Tethro Juul wrote: I have listened to all of the "Berlin School" albums that I could find in the Krautrock and electronic progressive section of PA but still would like to hear more. By Berlin School I mean the more dark/spacey/hypnotic type music like "Phaedra" by Tangerine Dream and the like. Does anybody have some suggestions on music like that aside from Ash Ra Tempel, TD, ect? I love those bands but I've already listened to their albums on repeat.

 

Parallel Worlds isn't in the Archive. PW is the nom de plume of Greek electronic musician Bakis Sirros. Enjoy!

Check out Sylvain Lupari's blog and website. He's been posting reviews of electronic music for years.  The blog has been discontinued, but it still has his old reviews (at least as of this writing). He has since moved to a website for all new reviews.  Note that he categorizes everything, so just look for "Berlin School" in the summary.  At the end of each review, he usually includes links to Bandcamp or other websites where you can listen to samples.

Old blog: http://synthsequences.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow - http://synthsequences.blogspot.com/

New website: https://www.synthsequences.com" rel="nofollow - https://www.synthsequences.com

Listen to this, on Sunday morning : http://starsend.org/%20" rel="nofollow - https://starsend.org/ the web site indicates *lots* of ambient musicians. For me, the "great master" is Steve Roach  : http://steveroach.bandcamp.com/%20" rel="nofollow - https://steveroach.bandcamp.com/  others would certainly mention Robert Carty, and of course there's Robert Rich. But the most important thing IMHO is that ambient music is a completely living, contemporary music. Klaus Schulze and the first Tangerine Dream have founded something, but it still goes on today with lots of great musicians involved in.

Have a nice musical  experience :)

Yves

(and by the way, check out http://jazzcomputer.org" rel="nofollow - http://jazzcomputer.org there are also lots of things that you may like, sorry for the ad :) )

Hi,

It's a nice idea and thought, however, if you check the history of the synthesizer and the "electronic" side of things, going as far back as the soundtrack to FORBIDDEN PLANET, you will find that the earliest attempts for many of these "instruments" (they were mostly machines in the earlier days!) ... sounded cold, like the equipment itself ... you could not add warmth to it, as some of them did not even have a keyboard. AND WARMTH meant only one thing ... a sequence of the sounds that is familiar to our ears ... not exactly "music" as we know and it became later!

Please take that in consideration, because it is the main reason why so many folks don't like the earlier stuff and the hard core existentialists that continually use these "machine" cold like sounds!

If you check GEORGE HARRISON's album of electronic sounds, you will find the same thing ... there is no "music" in it, and it sounds "cold".

I am not sure who/when, but the first time I heard something that was not "cold" or a machine, was in BEAVER AND KRAUSE album ... something that even Tangerine Dream paid a tribute to in STRATOSFEAR.

I think you want to look at the early Berlin music stuff, as the young days of the synthesizer and its experiments, and I positive that they were aware of the many works/experiments of things around the world ... and probably heard many of them!

Hi,

The best thing this guy did was the one that nobody EVER heard.

His first album could be played on 33 and 45RPM, and if EVER there was a "heavy" and far out piece of music at 33RPM, that was the one ... at 45RPM, I'm not sure it is that great a pice of music, but it is still nice.

Sadly, this "adventure" never got done again ... but it was far out as long as it lasted!

Richard Pinhas, I'm not sure that he went to the school at Berlin ... he had a PHD from the Sorbonne, in Philosophy, and was probably more interested in what Robert Fripp was thinking in his closet, than he was in the Berlin School, and I am not sure that the comparison can stop there ... the Berlin School (TO MY EARS) kinda ended up in what I call "symphonic" side of things with long meandering passages of music, of which their most prolific were Tangerine Dream/Edgar Froese and Klaus Schulze. Richard, for his work in Heldon, did not use a "frame" or any kind of template for the work he did ... one got the feeling that things just got turned on and it worked out. Still incredible work and only similar to the German story in that it was improvised (like Fripp and Eno early stuff wasn't!!!) ... and likely not touched up.

You can read a lot of Richard's philosophical stuff on the EUROCK book ... however, I'm not sure that anybody in the progressive/experimental mode here is willing to read that stuff ... even I had a hard time with it, but I read them all! AND, the EUROCK book is a really valuable document on a lot of these things as THEY HAPPENED ... not later! And I'm not sure that anyone here is interested in that history, or even give a damn about Savage Rose and bands that preceded Genesis with costumes and theater minded productions! It's just not a PA thing, because it doesn't sound like a pot 3 band!  Not to mention that there are a lot more artists mentioned that played in Berlin!

Mirage is my favorite Schulze record.

I'd like to mention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bebe_and_Louis_Barron" rel="nofollow - Bebe Barron (and her husband Louis) about this soundtrack, that some people consider as one of the first attempts in electronic music. Not only because she was a woman, pretty uncommon in prog (well, is this soundtrack Prog ? I'm not sure... ), but most of all because her work was important. Is Forbidden Planet some kind of paradigm of what is a SF movie ? Surely, and the soundtrack has clearly something to do with what, someday, Klaus Schulze will record...

And let's not forget https://www.sevwave.com" rel="nofollow - Suzanne Ciani and many others !

Tethro Juul wrote: Thank you all for these replies, I'll take note of all these artists you're mentioning. I was doing some digging over the past couple days and I found that Manuel Gottsching's solo work aside from Ash Ra Tempel is also really good, especially "E2-E4", "Inventions for electric guitar", and "New Age of Earth". Out of all of the Berlin school artists so far I think I like him the most because of the way be blends the guitar into his electronic stuff.

 

Early Water (1976) by Manuel and Michael.

Hi,

AND, to my ears that is the later material of his ... the one you want to check is the early stuff that came out on the ICM label, which was Klaus Schulze's label for a little while. In that label is an incredible listing of stuff, most of which I think is unknown ... to most folks. The later stuff came out, at least here as a sort of "new age" thing, and I can not tell you how good it is ... most new age stuff was really poor.

Nogbad_The_Bad wrote: Mortte wrote: You´re already familiar with Can, Faust & Amon Düül II?   Much as I love all of these bands none of them are Berlin School.

BTW, CAN may not have been exactly Berlin, but you won't find a group of musicians that is of such a high caliber musically as those guys were ... of them all, I think that Damo and even Malcolm, were the folks that did not have a "formal" education, but the fact that three of them understood how to blend things and make music ... is a story by itself. Their care and respect for finding what worked in "experiments" in a lot of music, is something that most bands don't even have the curiosity to try, as the only thing they know is to stick to a riff or two ... and these guys knew that one riff did not a piece of music make! ... 

Per FUTURE DAYS book, there were 6 distinct sections or so of music in those days in Germany, and these would be spread out in different places. AD2 would be Munich.

And IF there still is some interest in the music by the OP, he would be smart to start with EUROCK and then he might be able to find something of interest ... he will be missing a lot of musicians that DO NOT represent what became known as "krautrock", which sadly, was an attack on the fact that a lot of the sounds made music, but had no SONG, all over them! The English and Americans knew "song" ... the rest of the world were not educated wits that could even try a song!

Neither is Suzanne Ciani who someone mentioned earlier. The interesting thing is I was always saying her last name as See ah ni when it turns out(according to that clip)it is pronounced as Choni. The things you learn on here.  She's electronic (or even new age at times)for sure and I could be wrong but I seriously doubt she ever did anything in the Berlin school.

Yes, it very specifically relates the the minimalist electronic sound of the likes of Tangerine Dream & Klaus Schulze developed in Berlin in the 70's.

Those two are personal favorites.

Guldbamsen wrote: For peeps new to Berliner Schule electronics I’d strongly recommend Heldon’s Stand By or Tangerine Dream’s Force Majeure as stepping stones to the style. Both of these incorporate rock into the proceedings making the experience more palatable to folks brought up on bass and drums aka the beat.

Excellent recommendations.

Yup, Can & Faust are more the Koln-Dusseldorf school (though Faust was created in Hamburg), while AD2 is the typical Munich scene

cstack3 wrote: No one mentioned Larry Fast yet?

 

The OP said he's heard everything under electronic in the archive, so I assumed that included Synergy.

But I do own and love all those albums. I call them "Fast School." 

 

I highly recommend Breidablik's "Omicron"!  5-star album.

 

Here is my review link:  http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=2340480" rel="nofollow - http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=2340480

Thank you, I am listening to Omicron now, this is EXCELLENT work!!  

The guitarist style is similar to my own (volume pedal, long sustained notes).....

Being from Norway, I'd think you'd use Nord keyboards!  You said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhXyVXU2r_I" rel="nofollow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhXyVXU2r_I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5LiP5Slyxw" rel="nofollow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5LiP5Slyxw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1XlOOEbehI" rel="nofollow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1XlOOEbehI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5712owmksO0" rel="nofollow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5712owmksO0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uI65NO3Agc" rel="nofollow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uI65NO3Agc   (from Rain Falls in grey which was a Syd tribute album)

Not according to the the clips I saw(including the Letterman one). I'll take your word for it though since most people mispronounce names right and left(it wasn't until I heard Jon Anderson say Vangelis with a hard g that I knew I was mispronouncing his name wrong all these years). 

Believe me, we all pronounced it "Van-jell-is" till we found out (for me, it was an interviewer who actually wrote out "hard g" in the text of his introduction)! And then it made sense, considering his first name is Evangelos.

The prob with "Choni" is it lacks a syllable and resembles too closely the (North American) Spanish slang term for underwear. 

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote: My suggestion of Radio Massacre International was ignored the fist time around so I will mention them again. Come on guys. They used(or use)mellotrons for crying out loud. Is that good enough for you? :) They also had an album that was a little more proggy apparently that was an homage to Syd Barrett. Anyway, apart from that one album they are definitely in the berlin school. Anyone who is into that sound definitely needs to check out RMI asap.

 

I don't think your post was ignored. I think the OP's looking for more obscure Berlin School. The thread's morphed into people posting general rec's.

Superb band, I particularly love the Syd Barrett tribute and Emissaries.

Yeah they are great. I didn't catch them at Nearfest but I did see them play at a church in Philly about ten years ago or so. I saw Manuel Gottsching(from Ash Ra Tempel)at the same place about two years prior.

Anyway, imo anyone who's name isn't Tangerine Dream is probably considered obscure by most. 

Excellent stuff, congratulations, very enjoyable.

Thank you for the kind words! The electric guitars are played by Håkon from Jordsjø and Elds Mark. I can highly recommend both projects. Great stuff! 

Clavia/Nord are from Sweden so we do not use their gear in Norway ;-) No, I would really like to have a Nord keyboard, but they are a bit expensive and I prefer analog synthesizers.