Klaus Schulze: Big in Japan (2010)

Klaus Schulze - Big In Japan

KS Album 52

Track Listing (CD 1):

1.	The Crystal Returns	38:03
2.	Sequencers are beautiful	39:00

Track Listing (CD 2):

1.	La Joyeuse Apocalypse	46:35
2.	Nippon Benefit	14:10
3.	The Deductive Approach	12:12

Rating: 5 Stars

This is the 52nd solo album recorded by Klaus Schulze. In March 2010 he performed two concerts in Tokyo, Japan for the first time in his career. What he didn't know at the time was that these would be his last ever concerts. Health problems prevented him performing live after this. Klaus was a very secretive person, so details of his illness were never made public. All we know is that he was having problems with his kidneys.

In the case of "Rheingold" and "Djiekuje Bardzo" the concert DVDs were sold separately. "Big in Japan" was released as a box set with two CDs and an accompanying DVD.

The strange marketing decision was made to release three different versions of this album: a Japanese, an American and a European version. The American and European versions are identical apart from the packaging, but the Japanese version has different tracks on the first CD, and the tracks on the second CD have slightly different lengths. I don't own the Japanese version, so I can't make a direct comparison.

An unusual feature of the box set is the colour of the discs. Instead of the usual silver playing surface, all three discs (the CDs and the DVD) have a golden playing surface. The above photo shows a normal CD on the left and a Big In Japan CD on the right for comparison.

The phrase "Big in Japan" is used to describe the phenomena that many bands are successful in Japan despite being unknown in their own countries. This is only indirectly the reason for the album's title. It was almost certainly named by KDM, who is also responsible for publishing the songs by the group Alphaville. Their first hit single was "Big in Japan".

I'm sure that KDM invented the names for all the tracks on the CDs. The name of "Sequencers are beautiful" seems illogical, because sequencers are hardly used in the track, but the DVD makes it clearer. "The Crystal Returns" is a logical name, because the first few minutes are a similar melody to "Crystal Lake" on the "Mirage" album.

The DVD isn't a continuous concert performance. It's two separate pieces of music. The first piece is "A Crystal Poem", recorded on the second day, 21st March 2010. The second piece is "Sequencers are beautiful", recorded on 20th March 2010. The second piece seems to be the same recording as the track on the first CD, but a different cut. By that I mean that the track on the CD has been edited. Assuming that the DVD contains the unedited music, the beginning has been removed for the CD track, and Klaus talks over part of the music, which has also been removed from the CD track.

Apart from "Sequencers are beautiful", it's not possible to say which day the tracks on the CDs were recorded. All I'll say is that it's a beautiful box set, and Klaus played admirably at his last two concerts.

Of the three versions, only the American version is still available.