Music Arcades: Klaus Schulze: Irrlicht

I'd forgotten, when writing about Dead Can Dance last week, that DCD's Lisa Gerrard had collaborated with Klaus Schulze recently. I discovered that when Klaus popped up here 17 months ago and downloaded three of the tracks (average length 21'30") from Amie Street. However, my iTunes tells me none of them had been played more than two times. I gave them one more listen just now, and also made my way right through Klaus & Lisa's latest collaboration, a live triple album. Phew. I'm not sure how frequently I'll be coming back to this, but it's probably Klaus's best work with a vocalist, in that Lisa keeps it abstract, thus avoiding the pitfalls of dodgy lyrics (1, 2). In places this recent work marks a swing of the pendulum back from the mid-period sequencer-driven music towards the arhythmic 'floating' style that began with Irrlicht.

When I bought this, it felt as though being a Klaus Schulze fan was a bit of a dirty little secret, and an indicator of being stuck in the early seventies — and for someone who was only seven when Irrlicht came out in 1972, there was no excuse for that. I dropped in to Rough Trade East last week (I wasn't shopping, I promise; Alasdair Roberts was playing a few songs there), and noticed a good few Schulze albums on the racks. Don't get me wrong: it's not like Schulze fans are cool now — we'll forever have to cede that to the Kraftwerk boys in their thick-framed glasses, trying to pretend they're architects (or, worse still, being architects) — but there's a confidence about being out in the open now. No longer having to feel embarrassed. If only the sleeve art weren't so cringeworthy, eh? That figure looks like a geometry compass with a skull and a cloak tacked on.

Not that I've kept up with Klaus's career over the past quarter century, aside from those recent listens. Too much product, too high prices on import, and too variable quality. Though one of the dividends of digital has been that people like Schulze realise that, by licensing catalogue more liberally, they might engage beyond the die-hards to more casual fans, new and old, like me. So I may check out the 20-30 Schulze albums I haven't heard before on Spotify.

Early vinyl pressings of this album still retain their value. Mine isn't the original 1972 Ohr release, but the 1975 Brain re-issue, and it wasn't cheap back in the mid-eighties: £8.49 from HMV, which must be comfortably over 20 quid in today's money.

Irrlicht couldn't sound less like what you'd expect of the first solo album by someone who made his name as a drummer. Not a single percussive sound on the record, and barely anything resembling a beat either. "Textural," I guess you could call it. And, for the most part, teutonically dense. I worried at first that it was the kind of album that would sound good when you're stoned. That's a sure sign of portentous and tedious drivel. But happily the first track, towards the end of its 23 minutes, starts to throb menacingly, and sufficiently to unsettle any stoner. Side 2 is even better, shifting so indiscernibly slowly that you really have to keep your eye on the ball.

Overall verdict: an interesting curio. There are quite a few "interesting curios" on these pages. I don't mind that. I wouldn't mind of they were all interesting curios. The art of collecting has as its aim the interesting curio, rather than the unequivocal success… discuss.