Klaus Schulze: "X" - Sechs musicalische Biographien

That's "X" as in Roman numerals, this being Klaus's tenth solo album (in less than seven years). In the lavish booklet stapled to the inside of the gatefold, there are pictures of the previous nine, as though this is a kind reflective summation of Schulze's career. (He's since done more than 30 more under his own name, plus another ten or so under pseudonyms or in collaborations.)

The booklet is great. As well as photos of Klaus's career going back fifteen years to 1963, it has large spreads from the score. These are drawn on graph papers as well as traditional staves. This, along with Klaus's very cursive logo for his own name, shows how very, very analogue this enterprise remains. He lists all the synths he plays on this record:

• Grosser Moog
• PPG Synthesizer und Sequencer
• Drei Minimoog [I guess this means, simply, three minimoogs]
• ARP Odyssey
• Korg Polyphonic Synthesizer
• Polymoog
• Synthi A
• Mellotron
• Revox Echo "Tochter der Stimme"
• AKG BX 20 Hall
• Dynacord Lautsprecher und Verstärker

Did I tell you I nearly became a music technology geek around the time I was 16? I had the phsyics theory and the electronics practice — messing around with circuit boards and soldering irons — and the timing would have been just right, as MIDI was just getting established and magazines called things like Electronics and Music Maker. If there'd been someone I knew who shared this interest, I'm sure I'd have made something of it. But all the electronics geeks I knew were into being radio hams — just a geek too far.

While Klaus credits another percussionist alongside his keyboard array, there's no credit for string players, which threw me because the strings sound very authentic — beyond the capability of today's samplers, let alone 1978's. Wikipedia, however, adds credits for cello (Wolfgang Tiepold again), violin and two orchestras.

Anyway, that booklet made this record expensive, even by double album standards. I remember coming back to it in the same spot in the upstairs room of a Guildford record shop, month after month. Maybe year after year. Evidently no one else could afford it, either. Eventually I capitulated. By then, of course, the cover was shopworn. That was a fact of life: if you wanted to buy records that not many other people wanted to buy, you had to accept that they'd look old even when they were new. Another thing that bugged me was that tacky "2 LP-Set" sticker on the cover. I tried to remove it, got seven eighths of the way there, and then part of the cover came away with it. So I had to stick it back down again, making it look tackier than ever (see also Close to the Edge).

Thirty two years on from its release, "X" seems less like a resumé of what went before than a forerunner of what Klaus had in store for us with albums like and Audentity. I prefer those albums, but that may be just because I got to know them first.

MusicBrainz entry for this album Wikipedia entry for this album Rate Your Music entry for this album Some metadata about this album at Last.fm Listen to this album in full at Spotify

Comments

[Fred Stagg]

Forgive me if this seems a little self centred, but your mention of the brush with electronic geekhood is similar to my experience. As a young man I went to a school in the US to learn the trade of the recording engineer. I had grand designs of becoming the next Alan Parsons. Alas, now I am a carpenter. Oops. Anyhow, the first time I heard Klaus Schultze, it was one of those moments that seemed to change everything. Tangerine Dream was already part of the lexicon, but this album Irrlicht came along to intrigue and freak me out all at once. Perhaps "X" should join my collection.

[David]

Hi Fred, if you got marked down for being self-centred round here, well, there wouldn't be much left of the blog... ;-) If all you've heard of Klaus's stuff is Irrlicht then you've only got a limited view of what he's capable of. That slow arhythmic style crops up throughout his career, but there are also some percussion-driven pieces that I probably prefer, on balance. X feels like a transitional album to me, and thus it's not the best of any of his main styles -- though at the same time Ludwig II von Bayern stands out as his most realised orchestral piece (probably... I can't claim to be familiar with all his work). Here's my full set of notes on his albums, so have a peek through those and maybe sample some that sound interesting. I know you don't have Spotify in Canada, but maybe an equivalent (Rhapsody?)