Klaus Schulze

The Ride of the Valkyries diluted and slowed down in the absence of gravity, like a spectral dance across infinite space-time. The twilight of the gods celebrated in a long sidereal journey around the rings of Saturn. It's a reckless gamble, the one that Klaus Schulze decides to take on in 1975, after having given birth to four solo LPs following his split from the spaceships of Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel. Hunched over his cyborg keyboards, amid an inextricable tangle of cables and LEDs, the Berlin composer delivers a concept album about his idol Richard Wagner. As if wanting to reaffirm once more how German electronic music had roots firmly planted in that country's noble classical traditions. It's an opportunity not to be missed. And the most intrepid of cosmic couriers won't let it slip by, landing his new winning blow. Just two suites of about half an hour each, enough to crown himself the godfather of kosmische musik and all its evolutions for centuries to come.

Wagner in space

There are two reasons that led us to include "Timewind" among OndaRock's milestones. Firstly, obviously, the outstanding value of the work itself, which didn't escape the sharpest observers of the time, such as the French jury of the Grand Prix du Disque International, who crowned it record of the year. The other consideration concerns this work's crucial role in Schulze's discography and in the entire history of electronic music. As staunch opponents of the obtuse purism that insists "the real Kraftwerk" ended with "Autobahn" (which, on the contrary, was the spark that launched them into the orbit of an even bolder proto-techno), we are also convinced that the pioneering saga of Berlin's cosmic courier doesn't end with his first two monoliths, "Irrlicht" and "Cyborg", but continues just as fruitfully through many of his subsequent works, capable of building a bridge between the abstract sidereal suites of his early days and the most evocative developments of electronic music to come, from Jean-Michel Jarre to Air and new age. Along this path, "Timewind" sits exactly midway (just like the aforementioned "Autobahn"), in one of those magical "middle grounds" that, throughout music history, often herald masterpieces, thus acting as the keystone for deciphering the two-faced personality of the elusive German composer.

In truth, amid the fluctuations that mark the first part of his career, Schulze constantly oscillates between fidelity to the rigorous, orchestral canons of his planetary symphonies and a leaning towards a more melodic, accessible sound, which he had already begun developing on his two previous LPs, "Blackdance" and "Picture Music". Complicating matters further, on "Timewind", is the weighty dedication: Wagner, after all, demands majesty, chromaticism, tragic pathos. Schulze's spaceship thus finds itself forced to swerve once again, drawing closer to the starker, icier scores of his first two albums, but now with a hold full of instruments (guitars, percussion, sequencers) and melodic solutions accumulated along the way. It's precisely from this alchemy between the original kosmische musik and the electronic pulsations of the future that the unrepeatable magic of "Timewind" is born. A magic all the more astonishing given the limited means at his disposal.

The incubator of "Timewind" was in fact a disused barbershop in Berlin, which Schulze rented and soundproofed with layers of orange fiberglass wool. It was his home studio at the time - as he recounts in the liner notes - equipped with a two-track Revox for producing echo and delay, and a 4-track Telefunken for recording and mixing the synth sounds live, in a kind of "live in studio" fashion. The use of the sequencer would prove decisive, forging an incredibly airy, enveloping and futuristic sound, well ahead of its time, one that would echo strongly in later cornerstones of electronic music such as Oxygene by Jean-Michel Jarre and Blade Runner by Vangelis.

Return to Bayreuth

The album's high point is the colossal opening suite "Bayreuth Return", which references the very Bavarian city where the Leipzig-born composer chose to live. A spectral cosmic wind sweeps through the track from the very start, seeping in like fine dust amid the liquid textures of the synths. Then, around the third minute, comes one of Schulze's classic twists (think of the crescendo of "Ebene"). The sequencers begin painting celestial melodic phrases, overlapping across different tonalities, radiating out into the cosmic void, in an ever more hypnotic and enveloping spiral, in which the listener ends up literally swallowed whole, like a spaceship sucked into a black hole. In this hazy magma of hisses and synthesized strings, of modulations and synthetic pulsations, where one rhythm gathers momentum while another fades away amid the lapping of the keyboards, the wondrous main melody makes its way forward, as if in a gradual ascent towards a remote, perhaps unreachable galaxy. This panic-stricken terror of space, this sense of losing all sensory control - like an Indian raga cast into the cosmos - permeates the track, giving it a genuinely Wagnerian sense of drama. And the sequencer's rhythmic patterns, changing speed and chasing each other endlessly, like a kind of cosmic frequency, produce a trance effect of extraordinary modernity for its time.

The visionary fury of "Irrlicht" hasn't faded, but it has become less alien and abstract, more musical and harmonious, gaining a sense of romantic grandeur while still remaining rooted in a dramatic psychological dimension. A genuine electronic nirvana.

The illusion of peace

The second movement, "Wahnfried 1883", takes its name instead from Wagner's residence in Bayreuth, combining the words wahn (illusion) and fried (peace), while 1883 is the year the Leipzig-born composer died. Slower and more meditative, with no more pulsations or reverbs, on a firm course towards ambient music, the track is built entirely around organ drones that float in the immense solitude of cosmic darkness, pierced by electric discharges from the synths and surrounded by melodies as static as they are contrite and solemn, like a kind of stellar requiem for a celestial body. Another electronic wall of sound for another monumental suite, one on which some - such as The Orb - would go on to build almost an entire career.

For a long time Schulze's only album released in the United States, "Timewind" is in fact the perfect starting point for approaching the Berlin master's vast discography, as well as one of his most cinematic works (almost an ideal soundtrack for a film by Andrei Tarkovsky). In 2016 it was masterfully remastered, in a lavish edition complete with an essential booklet - featuring photos, handwritten notes and period testimonies, including one from the author himself - with the addition of a second CD containing three bonus tracks. The first two are outtakes from the original 1975 sessions: "Echoes Of Time" is essentially an alternate, extended version (39 minutes) of "Bayreuth Return", also drawn upon by the shorter "Solar Wind", which recovers its chords while stripping away the sequencer's rhythmic patterns. The closing "Windy Times", meanwhile, is a kind of self-tribute by Schulze to the whole album: a rare track composed in 2000, with sequencer pulsations in line with those of the Bayreuth suite but updated with contemporary sounds and a techno-inflected midtempo beat, as if to underline his status as the originator of that entire musical era.

If "Irrlicht" is "the highest peak from which music has ever gazed at the stars," then "Timewind" is simply another essential stage of the journey. An odyssey in space, Klaus Schulze's own, one that would continue right up to the present day, not always with equally brilliant results, but always tirelessly looking toward the future.

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29/09/2019