Klaus Schulze: La Vie Electronique 1 (2009)

La Vie Electronique 1  (1970 to 1972)

Track Listing (CD 1):

1.	I was dreaming I was awake	24:51	1970-71
2.	The Real McCoy	12:54	1968-71
3.	Tempus Fugit	26:24	1968-71
4.	Dynamo	14:19	1970-71

Track Listing (CD 2):

1.	Traumraum	31:36	1970
2.	Study for Brian Eno	07:20	1970-71
3.	Cyborgs Traum	39:15	1972

Track Listing (CD 3):

1.	Die Kunst, 100 Jahre alt zu werden	64:09	1971-72
2.	Study for Terry Riley	05:08	1971-72
3.	Les jockeys camouflés	08:03	1972

Rating: 5 Stars

In the 1990's a series of large box sets were released featuring previously unreleased material by Klaus Schulze. Responsible for these releases was Klaus Schulze's publisher, Klaus Dieter Müller, better known by his initials, KDM. He was a close friend and adviser of Klaus, and he knew that Klaus was recording music on a regular basis, then putting the tapes on the shelf to be forgotten. A lot of the music was every bit as good, maybe even better than the official albums. KDM rescued this music, and we can be forever thankful to him.

The Silver Edition was a 10-CD box set released in 1993. It contained eight CDs with recent studio recordings (1992 to 1993) and two CDs with live recordings from 1975 and 1976.

The Historic Edition was a 10-CD box set released in 1995. It contained seven CDs with live recordings, mostly 1975 to 1977, and three CDs with studio recordings from the same period.

The Jubilee Edition was a 25-CD box set released in 1997 to commemorate Klaus Schulze's 50th birthday. As a gimmic the box set was exactly 1947 minutes long. That's an average of 77 minutes 52 seconds per disc. It contained a mixture of recordings from 1970 to 1997, approximately 15 CDs of studio recordings and 10 CDs of live recordings. (It's difficult to count them, because some of the CDs are split between live and studio recordings).

At the time of their release KDM said that the box sets were limited releases and the music on them would never be made available again. Luckily he changed his mind. In 2000 the Ultimate Edition was released, a 50-CD box set. Wow! This mammoth box set contained the 45 CDs of the previous three box sets plus five CDs of previously unreleased material. Once more he said that this was the final release, and the music would never be available again.

That's a foolish thing to say, if KDM really meant it. It's possible that it was a bluff to encourage Klaus Schulze's fans to buy the box set quickly. If he really did mean it, it was an open invitation to bootleggers to make illegal copies of the albums for the next hundred years. KDM wasn't thinking about the needs of the thousands of Klaus Schulze fans who haven't been born yet.

But KDM changed his mind again. He launched a new series of albums called "La Vie Electronique", containing all the music from the 50 CDs in the Ultimate Edition, plus a few tracks that KDM had recently discovered. There are 16 volumes in the series, and each volume contains three CDs, apart from the final volume, which contains five CDs. La Vie Electronique (LVE) is superior to the previous releases, because it's better organised. The first 15 volumes order the music chronologically, from 1970 to 1999. Only the 16th volume contains random tracks. It seems like KDM threw everything into it that he'd forgotten in the first 15 volumes.

A word about the names of the tracks. If something was written on the tapes that KDM was compiling, he used it as the title, but mostly only the date was written, so KDM invented the titles himself. Most of his titles are imaginative, sometimes random. They shouldn't be taken too seriously.

As for the dates of the studio recordings, only the digital tapes that Klaus used from the 1980's onwards were exactly dated. His early analogue tapes weren't clearly marked. KDM could approximately date them by the instruments used. The dates listed on the Klaus Schulze website often contradict what KDM writes in the liner notes of the LVE volumes. If there's a difference, I follow the liner notes, because the website was written more than 10 years previously and was never updated.

Now I'll finally get round to this album, LVE 1. It presents the earliest years of Klaus Schulze's career, supposedly from 1968 to 1972. I say supposedly, because I don't know why KDM thinks that "The Real McCoy" and "Tempus Fugit" might have been recorded as early as 1968. When these two tracks were included on the Historic Edition he said that they were recorded "about 1970". I consider it doubtful that Klaus recorded them before he made "Electronic Meditation" (1970). My personal guess would be 1970 to 1971. "Tempus Fugit" contains ideas that Klaus used in "Irrlicht" (1972), so it sounds like he was working towards "Irrlicht".

KDM apologises in the liner notes for any imperfections in the recordings. Analogue tapes that have been lying around for 25 years can decay. I noticed slight errors on some tracks, for instance "I was dreaming I was awake". It's forgivable. I'd rather hear these tracks with slight errors than not hear them at all.

Typical for Klaus Schulze's early music is droning sounds with electric organs. This was all he had available with his limited financial means as a struggling young musician. Many people find his early music monotonous, but I love it. This is the Klaus Schulze that I found when I first discovered "Irrlicht", which immediately became my favourite album.

Below I'm including the liner notes written by KDM. They're written in German and English. The German liner notes are more detailed and include things missing in the English notes, but I'm too lazy to translate the German for you. I've transcribed the English notes with only a few corrections. The English is awkward at times, but I've only corrected it where there are blatant grammatical errors. At one point something was written in the English notes that was difficult to understand. I referred to the German text and rewrote the English sentence entirely. Nevertheless, my intention is to quote the English liner notes as closely as possible.

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La Vie Electronique 1 Liner Notes

To speak about the music in this and the coming sets is easier today than it was at the time when it was actually played. To look back is always easier. At the time of the actual happening no one knows what will become of it. In each era there are crazy people who risk and create something, and no one knows at this time what will become of it. Yes, Klaus Schulze was one of those crazies.

Some forty years later you should imagine: in the midst of the fashion of the time with beat music, then blues rock and the beginning of psychedelic music a German lad decides to sit down in his room in front of an old electric organ and some broken cheap electric tools, to play very long elegiac pieces. Sometimes he drums on bongos or whatever is at hand, not in the usual 4/4 scheme of pop and rock, but with a steady machine-like pulse. Klaus recorded some of his efforts on a home tape recorder. He quickly learned to outwit the little available technical means, if necessary. One of his tricks was to play with himself and to record multiplay with his normal home Telefunken recorder.

Some of these old tapes did survive, and during the 1990's I released plenty of it, mostly in my sets HISTORIC EDITION and JUBILEE EDITION. The dusty old tape boxes rarely showed any titles or a date, and even if there was something scribbled on the card board, who could swear after all these years if the info on the outside is according to its content, to the actual music on the tape? Of course, it was a muddle, and how else? As said above: no one could forebode at the time of recording what will become of Klaus, of his new music; many other youngsters probably made similar musical experiments in their living rooms or cellars, but without success because they gave up early, or soon they had other interests, who knows? Anyway, Klaus Schulze carried on, until today, with some progress, success, and with plenty of influence on others.

At the end of the 1960's into the 1970's it was the musical era of bands. Young men played electric guitars (above all), the not-so-good guitar player or more silent guy played the electric bass, aided by a drummer and sometimes a little electric organ. The good friend who could not play any instrument (except for the tambourine) became the singer. Or some of the players sang. The more experienced bands had played Skittle before the Beatles boom. In Germany those beat bands played mostly the music they had in their record collection: American music, but more often British pop and rock music.

But one guy alone, playing the electric organ with an echo device for hours. Organ music was previously played only in churches, but of course with another intention and with other music, and the echo didn't come from an "Echolette". Here, what KS did, this was a totally different music, a totally different way to make music. The keyword is home recording, which at this time was far less common than it is today.

Of course Klaus Schulze had heard the music of groups like Pink Floyd, in concert as well as on their early records, and like many others he was inspired. But even Pink Floyd in the sixties (and still forty years later) played in the usual set-up with guitar, bass, drums, organ and vocals. Also, and at the same time, Klaus had visited some lectures about modern music, had read some books about it. He was young, and the time for a cultural revolution was promising. Some tried free jazz, others just drugs or politics.

There were not yet musical pigeonholes for the new music which happened in Berlin and elsewhere. It was still too new and exotic for the journalists. For instance, Tangerine Dream was not yet "cosmic" or "new age" or "electronic", even if their first album had this word in its title. Rarely someone knew or thought about what will emerge from this much different new music. I remember going to concerts of Tangerine Dream, Peter Brotzman or John Cage, or concerts of  exotic non-European music in little art galleries, at underground places, or at the Berlin Academy of the Arts. All of it was somehow similar and was on a par for me and for many of my generation. Of course, every generation looks for new sensations, also in music, and probably we were lucky with our time. Today we know how to label these old names, even if their music is today a bit (or a lot) different from the time nearly 40 years ago. We all know the labels of today, for KS or for TD: New Age, World Music, Electronic, Meditation Music, New Age Jazz, Fusion, East/West Music, Progressive Music, Healing Music, Environmental, Space Music, Cosmic Music, Nature Sounds, Solo Instrumental Music, Computer Music, etc. Of course most names come from, you guessed it: the U S of A.

Circa 1970: two rooms in a Berlin school's cellar were rented by the Berlin government for the "Beat Studio". The musicians of Tangerine Dream, Agitation Free, Ash Ra Tempel and Klaus Schulze went there to rehearse, but also for learning. Also not unimportant: the studio had two professional tape recorders. The Beat Studio's boss was Thomas Kessler, a Swiss who had studied composition in Berlin. He was ten years older than the hungry musicians which he taught a few things about modern music, modern instruments and recording technique. Still today, in interviews KS remembers and speaks very friendly about Thomas Kessler.

These were a few of the circumstances when Klaus Schulze started as a professional musician.

Examples of his early home recordings are included in this first three-CD set (and also in the second set) of LA VIE ELECTRONIOUE (LVE). I had already put these recordings in the 10-CD set HISTORIC EDITION (1995) and the 25-CD set JUBILEE EDITION (1997), and both were also part of the 50-CD set THE ULTIMATE EDITION. All sets were limited editions and are long sold-out. 

Now I put them more or less in chronological order. British friends, the Freeman brothers ("Ultima Thule") from Leicester, had asked me after the first release: why not put these tracks chronologically on the discs? Now, Alan and Steven, you get your will.

There is a formerly unreleased bonus track on this set, and there will be three or four other bonus tracks in the coming sets. Yes, the bonus track in this set has a long title. But who says that titles should be always short? Especially if you consider that Klaus' music is often very long.

Also I included the interview parts that were to find in the former sets, plus two additional bonus snippets of old interview. Detailed info about the music on the three CDs of each set I will write in the credits in the booklet's rear part. Often I will repeat what I had already written in HISTORIC, JUBILEE or THE ULTIMATE EDITION. Except if I have new and different info about the tracks' when and where from.

(kdm, May 2008)