Klaus Schulze
La Vie Electronique Volume 1.0
(One Way Static)
In the realm of European kosmische-synth music, few figures stand mightier than Klaus Schulze. A member of mind-expanding krautrock legends Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel, and the Cosmic Jokers, Schulze has maintained a prodigious work rate on his own, too, releasing more than 60 albums over the last 50 years.
Whether you're a novice to Schulze or a serious fan with a groaning shelf full of his music, you should check out La Vie Electronique Volume 1.0, which One Way Static reissued last month (Seattle/LA record company Light in the Attic distributes it).
La Vie Electronique Volume 1.0 collects rarities that Schulze cut from 1968 to 1971. Appearing for the first time on vinyl (on two LPs, 78-plus minutes, limited to 1,000 copies, 300 of which are on white wax), this compilation previously surfaced on CD in 2009. It's worth owning on all formats.
These recordings spectacularly display Schulze's ability to evoke vast swaths of interstellar drama and to populate the stereofield with melodies of profound eeriness and atmospheres of limitless desolation. On La Vie Electronique Volume 1.0, you can hear templates being established for various strains of ambient music, sci-fi soundtracks, horror-flick scores, and that stuff they pipe into the best planetariums.
Schulze's music is built for long attention spans and periods of deep meditation. While far from anodyne, the tracks on La Vie Electronique Volume 1.0, I daresay, possess healing power. There's an existential palliative effect to be derived from immersion in his epic excursions. Despite creating the illusion of infinity in a grain of sound, Schulze's compositions also envelop you in comforting sonorities. It's the secular equivalent of what the pious feel in churches when the organ swells. I look forward to volume 2.0.
