Tangerine Dream - Electronic Meditation (1970)

Will be topping & tailing my TD collection here in the coming weeks/months, as the list of previous posts below is pretty heavy on the Virgin years.  Great as those are, it's always fun to start from the beginning, and enjoy this jam-session-as-unexpected-career-launcher with its hilariously inappropriate title (the number of times I've said to people over the years - erm, yeah, it's neither electronic or meditative).  This was the first Tangerine Dream CD I bought, in 1997 - the Castle Communications remaster, which also introduced me to Julian Cope's sui generis writing from Krautrocksampler - and that very CD was freshly ripped for this post.

Pre-synths, the oddball instrumentation that makes up Electronic Meditation includes cello, violin and "Addiator" (an early calculator, somehow amplified) (all by Conrad Schnitzler), guitars, organ, piano, effects and tapes (Edgar Froese) and drums/percussion (Klaus Schulze).  That last name of course gives the sad realisation that this (in hindsight quite incredible and seminal) lineup is now entirely no longer with us, so this post can double as a tribute to Schulze.  Appended to the core trio, but unbekownst to me at time of CD purchase as they wouldn't be fully credited until years later, were organist Jimmy Jackson and flautist Thomas Keyserling.

 

After the fledgling TD jammed in a basic studio in October 1969, no intention then of making a record, Edgar and partner Monika, as the story goes, left for the UK to unsuccessfully establish themselves on these shores.  On return to Berlin, Edgar found a letter from Ohr Records, who'd got hold of the tape and wanted to release it.  With various bits of quirky editing (the backwards voice at the end is actually Froese reading his Dover-Calais ferry ticket), Electronic Meditation became the debut LP of Tangerine Dream.  Two thunderous extended jams, like Pink Floyd's Interstellar Overdrive supercharged, flow like lava at the core of the album, with shorter, more atmospheric pieces making up the runtime.  Edgar Froese would keep playing guitar on TD records for some years, but never as unhinged as this.  Along with Ash Ra Tempel's debut from the following year (with more wild drumming from Schulze), Electronic Meditation remains one of the most striking and thrilling krautrock debuts.

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pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:

Phaedra (scroll past main post)

Rubycon & Richochet

Stratosfear
Encore

Cyclone
Force Majeure
Tangram

Pergamon

Exit

White Eagle 
Logos: Live At The Dominion
Hyperborea

Poland

Le Parc

Conrad Schnitzler - Blau (1974)

Early Schnitzler in his second solo LP, comprising two side-long tracks.  Die Rebellen Haben Sich In Den Bergen Versteckt looks forward to the increasingly rhythmic electronics that Schnitzler would produce in the late 70s - early 80s, clanking its way forwards whilst other synth burbles are overlaid until a mournful-sounding guitar figure is introduced.  

 

Jupiter is more appropriately cosmic, with Schnitzler's synths floating around in a dark, gaseous echosphere, and what sounds like a wordless vocal towards the end.  According to Asmus Tietchens' liner notes, Schnitzler's old Kluster bandmates Moebius and Roedelius are featured on this album - I'm not entirely sure where though, it all sounds like classic early period Schnitzler to me.

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pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
Grün
Con
Consequenz
Contempora
Con 3
Congratulacion

Con-Struct (Pyrolator)

Conrad Schnitzler / Pyrolator - Con-Struct (2015)

"Con-Struct" is a series of albums whereby Conrad Schnitzler's archive of sounds was opened up to contemporary German musicians, with releases beginning in 2011 (the year Schnitzler died).  This one I probably picked up around the same time as those two early Pyrolator albums featured at the start of this blog (links below), and it's Kurt Dahlke's latter-day sound that takes the Schnitzler building blocks here and gives them a sleek techno sheen.

After a tantalising ambient drift of an introduction, Pyrolator's Con-Struct album takes a few tracks to warm up into something genuinely special, but then hits cruising altitude with a series of winning con-structions.  Some of these could almost sit comfortably on a contemporary Ostgut Ton album (now my absolute favourite label for new electronic releases).  All the tracks have numerical titles, as per late-period Schnitzler's general practice, and my personal picks are the minimalism of 316-2, the pleasantly bouncy 287-13, and the club-ready sequences of 316-16.

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pw: sgtg

Conrad Schnitzler at SGTG:
Grün
Con
Consequenz
Contempora
Con 3
Congratulacion
Pyrolator at SGTG:
Inland
Pyrolator's Wunderland

Conrad Schnitzler - Con 3 (1981)

Even by Conrad Schnitlzer's standards, this is an incredibly strange album.  Attempting to make a pop album of sorts, Schnitzler and collaborator Wolfgang Seidel returned to Peter Baumann's Paragon Studio, and Schnitzler elected to sing on every track, the first full-length album on which he'd done so.  The resulting combination of minimal, repetitive synth sequences and equally underwritten, largely absurdist lyrics remains a fascinating listen.

Schnitzler's voice might bark out at you on some tracks like an odd predecessor to Laibach, but becomes intentionally comical on Coca, perhaps the best known track here, a loungey (complete with glockenspiel), surreal ode to surviving on Coca-Cola in the desert.  Nächte In Kreuzberg from Consequenz gets a groovier makeover, Hongkong channels The Residents, and the quite lovely Tanze Im Regen closes the album on a hushed note closer to the bucolic sounds of Roedelius - fittingly, this was Schnitzler's only album to be released on Sky Records.  There's a Con for every taste on Con 3.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Grün
Con
Consequenz
Contempora
Congratulacion

Conrad Schnitzler - Congratulacion (1987)

Must confess I didn't give this one nearly as much attention as all the others that I picked up when getting into Schnitzler - big mistake.  The stark difference in the sound can be initially off-putting if you've just become accustomed to the barely-controlled EMS-Synthi blooping of earlier albums.  But far from being "Schnitzler sells out", Congratulacion should be considered "Schnitzler tries something new" - which he'd keep on doing, right up to his passing in 2011.

In August 1986, when these 16 little minatures (none longer than 3:12) were recorded, the Yamaha CX5M was still fairly new, and notoriously difficult to program (although most of its contemporaries were too, compared to today).  Schnitzler created some great little melodies with this fresh gear, in a mostly mellow mode, letting the clean tones bubble away in an almost baroque manner.  Only the lead-in tracks (on each side of the old vinyl) are more strident, pulsing along like 70s sci-fi series themes.  The overall effect is akin to a cleaner, early-digital-era version of Switched On Bach that swaps out the warmth of the Moog for the relatively clinical (but still charming) Yamaha.

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Kluster - 1970-1971 (this comp. rel. 2008)

Before there was Cluster, the legendary home-base of Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius, there was Kluster - a trio completed by the great Conrad Schnitzler.  Formed in 1969 around the Zodiak Free Arts Lab in Berlin, everything Kluster released in their short lifespan is in this one handy package, and remains some of the most heady, extreme material in the entire krautrock canon.

Unlike the genre's other Year Zero masterworks like Phallus Dei and Monster Movie, or even the Schnitlzer-infused Electronic Meditation, the Kluster sound owed nothing at all to rock music.  Instead, their legacy is these six supermassive black-holes of the freest free improvisation, bearing closer similarities to what AMM were doing on the other side of the English Channel, and also an utterly uncanny prefiguring of the early industrial music of the mid 70s.

In the studio (or rather, in the church where they found themselves recording), Kluster were faced with a bizarre, but very much of the time, compromise: that they allowed the usually religiously-inclined record label to overdub recitations of a couple of lengthy religious texts.  Schnitzler once said that you'll get more enjoyment from both of the vocal pieces if you can't understand the preposterous texts, in which case the stentorian female voice (on the first album Klopfzeichen) and male voice (on the second, Zwei Osterei) are intersting enough soundwise, if a little intrusive at times.

The voice-free second sides are more interesting overall, with plenty of screeching flute, scraping cello shards of guitar/piano to the fore.  The effects-laden sound can also be more clearly heard pointing the way to the first Cluster album sans Schnitzler.  Before he set off on his own however, there was the final Kluster recording.  Taped live, Eruption is an echo/delay masterpiece, stretching out for longer and unencumbered by previous compromises.  The sound is more lo-fi, but if anything this pushes it even closer to the live sound of Throbbing Gristle circa 1976.

Disc 1
Disc 2
Disc 3

Conrad Schnitzler - Contempora (1981)

Time for some more Con artistry.  For the follow-up to Consequenz, Schnitzler clipped back the track lengths even more and generally showed that he had his ear to the ground for what was happening around him in the burgeoning  Neue Deustche Welle.  Contempora was one of the purest expressions of his DIY aesthetic, offering thirteen untitled tracks in a plain white sleeve, self-released with only the album title stamped on the front.

As mentioned above, the first eight tracks on Contempora were Schnitzler's most succicnt yet, with none lasting over two and a half minutes.  These upbeat, quirky pieces suit their reduced length well, and make for a hugely satisfying blast of Schnitzler's inimitable style.  After this, we're treated to five longer tracks that are more like a natural development from Consequenz.  The longest of these (B2 - I've titled each track to correspond with where it sits on the original LP, just because I like knowing where I am on an album like this) is the most interesting, and the highlight of the album for me.  It's so uncannily close to '78 era Throbbing Gristle that if someone played me it blind and said it was a studio recording of what they were playing at, for instance, the Goldsmith's College gig, I'd have been near-as-dammit convinced.

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Previously posted at SGTG:  Con | Consequenz | Grün
 Oh, and going back to grab those links has reminded me that I said I'd post Kluster 70-71, so expect that next week.  Schnitzler will feature heavily, but accessible brevity most certainly will not.

Conrad Schnitzler - Grün (rec. 1976/80, rel. 1981)

One more Schnitzler album for the moment.  This is my pick of the 'colours' albums - Rot and Blau were self-released in the mid-70s as his first two proper albums, featuring side-long raw electronic improvisations, then the archival compilations Gelb (rec.'74) and Grün (rec.'76/80) came out in the early 80s on a small art gallery imprint.

Just two tracks on Grün - first up is Der Riese Und Seine Frau (The Giant And His Wife).  Recorded in 1976, this 32-minute epic hinges on just two simple ingredients - a harsh, sometimes ridiculously over-distorted drum machine, and layers of soft, shimmering melodic synth.  Fading in and out with minimal change or development, it becomes like a half-hour eavesdrop on a dialogue between the title characters.  If this catches me in just the right mood, it can have an oddly emotional pull for such a monotonous, mechanistic piece. 

Recorded four years later, Bis die Blaue Blume blüht has a lighter touch and brisker pace (the LP even suggested the additional option of playing it at 45rpm - the CD has both speeds), and makes the most out of a seven note melody to hypnotic effect.  Not sure where a title like 'Until the blue flower blooms' fits in though (perhaps just a nice bit of aliteration in the original German) - if anything, it sounds more like Mr & Mrs Giant stepping outside after dark to watch a comet or a meteor shower.

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Conrad Schnitzler - Consequenz (1980)

Two years on from Con, Conrad Schnitzler was working with shorter, even more structured tracks and bringing on board his collaborator Wolfgang Seidel (aka Wolf Sequenza) to make this great album, which remains one of his most accessible.

Even as an attempt to make an electro pop album of sorts, Consequenz still couldn't be mistaken for anyone else.  Twelve instrumental tracks, averageing about four minutes each, were self-released in a stickered white sleeve, each of them establishing a single idea and playing it out with little variation or superfluous ornamentation.  Synth burbles and squeaks percolate around freely, ensuring that each track never feels quite as static as the clipped, robotic rhythms might suggest.  Fellow fans of pre-Dare Human League should definitely check out Afghanistan, for my money the most effective and evocative high point of this brilliant set of studies in cyborg avant-pop.

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Conrad Schnitzler - Con (1978)

Conrad Schnitzler (1937 - 2011) was pretty prolific in his lifetime; discogs currently lists 151 albums excluding compilations.  Most were self-released in limited editions; this album was one of Schnitzler's few releases on a 'proper' record label, the French prog label E.G.G.

Con - also known as Ballet Statique on reissues - also boasts arguably the most sophisticated production values in Schnitzler's catalogue, with a post-Tangerine Dream Peter Baumann behind the mixing desk.  And most importantly,this is possibly the greatest, most accomplished and satisfying album Schnitzler ever made, and deserves to be a cornerstone of any collection of groundbreaking electronic music.

In sharp contrast to my previous post, this album is notable for its almost total absence of melody. Instead, the album's tracks clank, hiss, drone and squeal in ways that take the blueprint from Side Two of Bowie's Heroes into even starker, near-industrial territory.  'Ballet Statique' has some sort of melody going on, in barely audible wisps floating above a stately, unchanging sequence, and 'Zug' is another highlight, vying with Trans Europe Express as one of the most perfectly descriptive train tracks ever recorded - check out the extended video version below.

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