Klaus Schulze: Beyond Recall (1991)

Klaus Schulze - Beyond Recall

KS Canon 23

Track Listing:

1.	Gringo Nero	26:54
2.	Trancess	12:50
3.	Brave Old Sequence	11:02
4.	The Big Fall	11:35
5.	Airlights	14:34

Rating: 3 Stars

This is the 23rd solo album recorded by Klaus Schulze. An LP was released at the same time, with "Gringo Nero" omitted. In the 1990's the trend was to move away from LP's. In my local record store the vinyl section shrank steadily, and by 1995 only CD's were on sale. It wasn't until the late 2000's that the vinyl fetish became widespread.

"Beyond Recall" sounds like a new age album. I don't know whether this was intended. It's pleasant and relaxing, but for me it's just not Klaus. Only "Brave Old Sequence" gets close to being the music I love so much.

Like "Dresden Performance", this album has never been re-released. It's the second of five albums for which Virgin Records refused to sell the copyright and then allowed them to go out of print. Luckily I bought all five of them while they were still available. The only blessing is that these albums are available to download as MP3's.

This is a subject that I argued about with KDM, Klaus Schulze's publisher, in a series of emails. He's against the illegal copying of music, in which I agree with him. I have physical copies of all of Klaus Schulze's CD's, as far as they're available. I dread to add up how much I've spent on them over the years. Though I agree with KDM in principle, we disagree strongly in the details.

KDM says that by downloading MP3's the musician is losing money. To this I reply that by buying a second hand CD the musician is also losing money. If the CD is out of print and considered a "collector's item" I might have to pay a large amount for the second hand CD, in which case the seller is making a profit at the musician's expense, for which he should morally pay the musician a percentage. KDM never understood this. He just took the standpoint that downloading MP3's is wrong and buying second hand CD's is right. The law might be on his side, but morally I'm right. By downloading MP3's nobody is making a profit at the musician's expense.

Naturally, I'm only talking about albums that are no longer available. If Klaus releases a new album I'm willing to pay for it to support him and his music. But what about albums like "Beyond Recall" that are deliberately being kept off the market? It's not the people who download MP3's who are stealing from Klaus, it's Virgin Records. Every time this album is downloaded, Virgin is taking money out of Klaus Schulze's pocket. They're the criminals, not the downloaders.