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Klaus Schulze - Rheingold - Feat. Lisa Gerrard - Feb. 2009

On the 18th of July 2008 Klaus Schulze played at the 'Night Of The Prog III' festival, an extraordinary concert on the Open Air Stage 'Loreley' in St. Goarshausen, Germany. For this particular concert Klaus had a very special guest with him, the Australian singer Lisa Gerrard. Lisa refined the tracks 'Loreley' and 'Wellgunde' with her unique voice. This concert was filmed to become Klaus Schulze first DVD release.

Last August Schulze and his sound engineer Tom Dams worked at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios to mix the concert in 5.1 surround sound. This post production process is part of the documentary on the bonus disc. Klaus also did an exclusive interview with Steve Wilson from Porcupine Tree, which will be part of the bonus material for the DVD

KLAUS SCHULZE/ LISA GERRARD – FARSCAPE - 2008

Klaus Schulze is a visionary. A dreamer. And he is well known for making his dreams come true. For a long time now he has wanted to collaborate with extremely gifted vocalist Lisa Gerrard. Now he made his wish come true. The result is the new double album called Farscape. Never before have you experienced Schulze – whose oeuvre is full of emotionally gripping music – in a more emotional framework.

Schulze is an institution, a living legend – he was member of electronic pop icons such as Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel and since 1972 he has released a plethora of solo albums. He has provided remixes for a variety of interesting bands and he has collaborated with a variety of other thrilling and innovative artists. The Moog specialist and confessed Wagner fan has been a flickering will-o-the-wisp within the music scene for nearly four decades. “The German electronic genius” – effusively described by music magazine Pop at the beginning of his solo career in the early seventies, is on top of the world in 2008 A.D. Schulze’s elation is the result of having spent just two days last November with the incomparable Lisa Gerrard recording two discs worth of new material now released as Farscape.

Gerrard, born in Melbourne, Australia was once a member of the unique duo Dead Can Dance and has since contributed to a host of movie scores such as Gladiator, Ali and Whale Rider. She owns one of the most remarkable and expressive voices of modern times.

“I have wanted to work with Lisa since the days of Dead Can Dance in the 80’s, but I never had an opportunity for such a collaboration”, Schulze says. “You don’t get her on the phone so easily. But my new manager was able to arrange it within a few weeks. When Lisa called me we spoke for quite a long time and managed to agree on a deal. We both have very similar opinions about art. For example, she says, ‘music is something sacred’, I can understand that very well but try and explain that to a normal human being...”

Lisa Gerrard explains her willingness to cooperate with the electronic composer, “I have observed his career since he was in Tangerine Dream in the late 60’s. He is an amazing artist! His work is in harmony with the soul’s journey and has been for a long time now. I was astonished when he asked me if I wanted to come and sing with him. We seem like-minded in so many things. That’s normal when you have an artistic soul, you know? In some way you connect in the ether. That was the case with our work on ‘Farscape’”.

In November 2007, Lisa Gerrard travelled to the Lüneburg Heath, where Klaus Schulze has resided for more than 30 years. It is also home to his private recording studio. For this joint effort six days were scheduled, but “on the first day, we just went out for dinner and didn’t play any music at all”, recalls Schulze. “I had already prepared the compositions and on the second day we actually recorded about five hours of music straight without a break. This session became Farscape I – I have never experienced such an exciting thing in my entire career as an artist. The next day was just as intense and this session became Farscape II, another majestic, gripping experience with an exceptional artist”, Schulze enthuses.

A great moment of cooperation between true artists was the result. Schulze weaves soundscapes that are at times threatening, passionate, sentimental and sometimes mysterious above which Gerrard’s voice seems to float in its majestic and deeply moving beauty. “During the two days of recording I kept looking into the vocal room in order to see what unusual things Lisa was doing there”, says Schulze about his creative partner. “But she just stood there singing. When she is in front of the microphone, the only important thing is her devotion to sound”.

Music journalist Stefan Albus captured precisely why this collaboration between Schulze and Gerrard was not only necessary but almost inevitable, “Both get their inspiration not from music text books but from having discovered their own channels to the source of their creative power, their intuition, and this has opened them up widely”, he goes on to say, “Schulze doesn’t just compose music. He plays. And Gerrard not only sings, let alone to sing from music. She illuminates, imagines and fills spaces intuitively”.

There is this desire for an unfamiliar, creative adventure. While at the same time there is this trust in each other’s skills, which distinguishes Farscape and makes it unique. Both records are, like all albums by the grand master of electronic music, “a trip into the revolutionary area of sound, which has always most interested me. With each new work I want to explore new territories. Active listening is in demand when it comes to my work! The music is actually only half composed; the other half is open for impressions from the consumer”.

“I am my own micro cosmos, I’ve never made compromises, and that goes for the music on Farscape too, although Lisa was absolutely an equal partner. I could not work under different circumstances other than those of absolute freedom. I only have this life. Why should I do something other than that which I really want to do?”

KONTINUUM - 2007

The DCE (Dictionary Of Contemporary English) describes a „continuum“ in its 2nd meaning listed as „anything that changes only by regular degrees and keeps a common character from beginning to end“.

And so it comes as no surprise that one of the most continuous artists in (electronic) music names his latest - and umpteenth ‘return’ - album “Kontinuum”. “Kontinuum” includes 3 new Schulze tracks that all fans all over the world will love. The frist track ‘Sequenzer (from 70 to 7) with the Schulze typical Sequenzer sound, will carry the listener back into the good old seventies. With ‘Euro Caravan’ the music is gliding towards the present and with the nearly 32 minute track ‘Thor (Thunder)’ Schulze will take us on a trip into the future. This new piece of music shows all facets of his lifework.

What would have become of the drummer Klaus Schulze, if not a certain Bob "Dr. Robert" Moog had built his Moog synthesizers from 1963 on? The pioneer of electronic music Klaus Schulze, admired as the Pope of Electronics, Godfather of Techno or simply as "KS" all over the world, is never lost for spontaneous and ironical words: "Maybe some church organist? Haha. No, to be serious, before I got my first Moog – and that was like Christmas raised to the power of ten! – I had already stopped playing drums. I had worked on my organ to make it sound different, creating those twitter sounds on 'Irrlicht' [1972] und 'Cyborg' [1973]. I wouldn't have continued playing drums anyway because I didn't enjoyed it anymore at the end of the Sixties. Although in my opinion each musician ought to play drums for several years in order to grasp groove and rhythm also on a purely physical level. Because this is one of the prejudices against electronic music – that it is not physical, not sensual. For me, electronic music is totally sensual."

With which Klaus Schulze would partly have answered an unasked question on the occasion of the re-release of his --uvre of so far more than 50 solo albums (not counting various 10, 20, and 50 CD box sets and numerous side projects!): What is the difference of KS' work with electronic sound generators and the approach of other gurus of electronic music? KS: "My approach is perhaps a little bit more playful, and at any rate very physical. I need this physical element, that the songs have groove and immediately happen! For this reason I decided to play solo and no longer with groups back in 1971. I was annoyed by those discussions in the bands – what do we play now and how do we play it? The discussions often went on longer than we used to play music. That's not my thing!"

Psy Free (1967-1969), Tangerine Dream (1969/70), Ash Ra Tempel (1970/71): this were the first stages of Klaus Schulze's career at which he co-founded the legendary "Berlin School" of electronic music. "When we began to make music in the Berlin underground scene we were striving for a music which had nothing in common with British or American pop music. We wanted to do something different, something new! But we knew that we needed new instruments for a new music – no guitars or drums. So the parallel development of the synthesizer come just at the right time for us. It was the perfect timing, and everything combined: the new technology, a new body of thought in music, and a cultural climate in which one could also create non-commercial music."

"There were no models for what I did solo at the time – after Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel. Actually there was the American composer Morton Subotnik who worked purely with electronics, but I didn't know him then. The only people I knew were the minimalists Terry Riley and Steve Reich, however they were not completely working with electronics. Only their concepts – the repetition and changes of phrases, the work with some kind of sequences – already included the structure of music which I had in mind. But in fact I had started into nowhere, without knowing where my journey would lead me to."

In musical terms, Schulze's journey led him into a cosmos of strictly electronic sounds in which the format of five minute pop singles was obsolete from the very beginning. The compositions of the epic poet Klaus Schulze are lasting. "For me, a piece of music just needs time to start a life. In theory I could of course shorten what you mean by 'epic' to about four or five minutes, which is common in pop. But then the dramaturgy of the songs would brutally break down. Marian Gold, singer of the group Alphaville, once tried to do this when I was doing songs with him. But even he said: 'I have cut these 25 minutes down to 12 minutes. I can't make it shorter because then everything breaks down!' With me it's probably the same as with some authors. An author writes a novel and sometime he notices that the characters in the novel are just doing what they want. Many of my compositions are such things, they have a life on their own. But don't ask me how such things happen! Since my first album I always needed time for my songs."



The SPV label Revisited Records starts early 2005 with re-releases of the Schulze back catalogue. Today there are 30 older albums out again as Deluxe Editions with new liner notes, photos and tons of bonus material. At the end of 2005 Schulze released his latest studio work “Moonlake” and in 2006 he received the french music price "Prix d'honneur" for KS, from French organisation Qwartz.

Time now to go into retirement in his 6th decade of life? "Well, what should I do in retirement, Mr. Colleague? I have only just begun, haha! And I do want to know how electronic music evolves. I mean, at the moment there is a bit of stagnation in the scene. When techno became popular there at least was more movement. But now these guys have found their groove, partly they are very successful and they are continuing with their concept. I'm waiting for the next revolution. It will come, I'm really very optimistic here. And then I want to be part of it. Sometime I will surely retire – perhaps in 2250? Not until they carry me out of this studio in a box!"