CYBORG

Cyborg" is one of the best cosmic Odysseys put into music.

Klaus Schulze today is considered among the Top Electronic artists of all time. His contribution to the genre is massive, at the par with other outfits like Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk or Jean Michel Jarre. However, for some reason he is considerably less known and appreciated than the above mentioned, leaving him in the shadow of these great artists. "Cyborg" was the follow up to the highly praised album "Irrlicht", which had a very concrete atmosphere and dark tones. "Cyborg" in a way is an evolution to "Irrilicht": it's much more ambitious, complete sounding, even though musically they share many qualities.

Electronics in 1973 were obviously quite primitive sounding and not exactly at the same levels as today. Electronic music was used thus in a much more experimental way, and electronic beats were not even heard at the time. Synths, before the birth of Disco, were conventionally used to do either Prog Rock or Electronic. In the case of Klaus Schulze, he doesn't do just simple Electronic music, but brings it up to Progressive Electronic, making him part of the Berlin School movement. In "Cyborg", his concept of space is not something melodic, nor rhythmic; it's pure and simple, yet extremely dense atmosphere what he creates in these enormous 90 minutes. He builds layers on layers of stretched out synth sounds, but also violins in some spots, creating bleak, yet spacey and fluent soundscapes that you could just dive into and feel like you can't ever go back. The explicit spaceness is evident when there are obvious sound references to weird space sounds, some might feel like a falling star, or a glimpse of a planet, or some sort of alien presence. These sounds make the atmosphere even more credible sounding, and, if you close your eyes, I guarantee that you'll have everything in front of you.

"Cyborg" is one of the best cosmic Odysseys put into music: the four songs on here together build one of the trippiest journeys you'll ever experience. If the first track, "Synphara", starts almost with an earthly mood thanks to the drony sounds of violins being layered, after a while the space element is finally felt, almost implying that this song is one that represents the ascent from earth to space. The more repetitive and spacey "Conphara" suggests that we're deep in space, thanks to its pulsing synth sounds. With the wonderful "Chromengel" the music isn't as claustrophobic as the previous track, feeling a lot more open and relaxed, and finally, there is some melody. The final track,"Neuronengesang", feels like a slow descent from space to earth, without however not sounding extremely evocative at all times. This makes "Cyborg" a huge, sonic circle that begins within the first minutes of "Synphara" and ends up in the same place as the beginning with the last few minutes of "Neuronengesang".

A remarkable adventure is proposed with "Cyborg", an extremely long album that however has to listened to as a whole. An essential album for Progressive Electronic and the Berlin School.

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