stars

Klaus Schulze's first soundtrack is for... an erotic movie! Believe it or not, his previous albums "Timewind" and "Moondawn" were already used by German film director Lasse Braun as background music for his scenes. Logically, he directly asked the electronic musician to compose the score for his next production, "Body Love". But don't worry, there are no soporific, flat or lazy composition here. Schulze still proposes a musical trip through his hypnotic and slowly evolving soundscapes. Then... is this a follow up to "Moondawn", or even "Timewind"? More precisely, "Body Love" can be seen rather as futuristic evolution, mainly due to the percussive elements of future ASHRA drummer Harald Grosskopf, but also due to the dynamicity of the tracks and their science-fiction sonorities.

"Stardancer" can be described as a more lively and upbeat version of "Totem", from the "Picture Music" album. After a trippy cosmic introduction, pulsating sequences and synthesizer waves give life to mystical whirlwinding keyboards. It even sound Middle-Eastern-ish at times. Mesmerizing! Probably my favorite passage of the record. Dedicated to his girlfriend, "Blanche" is maybe the more suited piece to an erotic scene of the entire soundtrack. In contrast with the other tracks, this is a kind of electronic romance. Beginning with a delicate and calm piano introduction, it displays a relaxing and oneiric sonic landscape. No rhythm here, just a peaceful ambiance.

Longest composition of the album, the 27 minutes "P.T.O" can be seen as extended version of "Stardancer". After a magnificent spacey and contemplative opening, the middle sequenced section is not bad but tends to become a little repetitive and monotonous. This passage could have been shortened. The deliverance arrives with a delightfully surprising break introducing the final part, which brings the listener somewhere between the stars...

Quite different from TANGERINE DREAM's movie scores, "Body Love" is a good soundtrack and even surpasses "Moondawn" in terms of variety and attractiveness. Harald Grosskopf's drums are a welcomed addition and brings a futuristic tone to Schulze's stretched soundscapes. I did not see the film, but, except for the piano overture of "Blanche", I can difficulty imagine how well the music is suited... To be honest, I would not recommend to play it neither for a romantic dinner nor to make love. Instead of erotic and sensual tracks, what we have here somehow foreshadows the 'trance music' of the nineties!

During your Klaus Schulze musical journey, don't be afraid by the soundtrack denomination or the nature of the movie it addresses. "Body Love" should by no means be considered as a minor effort by the German pioneer and is at the level of his other studio opuses of the 70's. Do not hesitate to dive into this nice retro-science fiction ambiance and give it a listen!

Report this review (#1594199)
Posted Wednesday, August 3, 2016 | Review Permalink
patrickq
PROG REVIEWER
4 stars Timewind (1975) was a low point in Klaus Schulze's first ten albums, and Moondawn, released the following year, was somewhat of an improvement. With Body Love, Schulze again builds on his prior work, turning in a very good album which bridges the TimewindMoondawn period and his golden-age triptych of Mirage, Body Love 2, and X.

Body Love is somewhat familiar in form, with the original LP comprised of two 10+ minute songs on one side and a one song 25-minute on the other. Side One is divided between "Stardancer," a rhythmic track including a drumkit played by Harald Großkopf , and the more pensive, rhythmless "Blanche." Side Two is given to "P.T.O.," which is similar in sound and tempo to "Stardancer." The twenty-two minute bonus track on recent CD issues, "Lasse Braun," fits stylistically with the rest of the album, although it's played in a noticeably lower register than the canonical tracks. It also has a lower tempo than "Stardancer" and "P.T.O." Großkopf plays on "P.T.O.," but the drumkit is low in the mix, and is only audible for a few of the track's twenty-seven minutes. This is followed by "Lasse Braun," on which Großkopf is absent. So the drumkit is heard only rarely in the last hour of Body Love.

(There isn't a drumkit on Schulze's first three albums, although Schulze is credited with playing "percussion." On his fourth LP, Picture Music (1975), Schulze plays the drumkit, and with that album he had nearly perfected his synthesizer-and-drumkit formula. After the drummer-less Blackdance (1975), Moondawn (1976) became the first to feature only Schulze (synthesizers, etc.) and Großkopf (drums). Body Love is the second, and the recipe works even better than it had on Moondawn. Body Love 2 (1977) was the final Schulze-Großkopf album, although Großkopf is heavily featured on X (1978) and also appeared on Live? (1980). In the 1980s, Schulze's go-to percussionist/drummer was Michael Shrieve.)

It's useful when evaluating a musical work to evaluate the composition, performance, and production (or sound) separately - - even though they overlap. It's especially difficult to segregate these three elements on a Schulze album. This makes it complicated to explain why I don't consider Body Love to be as good as, say, Body Love 2. While Body Love is very good, it isn't quite as engaging as any of his next three albums.

Nonetheless, I'd recommend Body Love to anyone interested in Schulze's 1970s work or to anyone interested in the "Berlin School" of progressive-electronic music. Four Stars.

Report this review (#2182445)
Posted Thursday, April 11, 2019 | Review Permalink

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