Klaus Schulze: La Vie Electronique 10 (2011)

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.

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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)