Synths of the Father: Klaus Schulze 75

I apologize this is a little late tonight, but I fell asleep into an unscheduled, four-hour nap.

I'm awake now, so now is the time to honor one of the true pillars of the music of our times.

He passed this past April, just shy of the 75 he would be today.

He began, like so many of the cool kids from Peter Gabriel to Sid Vicious, as a drummer, supplying the driving beat to early German rock experimenters who became legends.

Present at the inception of both Kraftwerk and Ash Ra Tempel, had he faded from the scene and never went solo he would still be a formative figure.

But go solo he did, starting in around 1972.

When he did, he became an instant, one-man band thanks to the advent of what became his signature tools: the synthesizer and the arpeggiating sequencer.

Both of these -- especially the sequencer, which was only then in its infancy -- were new at the time, and our birthday lad wasted no time at all into exploding the horizons of what they could be capable.

No less than 50 albums followed in the ensuing decades, and he was creating right up until he died: his last record just came out last month.

If I had to list the 50 most influential musicians of the 20th century or the ones most impactful on the music of our age, there'd be obvious names aplenty like Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong and Lou Reed.

There'd also be less obvious names, of people whose explorations pointed the way towards an open door and paths of creativity not before manifested.

Pioneers like Klaus Schulze, born this day in 1947.

We honor him today with four long tracks: the only ones from the very limited and long out-of-print "Editions" series from the 1990s that never made the Revisited Records reissue program for that stuff.

Klaus Schulze
La Vie Electronique outtakes
1978/87

01 Ballet pour le Docteur Faustus (1978)

02 Discover Trakl (1978)

03 Ludwigs Traum (1983)

04 The Unspoken Thing (1978, remixed 1987)

Total time: 2:12:42

disc break goes after Track 02

Tracks 01, 02 & 04 are variations on the same piece

Klaus Schulze - synthesizers, keyboards, sequencers, percussion & electronics

the only 4 selections from 1997's Jubilee Edition and 2000's Ultimate Edition 

not to be reissued in Revisited Records' 16-volume "La Vie Electronique" series from 2005-2010

slightly declipped by EN, August 2022
687 MB FLAC/direct link

Thus concludes post #699 of this blog.

I need to go figure out #700 and beyond, but don't let me catch you napping on KS -- as important a figure in the evolution of the music of today as any you could name -- here! Don't hesitate.... arpeggiate!--J.

8.4.1947 - 4.26.2022