CONDITIONS OF THE GAS GIANT

Originally released in 1987 for a lucky few on Birdo'Pray Records, cassette only Conrad Schnitzler: Conditions Of The Gas Giant (reissue 2019), is now available in a more contemporary fashion.

As lazy as it may seem it will turn out extremely informative to copy paste the history of this undercovered masterpiece in its label´s reissue advertisement.-

""Bureau B present a reissue of Conrad Schnitzler's Conditions of the Gas Giant, originally released on cassette in 1988. The Berlin artist first released these recordings on a small American cassette label. Admirers of the seminal artist Conrad Schnitzler can be found all over the planet, including the USA, of course. Matt Howarth, illustrator and independent comic artist, is one of them. He has been following Schnitzler's music since the early 1970s whilst drawing offbeat science fiction stories. One day Howarth came up with the idea of making Schnitzler a member of a notorious band -- The Bulldaggers -- who featured in one of his comic series. Not wanting to go ahead without permission, he got in touch with Schnitzler who readily embraced the idea. In fact, he posted a pile of photos by return so that the graphic artist could draw him properly. The Bulldaggers popped up repeatedly in the comics and Schnitzler was (repeatedly) delighted. A friendship soon developed between him and Howarth. In 1986, Howarth designed his first cover for a Schnitzler album (Concert) and the following year Schnitzler entrusted him with tapes which Howarth was able to bring to the notice of the small American label Bird O' Pray. Considering the label's predominantly punk and early garage leanings, Howarth and Schnitzler were as surprised as each other to see the album successfully released on cassette."

Yep! Those were the days when the world wide web still was a military only communications system.

Anyway, I could not be more than enthusiastic about the whole thing in a year of so few really surprising Progressive Electronic releases, so far, and yes I know this is not a 2019 album, but thank the Gods it is a timeless masterpiece.

Well as what you reader may wonder if you have not yet dwelled into this electronic: noise/glitch/experimental/minimalist/pre-industrial Master musician´s work, expect 12 independent tracks beyond their respective title context which travel the minimalist music roads but do not suspect long gone Mr. Schnitzler to behave like a common thief, opposite to that he returns the double of what he takes.

By then, as commented before, the kings of the hill of the newly found minimalist way of music expression in all kind of contemporary fields, as this PA´s sub-genre´s detailed preface explains, were La Mont Young pre- minimalist works (one of Brian Eno´s confessed influences), Harry Partch´s pre-drone works, Terry Riley´s daring "In C" (1964) inspiring young composers as Phillip Glass´ slow motion opera "Einstein On The Beach" (1975) and Steve Reich´s flaming "Music for 18 Musicians" (1978) which ten years later, give and take, touched the restless mind of the low profile by choice and key player in the development and evolution of the famous Berlin School of electronic music Conrad Schnitzler.

So, an independent, counter culture and true to himsellf artist will never dare to rip off nobody´s idiom, less have no fun placing in his hands such a valued treasure to repeat other musicians glories, opposite to that and knowingly forecasting his own language composition possibilities in this music mode, he explores and bursts his experimental music potential to the point of adding up new colors to the already rich palette and establishing his very own, raw and unsophisticated sequencing textures to work as an integral part of this contemporary style of music composition, whose branches still grow up to today in all kinds of music genres, electronic and not & high and Pop.

Mr. Schnitzler at the time of this cassette´s release had already consolidated his own, self acquired and distinctive electronic music language therefore this work is his personal understanding of minimalism.

And that my friend is exactly what he does all through this work´s 12 tracks, one by one.

Between thrilling and sublime masterwork.

*****