Klaus Schulze: X (1978)

Klaus Schulze - X

KS Canon 10

Track Listing (CD 1):

1.	Friedrich Nietzsche	24:50
2.	Georg Trakl	26:04
3.	Frank Herbert	10:51
4.	Friedemann Bach	18:00

Track Listing (CD 2):

1.	Ludwig II von Bayern	28:39
2.	Heinrich von Kleist	29:32

Bonus Tracks:

3.

Objet D'Louis

21:32

Notes:
(1) Harald Grosskopf plays drums.
(2) Wolfgang Tiepold plays cello on "Heinrich von Kleist".
(3) B. Dragic plays violin on "Friedemann Bach".
(4) A small string orchestra plays on "Ludwig II von Bayern".
(5) A large string orchestra plays on "Objet D'Louis".

Rating: 5 Stars
Bonus Tracks: 3 Stars

This is the 10th solo album recorded by Klaus Schulze, and it's a majestic piece of work. It was originally released as a double LP and described as six musical biographies.

The bonus track is a live version of "Ludwig II von Bayern" recorded in Belgium in 1978. Unfortunately the sound quality isn't very good.

On the original LP the track "Georg Trakl" was only 5:25 long and shared the first side with "Friedrich Nietzsche". This track had evidently only been shortened to fit the LP. In 2000 a 50-CD box set called the Ultimate Edition was released, which contained the uncut version of "Georg Trakl" with the title "Discover Trakl", 27:52 long. This was a limited release and is no longer available, so when "X" was re-released in 2005 the uncut version was used. I should say it was almost used. In its full length it wouldn't have fit on the CD, so it was shortened to 26:04. This means that the full, uncut version of "Georg Trakl" was only ever released on a CD that's no longer available.

I used to own the Ultimate Edition, but it was stolen by Thomas Kuzilla of Dearborn Heights, Michigan. Luckily I was able to retrieve it, partially at least. Let me explain the full story:

In 2000 I was living with my girlfriend, Leslie Colligan, in Auburn Hills, Michigan. I was working at Siemens, but she was unemployed. She wasn't making much of an effort to find a job, but it didn't bother me because my salary was enough for both of us. I was blind to what was happening. She was sleeping with other men while I was at work. I discovered this by chance in May 2000. By reading the emails and the chat logs on her computer I found out that she was sleeping with two other men. Thomas Kuzilla was one of them, and the other was a Mike who worked in a nearby bookshop. Despite already having three men (two plus me) she was answering online ads looking for other men.

At that time we were considering marriage, so it was a shock for me. In her emails she told her friends and lovers that there was nothing between her and me; we were only roommates. Sometimes she called me her "roommate who pays the bills". When I found out about the men she promised to stop seeing them, but it was a lie. She continued. I left her and returned to England a month later, even though she begged me to stay.

At the time I had a large CD collection, about 1800 CDs. This included the full collection of Klaus Schulze's CDs up to that point. I didn't have an address in England when I left, so I gave Leslie $5,000 and asked her to ship the CDs to me at a later date.

When I returned to England I received strange messages from Leslie. She hadn't changed her passwords, so I was still able to read her emails. For a few weeks she was writing emails to Thomas saying, "Mike has just left for work, I can see you now". She didn't want to admit to him that she was living alone. At the same time she wrote emails to me claiming to have moved back to New York. She told me that she was living with her parents, but when I rang their house they denied it.

Finally Leslie stopped emailing me, and Thomas began to email me. He told me that she had moved in with him the day I left (or at least the day she told him I left). He confirmed that she had never moved to New York. He said that he had taken my CDs, and he wanted me to pay $10,000 for them. I insisted that I had given Leslie the money to ship them, but he said it was nothing to do with her. At that time I became ill and had an extended stay in hospital, so a friend of mine was negotiating on my behalf. I read the emails that Thomas wrote, and he became increasingly insulting.

If I understand Thomas correctly, he thought Leslie was his girlfriend, and he hated me when he found out I had been sleeping with his girlfriend. He didn't understand that it was the other way round: he'd been sleeping with my girlfriend. He wanted to punish me for what he thought I'd done wrong.

But let's get back to the Ultimate Edition: About a year later Leslie sent a small packet with about 20 CDs to my hospital. One of them was the fifth box of the Ultimate Edition, the last 10 CDs. She wrote me a very pleasant note, saying she knew how important the CDs were to me and she would like to send them all, but Thomas wouldn't allow it. She said she could only send a few without him noticing.

Thomas Kuzilla was an abusive tyrant who wouldn't allow his girlfriend to do what she wanted. It's obvious she didn't want to move in with him when I left, which is why she didn't immediately admit I had gone. She was forced to be with him when she couldn't find a better alternative. I'm not saying Leslie was an innocent victim. I carried on reading her emails for a few years until she finally changed her password. She was betraying Thomas the same way she had betrayed me. She couldn't help herself.

But the good part of the story is that I still have the uncut version of "Georg Trakl" on CD.