Rheingold (5 Stars)

When I wrote about the "Rheingold" CD three days ago I said that I would buy the concert DVD on Ebay. Thanks to the speedy service of the Ebay seller 1a-music in Burgthann I received the DVD this morning. I don't usually buy used copies of CDs or DVDs, due to bad experiences in the past, but this time I wasn't disappointed. The article description on Ebay said "like new", and that's the case, 100%. No marks on the case, no fingerprints on the disc, and most importantly, it plays perfectly.

I bought the DVD primarily for the documentary and interview on the second disc, but I'll write about the concert first.

The DVD contains the first five tracks of the album, in the same order. It's slightly longer than the album, because Klaus Schulze's words with the audience between the songs aren't edited out. I picked up a few details that weren't obvious from the CD.

The first song, "Alberich", should have been longer, but it was interrupted by the audience. Klaus was playing a quiet section, and the audience began to applaud because they thought the song was over. Klaus stopped playing, stood up and told them they'd made a mistake. Several times in the rest of the concert he made signs to the audience that they should remain quiet.

Klaus Schulze and Lisa Gerrard work together perfectly, adapting to one another's improvisations, but it's not obvious when you see them on stage. Klaus occasionally glanced at Lisa, but Lisa didn't look at Klaus while she was singing, not once. For most of the concert she was singing with her eyes shut. On the rare occasions when she opened her eyes she stared into the sky, over the heads of the audience. (It was an open air concert).

When I listened to the CD three days ago, I said that "Alberich" disappointed me. Listening to it again today, I've changed my mind. I should have given the album a five star rating, but I don't go back and change old reviews.

I have only a few music DVDs in my collection, and this is the first time I've ever bought a concert DVD of music I already had on CD. It's a welcome addition to my collection.

The second disc is divided into two halves, a documentary about the concert and an interview.

Objectively speaking, it's not a good documentary. With the exception of Tom Dams, the sound engineer, nobody is introduced. We see people talking to Klaus in the studio, but we have no idea who they are. In a normal documentary the names would flash on screen the first time they appear. Another problem is the dialogue. A mixture of German and English is spoken. There are subtitles for the German dialogue, but no subtitles for the English dialogue. When German is spoken the language is clear, but the English dialogue is often mumbled and difficult to follow, so I would have liked subtitles for the English dialogue as well. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the documentary a lot because of the subject matter. I'm biased.

Most of the documentary shows Klaus and the engineers around him working to prepare the DVD at the Real World Studios in the village of Box, near Bristol. The video footage is spliced together from three cameras used at the concert. The music is being remastered for surround sound. It's interesting to hear Klaus Schulze's attitude towards the music changes as the remastering progresses. Before it starts he says that he doesn't like concert recordings to be changed or edited, they should be left as they originally sounded. That's a strange statement, because many of his live albums were heavily edited in the studio. The most extreme example is "Dresden Performance" in 1990. But as the remastering continues, Klaus changes his mind. There's a section where two sequencers are playing together (I believe it's in the second song, "Loreley"), and Klaus says "It would sound better if the second sequencer is played backwards". The engineer proceeds to reverse the sound with his computer/mixer, and Klaus agrees with the change. I listened to the stereo track today, which I assume is unedited. If I had surround sound equipment I'd like to compare the differences.

About half of the "documentary" consists of Klaus leaning on a wall talking about Lisa Gerrard, who he calls Lieschen. He says some things about the "Farscape" album that weren't contained in the liner notes. She arrived in the evening with her friend (boyfriend?) Pete, flying in from Moscow, and she wanted to go out and drink some German beer. She went out with Pete, arranging to meet Klaus at 1 pm the next day, which Klaus considered an unholy time. He's a night person, like me . When she arrived, Klaus didn't play. He'd prepared pre-recorded tracks for her, and she sang over them. I'm curious whether the whole album was done this way, or just the first few tracks. Klaus didn't say. I would have asked a lot more questions.

They started at 11 the next day, even earlier! The following day she had to leave.

It was only supposed to be a one-off collaboration with Lisa. Klaus was scheduled to play the Loreley concert by himself, but he decided spontaneously to invite Lisa shortly before the concert. They enjoyed performing together so much that Klaus arranged another eight concerts with her over the following 12 months.

Klaus says that the Loreley concert was the first time that his sons had seem him perform live. The above photo is in a flashback to the concert during the documentary. I hope the two men really are his sons, because I've never seen them before. Klaus was a very private person. He lived in a remote village, and his family was never photographed for the public.

The second half of the second disc is an interview with Klaus Schulze, carried out by the English musician Steven Wilson. He was working with Klaus in the Real World Studios because he's an expert in remastering music for surround sound. The interview started with Steven talking about his own background. He was born in 1967 and he grew up in the 1980's. He said that the music in the 1980's was bad, so he had to look back to previous decades. When he was 13 his parents bought each other two LPs for Christmas: "Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd and "Love to Love You Baby" by Donna Summer. These two albums were his primary influences as a young teenager. He found his way to the "progressive" rock of the early 1970's, then to Tangerine Dream, and finally to Klaus Schulze. He now considers Klaus Schulze to be his favourite musician.

For most of the interview Klaus spoke about his early years, the 1970's. I made a whole page of notes about what he said. I'll have to be selective, I can't write everything.

Klaus calls his album with Tangerine Dream, "Electronic Meditation", pure experimentation. None of the musicians knew what they wanted to do. None of them repeated music like this.

Klaus denies the frequent claim that Karl-Heinz Stockhausen influenced the German groups of the early 1970's. Stockhausen's music was so avant-garde that they ignored it.

Klaus says that "Blackdance" (his third album) is the only album he regrets making. Steven Wilson immediately contradicted him, saying that "Voices of Syn" (the third track) is a masterpiece. I agree.

Klaus talks at length about the Cosmic Jokers albums released in 1974. Dieter Dierks had a large studio in Berlin. He invited musicians to practise (Klaus Schulze, Manuel Göttsching, Jürgen Dollase and Harald Grosskopf). By the door there were strips with LSD (presumably blotting paper), and Dieter watched to make sure that everyone who entered took one. In the following months Dieter Dierks recorded the music and released five albums without informing the musicians. Klaus is still angry about it today, because he thinks that the music was too bad to be released. He doesn't understand why some people like it, especially in America.

Florian Fricke offered to sell Klaus his Big Moog for 20,000 Marks. That was a lot of money, and Klaus couldn't afford it, but he really wanted the instrument. He walked into his record company and gave the CEO an ultimatum: "I need 20,000 Marks for equipment. If you don't give me the money I shan't make any more records for you". The CEO agreed to give Klaus an advance payment of 20,000 Marks. Klaus immediately drove to Munich (where Florian lived), a 12 hour journey, and gave him the money. Klaus drove back to Berlin with the Big Moog in four cases in his small car, but it was snowing, so he needed 15 hours.

Steven Wilson asks why the first side of "Timewind" (his fifth album) ends so abruptly. Klaus replies that the music was too long for one side of an LP, so it was a choice between a fade-out and a loud final note. I know what Steven means by the abrupt ending, but it's never bothered me.

Klaus talks about being very poor in his early days. "Moondawn" (his sixth album) was his first commercial success. After that he could live comfortably. An advantage is that he kept more of his studio recordings. The tapes cost 30 Marks each, so before "Moondawn" he often erased them to be used again. This has led to Klaus having a large catalogue of unreleased music waiting to be released in later years.

One thing that's missing from the interview is that he never mentions his publisher, Klaus Dieter Müller, usually known as KDM. As I've often said, without KDM there would be no Klaus Schulze. Klaus makes music and moves on. He's an artist with no business sense. KDM took the trouble of gathering Klaus Schulze's old tapes and listening to them, deciding what was worthy of being released. Without KDM this music would have been lost forever.

This is a beautiful DVD set: I enjoy it all, even the documentary. If I'd known it's so good I would have bought it when it was first released, 14 years ago.