The Cedar Lounge Revolution

This weekend I’ll mostly be listening to… Klaus Schulze, Moondawn May 2, 2009

For those of us who aren’t entirely gone on Pink Floyd… (too big…too overweening… too commercial… too tediously linked to their own self-referential history and the intrinsic dullness of Roger Waters ego and how that played out across the decades) but kind of liked the nascent electronica of some tracks on Dark Side of the Moon or the near Krautrock throb of bits of Wish You Were Here there’s more than something to be said about German composer Klaus Schulze. Because after collaborations with Tangerine Dream his early solo career is like those Pink Floyd records with all the irritating bits excised. So… gone are the guitars, at least mostly. And in come subtly pulsing bass lines that are set against washes of keyboards. It’s ambient. It’s electronic. It’s relaxing and it sounds remarkably contemporary even at this remove – a slow burning but driven excursion. Whatever that may mean.

I’d recommend Moondawn from 1976 for anyone who is interested. Ignore the cover artwork, thankfully diminished now to postage stamp size on an iPod (incidentally that’s an argument I don’t usually make. One of the saddest aspects of digitization has been the way in which the materiality of record sleeves, once a key part of the experience of listening – as distinct from consuming – music, has vanished). And listen instead to the tracks. Not many tracks, to be sure. Each stretching to lengths that would later ignite the rage of punk and new wave.

And consider the titles…science fiction subject matter, electronica, cutting edge… whatever… Floating… Mindphaser… Floating Sequence… (A bonus track as it happens. But a bonus track that is 21 minutes long. Ambassador, with these instrumentals you are spoling us)…

Anyhow, for anyone still interested here are some YouTube clips [fan produced - natch!] of the tracks from the album. I’d recommend for those who want, y’know, something more than the sort of wind like keyboard sounds that a certain Mr. Jarre would use to interesting effect a little later in that decade to fast forward through to a few minutes in. Say double digits to be on the safe side… Enjoy.

Mindphaser

Floating