home > browse > cd-feature > view article

CD feature: Klaus Schulze: "Picture Music"

  Tobias

Klaus Schulze had always wanted to compose “Picture Music”: Sounds like oil on a private canvas, journeys into foreign, emotional landscapes. Which is why you can consider the title of this record as a credo, which made its appearance during a period of change. 

While the two debut albums (“Irrlicht” and “Cyborg”) were mostly made up of static layers of noise and seemed to stem from a crass avantgarde mentality, the drummer in Schulze slowly found his way back into the music with “Black Dance” and “Picture Music”. This becomes clearest on Side B of the original record, the 23-minute long “Mental Door”. While synthesizers take bizarre twists and turns to form melody-like structures, a clanking percussion track decidedly cleaves its way through empty space. In its radical approach, this piece is still unrivaled today und should appeal to all those who find even the most daring and eccentric ELP-keyboard solo too radio-friendly. Still, the first composition here, “Totem”, is even better: A threedimensional musical vision full of truth and madness. A fragile pattern of bell-tones is the rhythmical pulse, which guides the listener through swathes of harmonic fog and constantly evolving motifs. It’s probably all just a tad too long, but that’s the way it was supposed to be – these sonic pictures are not supposed to have a real ending and that’s why we are treated to an even longer alternative take of “Totem” on this re-issue, called “C’est pas la meme chose”. And it’s true: This world never looks the same twice.

It’s also extremely fascinating that “Totem” should end at the exact point, where “Timewind” picks things up again in 1975. Which, of course, was Schulzes breakthrough-album, at least in France. On that record, the paper-thin beat turned into a true storm, which whispered prophecies and myteries. The journey went on.

Homepage: Klaus Schulze