La Vie Electronique 10 (1985 to 1992)
Track Listing (CD 1):
| 1. |
Unheilbar Deutsch |
53:53 |
1985 Live |
| 2. |
Maxxi |
07:45 |
1985 |
| 3. |
Weiter weiter! |
10:37 |
1985 Live |
Track Listing (CD 2):
| 1. |
Walk the Edge |
46:30 |
1985 |
| 2. |
Havlandet |
27:08 |
1985 |
Track Listing (CD 3):
| 1. |
Goodwill |
13:04 |
1991 |
| 2. |
Olé! |
16:30 |
1991 Live |
| 3. |
Habla Espanol? |
17:27 |
1991 Live |
| 4. |
Gaudi Gaudi |
23:13 |
1991 Live |
| 5. |
Suite Nr 3, D-Dur, 2. Satz "Air" |
08:00 |
1992 |
Notes: Rainer Bloss plays keyboards on the tracks on "Unheilbar Deutsch",
"Weiter weiter", "Walk the Edge" and Havlandet.
Rating: 3 Stars
"Unheilbar Deutsch" was recorded at a radio station in Cologne on 12th January
1985.
"Weiter weiter" was recorded at a concert in Aachen, Germany on 24th February
1985.
"Olé" and "Habla Espanol" were recorded at a concert in Barcelona, Spain on
22nd October 1991.
"Gaudi Gaudi" was recorded at a concert in Santiago de Compostela, Spain on
28th October 1991.
So far this is the LVE album that I like the least. I can't remember when I
last listened to it. I bought it from Amazon in September 2012 and probably
only listened to it once when I got it.
"Unheilbar Deutsch" is a strange piece of music. It doesn't sound at all
typical for Klaus. I need to listen to it again soon to make up my mind about it.
"Maxxi" (usually spelt "Macksy") was the only maxi-single ever
released by Klaus. I have nothing against the format, but the music itself is
more commercial than his usual music. "Weiter weiter" is a mess on different
levels. It's the encore of a live concert, and the track begins with 70
seconds of the audience shouting for more. "Zugabe" is the usual concert cry,
and the fans yell the word repeatedly. Then Klaus comes on stage, and he talks
to the audience for more than 80 seconds, telling them that he's going to play
part of his new opera. That means that it's two and a half minutes before the
music starts. KDM should have cut this out. When the music started, I didn't
know what to make of it. There are pre-recorded vocals, and dull keyboard
accompaniment. The audience listens in silence, not knowing what to make of
it, but towards the end of the song Klaus plays a theme from "Ludwig II
von Bayern", and the audience erupts into applause, which spoils an already
poor track.
The tracks on the second CD are both film soundtracks. "Walk the Edge" was
written for the American crime thriller "Walking the Edge", while "Havlandet"
was written for the Norwegian coming-of-age film "Havlandet". "Walk the Edge"
is divided into six short pieces, most of which are just noise. Maybe it would
sound good as background noise in a film, but it's not pleasant listening on a
CD. "Havlandet" is more melodic and sounds better. It's divided into ten short
pieces.
"Goodwill" begins with drunken groaning and only slightly improves as it
continues. "Olé" uses copious amounts of samples of male and female voices
moaning. It's annoying. "Habla Espanol", played the same evening, also uses
samples, but not as intrusively. "Gaudi Gaudi" starts well but degenerates
into excessive voice samples after eight minutes. The version of Johann
Sebastian Bach's "Air" was omitted from the
GOES CLASSIC
album for space reasons.
Overall, this is a weak album. The tracks range from average to poor quality.
Maybe three stars is too high a rating. The best track is the
untypical "Unheilbar Deutsch", which would have been the weakest
track on any other LVE album.
The liner notes for LVE 10 are written by the German journalist Lars Fischer.
The English translation, quoted below, sounds awkward, but it's understandable.
La Vie Electronique 10 Liner Notes
The first two CDs from number 10 of the re-release series LA VIE ELECTRONIOUE
document the partnership between Klaus Schulze and Rainer Bloss. During the
years 1982 to 1985 this encompassed various albums and many concerts. Never
again would Schulze work for so long with any of his musical collaborators,
and in this case the relationship extended beyond art and involved the
business of running the Inteam label together; all of which is not to say that
sources of inspiration had in any way dried up. Maybe except the trip to
APHRICA, whereas the excursion into the pop genre (without Bloss), which was
variously given as "Macksy" or "Maxxi", was once again a diversion, but now
regarded as artistically altogether more satisfying. As a point of interest it
remains the only work by this renowned purveyor of epic pieces to be issued in
the shorter maxi single format apart from his treatment of Vangelis' "Conquest
of Paradise". This should, perhaps, be regarded not so much as an encroachment
by Schulze into the territory of his former musical colleagues, for whom this
had become the standard format, but rather as a one off visit to a fun playing
field, if you will.
From the soundtrack of the film "Havlandet", in which the Northern Lights
shine over the frozen coastline, we go directly to Spain and the year 1991 on
CD 3. This represents the biggest, and actually the only time leap in LA VIE
ELECTRONIOUE. In the interim not only most of the vestiges of so called
socialism have died, but Inteam had also failed.
Despite this KS issued nine further albums and played some legendary concerts.
These included a show in Dresden in front of 6,800 spectators in 1989, and
another one in 1991 at the Royal Festival Hall in London. For three of the
encores from the Iberian concerts one month later we find KS in his most
prolific voice-sampling phase. (The fourth encore appears as bonus track on
the re-released DAS WAGNER DESASTER). Now the reality becomes more virtual, or
should we rather say that the virtuality becomes more real?
The decision to include a Johann Sebastian Bach interpretation with these
pieces is not by chance, but is chronologically accurate. The sampled concert
guitar, choirs and strings combined create an almost classical sound picture.
This is not so surprising for these KS compositions, as one year later the
same tracks, now with controversial "speech singing", were issued as
part of his opera TOTENTAG. The recital of the opera singers, who had likely
stood in the rain to record without being given conventional scores by KS,
found little approval. Indeed many fans enquired if the music was available
without the operatic singers. Now at last, at least in part, here it is.
One suspects that the listening habits of the regular rock fan would run
contrary to the direction taken by Schulze's music, which seems to reside more
likely in a classical landscape rather than contemporary music patterns. What
is remarkable, perhaps, is that whenever KS roams into explicitly "serious"
forms, reactions seem to be at their most controversial. It would appear that
the free spirit of KS, which causes him to shun conventional requirements,
might well be the trigger for this. For example, his use of singers in his
pieces invariably generates divided opinions. This conflict is further
exacerbated by his use of sampling. (Is this still human singing, or an
altogether more synthetic sound?)
So the feedback to Schulze 's "opera fancy" (excuse me!) has not always been
enthusiastic. For many years he has spoken of this and even in the year 2008
revealed that he has a finished opera in a drawer somewhere. This project was,
however, put aside to make way for his collaboration with Lisa Gerrard. He had
already introduced "Welter welter!" as an excerpt from an opera. This is
released here for the first time as a bonus track, and was in fact an encore
from a concert performance with Rainer Bloss on February 24th 1985 at the
Aachen Audimax.
The opera project entitled "Amor and Psyche" never saw the light of day,
although parts of it are to be found on Bloss' solo LP, "Ampsy: A Mythodigital
Fairy Tale Of A Kinky Computer" from 1984. By the time the KS opera TOTENTAG
came out, some ten years later, it contained completely different material
(see above), as is so often the case with the relentless overflow of Schulze's
output. Reactions were (not to be unkind) restrained. Such was also the case
when he attempted to reverse the process for the "Midi Klassik" project. Here,
instead of employing classical structure and form for new music, rather he
interpreted old music with modern instrumentation. The record company elected
to issue this under the crass and ugly title of GOES CLASSIC. As early as 1991
Schulze had begun to record the first pieces for it, and most were released
around three years later.
In addition to opera, ballet has also wielded its influence on Schulze. This
was possibly a legacy from his mother, Edith, who died in 1998, and had been a
ballet dancer. On occasions Schulze has announced pieces of music, as having
been written for a ballet, although thus far none of these tracks have been
used in a dance performance. The closest any of these ballet pieces has come
to fulfilling its stated purpose, was a 1987 performance by the Elisa Monte
Dance Company in New York, when the specially recorded tape for a ballet
either arrived too late or in an otherwise unsuitable format. Consequently
pieces from the albums DIG IT and AUDENTITY were used; music that, of course,
had never been intended for dance. This is perhaps a further indication of how
little relevance conventional labels and accepted forms have in the Schulze
cosmos.
As one listens to the second movement of Bach's Suite in its usual form, it
is, as its title suggests, light and "airy". Not so here. Indeed, as it
emerges in the midst of the encores from the Spanish concerts, the style and
manner of this music blends seamlessly with the KS pieces. The stylistic void
between his originals and the famous orchestral suite from the 1720's, which
might have been expected, simply does not exist. Perhaps it's a proof for the
thesis about the classical listening attitude. Who knows? But was the term
"timeless" - and I refer here to Schulze rather than Bach - ever more
appropriate?
(Lars Fischer)
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