KLAUS SCHULZE

1. Osiris (Parts 1-4) 2 ethereal parts to get you started, 2 moments to wander with a bold sound, far from those primary ones of his productions of yesteryear; here it's cottony, melodic and of course minimalist; it's trippy, almost new age; part 3 suddenly goes up a notch before falling back into its hypnotic overloops and resuming the so characteristic syncopated tune; it is with the very short 4th period that we are entitled to the sensual and dreamlike rise, a quiet homage to the limit of the new age and its detractors; or how to spend 18 minutes without realizing it!

2. Seth (Parts 1-7) aggressive space attack, laser rockets come out of nowhere and graze us; 2 parts to make a passage between the stars, between the limbs of your cortex and we arrive at the dancing evolution of the album, a sound that JARRE himself would not have denied, yes the master who will look for fresh and popular tunes; watch out part4 and it's time for Wolfgang to throw austere notes from his cello; part5 and a radical change, a sound that will scratch on its instrumentations of the time, the one in which it was taken; the air between deep sadness and enlightening astonishment, just before believing in a God; next part and I find JARRE with 'Alice' for a stunning romantic-spleen piece confirmed by the even darker finale; meditative

3. Der Hauch des Lebens (Parts 1-5) changes location, instruments by offering a long monolithic melody with loop effects, with wandering spleen melancholy-divine darkness; a piece that comes and goes in your brain and there too the tertiary melody, the one that hooks us waits for the 3rd beat; it's something already seen and well done, it's above all dynamic enough to be guided; the last 2 parts are more languorous, the noises of a megaptera for example, sounds reaching deep within us, from him; remember that only he knew his advanced state with regard to the crab and there is no doubt that this last chapter could represent one of the passages to the musical beyond; the final climb makes you want to resume your flights for the umpteenth, for one last time? No, there will be eternal sweetness. A testament to the Berliner school that is much less expressive, much more intimate.

1. Totem with a slow melodic tune, not a crescendo that makes you vibrate with its rise; here a repetitive and throbbing electronic pad which allows the keys of the synths to go here and there throughout the musical space; a title that doesn't catch as much as the one before or those after it, a more electronic essay and not intimate enough, not intoxicating enough, not contemplative enough; yes when we are used to very good a little less and the whole atmosphere collapses; yes, too much on the easy sounds that JM JARRE will take up again next year... yes, the more symphonic and more tinkered finale leaves a little more regret.

2. Mental Door changes, for the better; a sound ripple, a musical jolt, an overloop search, you know when it's spinning and you can't get out of it; a synth note which swirls during the first third and which announces a surge with the presence of a drum, don't forget that he was a drummer before with TANGERINE DREAM; in short it goes in all directions, it's more cheerful, more lively than many of his titles, it's quite interesting to have missed it and to dive into it now; I find less emotion but is this due to the fact that I have fewer memories to cling to or actually cling to? In short, the fact is that the vibration is less intense and this raises the question: were we addicted to music 50 years ago, did we already want to have our Rollex so as not to miss out on life or were we in a form of recklessness by stuffing ourselves with the little that passed under our ears?

Deus Arrakis is Klaus Schulzes last album. I have been a fan of him since 1975, buying Timewind in the record shop, because of the intriguing cover (both front and back) and the long timings. I had not heard an electronic album before. I was deeply impressed and still am up to this day (maybe even deepler, since I have a keyboard rig like him, and he does amazing things with it). I first explored his backalbums, but they were really hard for me. Fortunately, I like them very much these days. Bought all albums and boxsets there after, and he is my most played hero. Now to Deus Arrakis, or maybe 'just before' it: The last 20 years I was not impressed by his output, mostly too much noodling and same chords repeated infinitely. But I am surprised with Deus Arrakis!

The first track 'Osiric' is very smooth, almost no rhythms but more arpeggiating. Quite nice chords he's using and a joy to listen to. The second track 'Seth', starts slowly and then has a peaceful rhythm. A bit repeating chords, but after ten minutes we go into other territory, great 'spooky' sounds. Then Wolfgang Tiebold joins in (from an old tape) and from there this is a really nice track, much in vein of the original Dune record. In fact, this as nice as those old days!

We finish off with a remarkable track. The mood was allready quite somber, and this track continues this. I think its fantastic. Great breathing sounds, great chords and great arpeggiators. Then, after 17 minutes, we get to the last sequel of Klaus, an amazing mix of what Klaus is/was. Beautiful stringpads, arp bubbles, great chords. It finishes off with some major chords and sounds really reminiscent of his Irrlicht and Cyborg organ drones. And then it stops... Everything is finished, the circle is round. Artistically this is an amazing album, the music on the first half is not groundbreaking, so 4 stars. Well done, Klaus. What a way to change cosmic address.

Review #114!

There are no synths on this one, for sure. But is that better? 'Irrlicht', Schulze's first studio album, is an artistic ambient album. All instrumental, minimal in sound variation, but powerful in instrumentation. Klaus Schulze uses an orchestra to elevate his sound and the ambience is superb. 'Satz Ebene' is a long piece that utilizes electric organs only as background (something that would change in his later works) and the orchestra and strings take the stage. 'Satz Gewitter' is a relatively short composition with an organ that fades in and out. This is great. The delicate synths and other weird noises create a dark, moody atmosphere. This might be my favorite song on this album. There is supposed to be some sort of segue between this song and 'Satz Ebene', so you should check that out. Then is 'Sats Exil Sils Mari', which I find quite boring. It just fades in and out for fifteen minutes with the same sounds until it changes up a bit. Those last six minutes are great, but everything else is weak. But this is still a great album. Maybe not Schulze's absolute best, but worth a shot. Prog on.

A hidden chronicle of ' Moondawn'! 1 Floating...you have heard, the musical crystalline note, the canticle, the pamphlet, the incantation; everyone has had a father who picked you up passing through your room and listening to this... you better tidy up your room and go to mass rather than listening to this... tuuuuu, duuuuu... the note rises, a crescendo without knowing what it was; a bit of OLDFIELD in it, yes it's much more recent than the tubular bells; 4 minutes passed without realizing the time passing; I think a bit and bam 2 more minutes on the clock, yes when it starts to fill up in the headphones, a sound reminiscent of 'Reality' with CHABAT yes go dig and you will see that there is Philip GLASS at the controls, another tenor; good 9 mins and it just starts / finally cross out the word you want; the stereo starts up, the pink noises give way to a melody with bubbles à la JM JARRE, yes he too is not just a little Frenchy; good, Harold's drums help take off, the sound gets louder, the dzin dzin at 13 min, yes I remember by heart... indicates that we are entering the title, it goes up, it becomes intense, oppressive , we're starting to wonder where we're going, are we going to have to lower the volume, won't the stereo be split, 15 minutes and these crystalline notes that fill the room, that clean your speakers ; yes Cabasse and JM Lab, but it doesn't mean anything these days .... what a sound with .... your your your your your, that's it I see the Synthanorma 3-12 sequencer which adds to it a diaper, I have to calm down otherwise I'm going to see Klaus in person in my room .... in meditation, in ecstasy, in a trance am I? Good you .... what stage are you at; bam the 2nd has just passed, it surely increases but inevitably, the drum roll has something to do with it; that's it I just understood, this sound is archaic, it comes from our viscera, finally from the schizoid ideas of Klaus, yes that's it! 19 and it goes up too loud all of a sudden, I lower the sound, come on I put it back, anyway the room is soundproof... it still vibrates, my whole body starts to shake, incredible what a vulgurus musica can do on a body....22 mins and I feel the end, yes well I know the album it's easy now but I'm still afraid of this abrupt end as I reach ecstasy, the sound having taken possession of the room, the 6 points with the subwoofer compressing my bubble of survival, this subwoofer a little too serious there, but what a foot; yes you did the same thing, that reassures me; that's it, I feel the end, go for a little more of this tireless, indescribable air before the real end, soft, where black noise reigns... bubbles of music for a while, end, the following silence is still part of the title. 2 Mindphaser for the title that I took time to domesticate, yes I admit it I cut to the explosion and I put back the intro! and yet these waves of departure, this implied serenity, this musical wisdom which imprints your preconscious and puts you in a state of hibernation; the flash has just fallen, yes the 4 minutes are exceeded; what it's a roar of waves oh well ok but each his representation; the dreamlike waves, these siren songs, come and go as you wander around, without drugs, without sex, of course! with a dram of a little whiskey of course my dear, go a glenfarclas 93 yes the one so fruity sherry you'd think you were drinking the juice dripping from a bunch of raisins; 8 mins I hurry, I'm fine ... yes let's not spoil; 11 mins and I'm in apnea, I'm waiting.. I'm always being had... that's it, the drums, the organ, everything happens, let's go for musical priapism.. yes it won't stop ... the drums will serve as a particular metronome by driving this synth, this organ, these keyboards to a proven state of hypnotic trance; the moment you let go, when you listen choking, when you tense up in fear of another explosion you couldn't control; the synth... the farfisa and big moog in the lead; at 16 min you wonder if the sound won't saturate, it becomes stressful, convulsive, mantranic, your head moves strangely, well the legs are not better, in fact you do your sports session without realizing it ; it squirts everywhere, the trance was only the start, there you are higher, you are familiar with the gods, you simulate the notes of Klaus, you have 15 fingers that touch the 4 synths arranged in front of you... yes how do you want chronicle this cult album OMNI which will trigger in each of you a different potential orgasmic coma and in every way similar? yet another musical oxymoron, one more paradox that I wanted to confront, struggle, fight, interact with... I capsize, I surrender at 25 minutes where the sinister melody no longer reaches me; my eyes are rolled back, the drool comes out of my mouth, I dance almost naked on the shards of bottles, remains of cans, glasses that have fallen by accident, I catch my breath, they call me, they wake me up, I was gone very far. Ok for a 5 points for this album!!!

For the fourth episode of the collaboration between Schulze and Pete Namlook, the project becomes temporarily a trio with the addition of some Bill Laswell. This is particularily evident in the opening track, which semms to be made of three different acts, from three different composers all mixed together.

Anyway, as for the previous chapters, also now the tracks are named just "part 1" to "part 9", despite the fact that they aren't so continuous that I can't consider them part of a single suite.

Part 1 has good moments, espcially in the most spacey segments, when only keyboard chords, background voices and very few electronic effects send the listener to the cosmos. The orchestral accents by surrogate strings sound a bit outplaced to me, but apart of that, it's quite my pot.

Part 2 is the longest track, scoring over 20 minutes. It seems that a time machine has sent it here directly from the 80s. It reminds to the Tangerine Dream of the Virgin period, even if Schulze was already out of TD at that time. There's some melody in background. It requires some attention. The first sudden change arrives around minute 8, when the chord progression turns to minors, while the foreground bass/drums loop has still no variations. After 4 more minutes, more percussions are added to enrich the basic loop with melodic whistles behind and electronic noises including unintelligible voices. As a Tangerine Dream addict as I am, of course I like this track, including its unexpected closure.

Electronic birds resounding full of reverb into a sort of cave have an Ummagumma feel without a Pict but with distorted voices like an astronaut falling into a black hole, later turned into a Tibetan guttural sound. I think Part 3 can be called "psychedelic". It's less than 5 minutes long but I would have liked it doubled at least. It fades seamlessly into part 4 which is a short interstellar travel.

At this point it's like we are effectively into a suite. Part 5 is based again on a percussive loop. Unfortunately, half of this two minutes track is nothing more that music in 4/4 ideal for a rave party. Listenable but unnecessary.

Another smooth transition and part 6 surprises us with a kind of spanish guitar over a floydian base reminding of the intro of Shine on you crazy diamond. It's the first time since the beginning of this project that I find something floydian other than the album title. Well it's not David Gilmour, but listen and let me know...It's likely Laswell who is known for being also a guitarist.

Part 7 is just two minutes of reverbed deadly bells transitioned into part 8 that's...the kind of track that makes me change station when I hear something of that kind on the radio. Are you on ecstasy, dancing and sweating like a monkey? If not, just skip it, even if what seems to be a guitar in the background is not completely bad.

Part 9 is just a minute of midi joke with some drone snare.

2.5 stars rounded up for track 6, where in my opinion they should have closed the album.

The first good new is that the duo has finally given up to the 5 minutes split in tracks. At least we have now different tracks of different lengths.

Part 1 is a 18 minutes suite that opens in a way that we can consider "classic" in the space rock world: no percussion of any kind, sci-fi like sounds coming and going and loops that partially point to Tangerine Dream's Zeit but also to the central movement of Saucerful of Secrets or even to the more quiet parts of Vangelis Albedo 0.39. No melody. Just a consistent succession of cinematic sounds designed to bring the listener to the deep space of Kubrick's Odyssey. Not too far from the music of Gyorgy Ligety, also thanks to the synthetic voices in the background.

Part 2 lasts 12 minutes and features the first proper chords. The same space sounds of the first part are now background to a progression of minor chords made by keyboard strings, then disappear. If before we were on a starship, now we have landed on a planet. It's a dreamy soundscape which seems to feature also an electric guitar hidden between the strings. It's the most floydian thing found up to now on this dark side of the moog, but it's still closer to Zeit than to Ummagumma. Kosmische Musik from the 70s created in the 90s.

Part 3 returns to electronics. Schulze remembers to be a drummer and creates a rhythmic base with an electronic loop . At least I suppose that in this case it's mainly his stuff. After deep space and a wild planet, it gives me the idea of a subterranean control room.

As in the previous two episodes of this serie of albums, we have a "disco" moment. Without the 4/4 drums it could be a Tangerine Dream piece from the Virgin period, but it ends to sound like a Jean Michel Jarre track of the 80s. Not bad, after all.

Part 5 starts with distorted echoed voices on a keyboard minor chord. Quite psychedelic. Then we are now back to space. It may be a keyboard, but for a while there's a sound that could be an electric guitar.

The last track is a short coming back to the initial spacey sounds that closes the suite.

As the previous volume of Dark Side Of The Moog, the album contains a single suite divided on the CD into segments of about 5 minutes each, regardless the contents. Also, as the previuos one, the connection with Pink Floyd, other than in the titles, seems to be limited to the studio disc of Ummagumma (which is not a bad thing).

It starts very dark, with a sort of "chirp" sound looped to the infinity. A deep bell sound enters after about 3 minutes and we have to wait three more minutes for a sort of cuckoo to be added. Then several sounds come and go. Described in this way, it may seem extremely boring, but I think it's mainly hypnotic. Pure Berlin school, and way better than the usually nowhere-going suites of Phrozenlight. Closing my eyes I can see a dark foggy wood, like in a horror movie. Small furry animals are now running free out of their cave. When the bell stops 15 minutes are already gone. Now only the animals remain.

More than 20 minutes are gone when a sound mimic of a sea shore enters. Now this "saucerful of ambience" is more alien. I don't know how to interpret the sound similar to a fart that is repeated at irregular time intervals. What is it really about?

Water now. Raindrops falling, distant thunders, what I've heard up to now, gives me a sensation of a cold, dark and wet place. So, after 27 minutes of this soundscape, the first proper notes can be heard. A little melody overrides the storm and gives a sensation of relax. It's not staying home warming by a fire, but the atmosphere is very different from before. It makes me think to the Vangelis soundtracks for Philip Rossif.

The melody developes slowly, sliding on minor chords with some little dissonances here and there. Electronic sound and beeps are still present, fart included, but now the stage is all for the keyboard minor chords. The background souns are slowly transformed into a rhythmic section. Different from Nick Mason's famous drum riff on Saucerful of Secrets but similar.

so, after 43 minutes, the melody stops and we have a drone percussion solo lasting until minute 44 when...surprise!!! a 4/4 techno part which would fit perfectly into a rave party. Why? Because they (Schulze and Namlook) liked it that way, I guess. Do I like it? Kpnestly, if it was on air, I would have changed station, but let's see where it goes...

The disco rhythm is smoothly overriden by the return of the organ minor chords with just a hint of percussion that takes longer to disappear. F minor to C minor basically. Thinking to the suite title, I think the connection with Pink Floyd's Saucerful of secrets is in the structure: a first movement made of electronic noises, sort of concrete music, followed by a movement based mainly on percussion and a final movement more melodic, even considering the return of the percussion which reappear after 1 hour.

Then we see the return of all those elements together, 4/4 rave rhythm included. Last, there's a regression to the initial foggy dark and wet wood to close the circle.

I have enjoyed parts of this suite, but not in its entirety. The disco part appears to be outplaced and meaningless inside the rest of the suite and parts of it could have been shortened a bit.

I could suggest it only to listeners really addicted to these soundscapes.

This is the first of a serie of albums entitled "The Dark Side Of The Moog", born by the collaboration between Klaus Schulze and Pete Namlook, a frankfurter musician and producer (real name Peter Kuhlmann) passed away in 2012.

Regardless the paraphrase, the link to Pink Floyd is not very strong. This is mainly an instrumental suite made of melodic moments alternated with electronic noises. Personally I found it very enjoyable for the similarities of some parts with Zeit, that's my favorite Tangerine Dream album. Tracks 2 and 3 in particular have "emotional" minor chords progressions. I personally prefer when there's no solo, so that the soundscape gets closer to space-rock. I think that Saucerful of Secrets has been highly influential for the whole electronic movement.

Going ahead, track 4 is a sequenced loop on with drone drums taking the part of the solo instrument. An interseting rhitmic section that I feel connected to both techno-wave and several species of small furry animals. A Scottish gramelot would have fit well. Very interesting. Track 5 adds a hypnotic ringtone-like sound to the drumloop. I'd say several species of small furry robots... Then back to deep space with track 6 up to track 8.

Track 9 is more rhithmic. Between the main theme of Blade Runner and "Set the controls for the heart of the sun". The melody reminds a bit also to "One Of The Few" in the structure. But similarities apart, I find it very enjoyable even alone, taken out of the suite.

Track 10 and last, enters a different realm more made of major chords, even with some dissonances. Finding similarities with other electronic artists is quite easy: usually the instruments used condition the composition style. In this case I see a link with Vangelis. I must say that the distinction between the tracks is based only on their length. The last three minutes of track 10 don't have anything to do with the first three. They put us back to the Ummagumma cave without a Pict.

...and the suite ends suddenly. Maybe the best way to close it.

not bad, really. Especially if you like the genre. Not a masterpiece but I think I'll dig the following episodes of this collaboration.

Review #76!

As a first-time listener of progressive electronic music (never really cared for synthetic tunage), this was a lot to take in. 'Timewind' is a pretty solid album, despite the fact that I don't like the genre. There's a lot in this record to love: the album cover art, the ambiance, the subtle strings in the background throughout both songs, and most of all, the minute details; those quivering keyboard fadeouts, the occasional keyboard high note, it is all surprisingly beautiful to me. The wind in slow interludes is subtle but amazing. But this album is not all highlights. I had some prosthetic bones to pick with this album. One of which is the insane length of both songs. Until I listened to this album I had no idea you could smash a whole thirty minutes into Side A. And I am typically unfaltering when it comes to sidelong tracks, but this is insane. And when the song has little to no structure, it's a bit too monotonous. 'Bayreuth Return' felt a little too slow to me. It had a similar soundscape for most of the track. 'Wahnfried 1883', though, is really the better song on this album. It has a more interesting feel to it. There are many more sounds and a more diverse atmosphere. Anyways, I would recommend this album to any fan of Klaus Schulze or the progressive electronic sub-genre. If new to either, I would not. But, I had a fun experience listening to it. You might too.