Klaus Schulze: Dreams (1986)

Klaus Schulze - Dreams

KS Canon 19

Track Listing:

1.	A Classical Move	09:40
2.	Five To Four	07:57
3.	Dreams	09:25
4.	Flexible	04:16
5.	Klaustrophony	24:40

Bonus Tracks:

6.

Constellation Andromeda

23:52

Notes:
(1) Andreas Grosser plays piano.
(2) Nunu Isa plays guitar.
(3) Harald Asmussen plays bass guitar.
(4) Ulli Schober plays drums.
(5) Ian Wilkinson sings on "Klaustrophony".

Rating: 3½ Stars
Bonus Tracks: 5 Stars

This is the 19th solo album recorded by Klaus Schulze, although it has so many other musicians that it could almost be called a team effort. Klaus says that he first met Andreas Grosser when he was shopping for studio equipment. Andreas had a few friends who were musicians, so they all got together and recorded some music. The first four tracks are very good, but I don't like the singing on the fifth track. My rating of 3¾ Stars is an average of 4½ Stars for the first four tracks and 3 Stars for "Klaustrophony".

This was the second Klaus Schulze album to be released simultaneously on LP and CD, but in contrast to "Inter*Face" it was primarily a CD release. What I mean is, the music on the CD was too long to fit on an LP, so one of the tracks, "Flexible", had to be omitted on the LP. Fortunately I bought my first CD player shortly before "Dreams" was released, so it was the first Klaus Schulze album that I bought on CD.

The bonus track was recorded in 2003 and originally released on a free promotional CD given away at the Frankfurt Music Fair. It's intended as a demonstration of the Alesis analogue synthesizer. Klaus became angry when he saw that the free CD was being sold for over $500 on Ebay, so he requested that the track be given away free again, this time as a bonus track.

Over the next few years I re-bought all of my Klaus Schulze LPs on CD. By this time they were being sold for about 20 Marks, which was about $11.

The CDs released in the 1980's and early 1990's had a three-letter identification on them. They were either DDD, ADD or AAD. (I remember having a CD marked DAD, not a Klaus Schulze CD, but that was a rarity. I've forgotten what it was, and I can't check because all my CDs were stolen by Thomas Kuzilla of Dearborn Heights, Michigan). The letters A and D stand for Analogue and Digital. The first letter denotes how the music was recorded. The second letter denotes how the music was mixed. The third letter denotes whether the disc is analogue or digital, but since CDs are always digital the third letter is redundant.

My copy of "Dreams" was marked DDD, whereas all the other Klaus Schulze albums were marked AAD. (It's possible that this was a mistake in the case of  the solo albums from "Dig It" onwards). What this meant is that "Dreams" was a pure digital recording, whereas the older albums were recorded on analogue tapes and transferred to CD without any digital remastering. The first letter can never be changed. Every album recorded before the 1980's has to be an analogue recording, because it was the only method available. The 1980's were a transitional period in which both analogue and digital recording techniques were used side by side. The second letter might have been an A in early releases, but later releases were digitally remastered, making the second letter a D. Today, more than 30 years later, we can assume that all the important music that was recorded on analogue tapes has been digitally remastered, so ADD has become the standard for old music, just as DDD is the standard for new music. Maybe some CDs are still pressed today which are AAD, but the customer doesn't know, because this information is no longer printed on the discs.