Klaus Schulze: La Vie Electronique 14 (2014)

La Vie Electronique 14  (1993 to 1998)

Track Listing (CD 1):

1.

Opera Trance

79:21

1993

Track Listing (CD 2):

1.	Zooblast	03:11	1993
2.	Conquest of Paradise	04:48	1994
3.	Große Gaukler Gottes	05:24	1994
4.	Angry Young Moog	08:04	1994
5.	Kosmisches Gleiteisen	03:34	1994
6.	Operatic March	03:42	1994
7.	Kosmisches Gleiteisen, part 2	01:57	1994
8.	Angry Young Moog, part 2	13:15	1994
9.	Dreieinhalb Stunden	04:28	1996
10.	The Schulzendorf Groove (first version)	11:34	1998
11.	The Schulzendorf Groove (tribute version)	14:04	1998

Track Listing (CD 3):

1.

Tradition and Vision

78:45

1997

Notes: Jörg Schaaf plays keyboards on "Dreieinhalb Stunden" and "Tradition and Vision".

Rating: 4½ Stars

This album contains only studio recordings.

"Opera Trance" is one of the best pieces of music that Klaus Schulze recorded in the 1990's, maybe one of his best tracks ever. Today I read something that I'd forgotten: "Opera Trance" is the second part in a three-part operatic suite. The first part is "Borrowed Time" on "La Vie Electronique 13", and the third part is "Vat Was Dat", which was included as a bonus CD with "Are you sequenced?" It's a shame that this piece of music has been divided over three albums. I need to listen to them together. Maybe next week.

Another thing about "Opera Trance" is that it has an unusual fade-out. I say unusual, because Klaus never does fade-outs. I have a suspicion that the track was too long for the CD (i.e. longer than 80 minutes), so KDM shortened it.

The second CD contains a collection of short Schulze tracks, recorded over the period of a few years. Some tracks are better than others, but they're all curiosities. The strangest track, in my opinion, is the remake of the Vangelis single, "Conquest of Paradise". Strange but good.

"Tradition and Vision" is a very relaxed track. When it began I wasn't sure whether I liked it, but it grew on me as it continued.

The liner notes for LVE 14 are written by the musician Blue22.

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La Vie Electronique 14 Liner Notes

Once more the time has come to put a metaphoric pen to paper and write again about our enigmatic and somewhat reclusive musical hero Mr. Klaus Schulze.

In the liner notes of LVE 5 I had discussed Schulze's iconoclastic status as a pioneer of electronic music and sought to see if indeed the status bestowed upon him was at all justified. Anyone that has cared to spectate over Schulze's career to date will need no reminding that he has indeed spent a better part of his time trying not so much to become a man of infinite commercial success as to become one of infinite musical value. And in this endeavour I think it has to be said that he has succeeded remarkably well. Klaus, as always a focused individual with a propensity for doing things his own way, with little or no regard for traditional musical convention.

I had thought to continue that particular dialogue here, however at time of writing (Summer 2013), while looking for a fresh angle in which to revisit the subject of Schulze and his music, my train of thought was diverted when I read that fans still crave Schulze's 70's style of performance; a yearning for days gone by, I rather fancy. My fellow listeners and Schulze fanatics alike, please take note: the style is still there in abundance, it is merely the sound palette that has evolved over the years as new equipment is brought in and old equipment retired (with only one or two classic analogue machines remaining the exception to the rule). This is the way of progress in the world according to Schulze.

Much as I understand the retro viewpoint of the average listener, I don't happen to believe there is any point in clinging to this notion that one day Klaus will suddenly leap out of bed, think it's a good idea to get all that old analogue gear out of hibernation, take a show out on the road and pretend it's 1975. It's not going to happen, folks! A pipedream is what we have here that should and will most likely remain that way. It's a time now best viewed through those rose tinted glasses of nostalgia to be remembered fondly.

Had Klaus stubbornly clung to the idea that the only way was the analogue way then the man we're discussing here may well have been some long forgotten musician whose career ended abruptly some 30 years ago. For Schulze the synthesizer is a means to an end, it's all about the sound, not about the tool used to produce that sound. Is this a lesson fans have failed to observe? The resurgence of interest in vintage analogue remains a relatively new phenomenon fuelled in no small part by instrument manufacturers and the ever expanding Internet. If it's retro sounding music that people really miss from that bygone era, I think you'll be well served by the LVE sets and extensive bonus tracks added throughout the Schulze reissues of the last decade.

Klaus is a man trapped in the present; he doesn't live in some cosmic futuristic bubble, nor does he live in the past, he's not known as great revisionist (if anything just the opposite), he's an ordinary guy that goes about making his living playing the odd keyboard (or synthesizer for you purists out there). Back in the late 70's his music and its creation were nothing if not cutting edge, innovation being the name of the game. This trend continuing into the 80's and 90's right up to the present day. So why on earth should/would retro start now? A backward looking move!

That said, rest assured that if there were one man on the planet that could go truly retro, as fans suggest, and pull it off with a real sense of conviction, Schulze is your man.

So what of the future? Friedrich Nietzsche once said, "Without music, life would be a mistake". A broad and sweeping statement indeed, but one that is so completely true of Schulze as I continue to fathom that inseparable link between the man and his music. They really are one and the same. Listening to Schulze now I find his most modern compositions convey a sense of a work in progress as he continues to produce ethereal music where everything and nothing happens. As always, the sequencer providing the mortar that holds those musical building blocks together, punctuated by the odd analogue interjection; perhaps a gentle reminder from Klaus to let us know that he hasn't forgotten a time that made him famous.

Has his music lost its purpose? My answer is: did it ever have one? This may well be the great global attraction of Schulze's music: its very anonymity. Could it be that universal absence of a message which transcends those artificial borders of culture, politics, language and religion that can produce mutual harmony between listeners that none of the aforementioned seem able to provide? After all it should be the ears that give meaning to the music, not to wait for the music to give us meaning.

Another question: is the music of Schulze relevant in the 21st Century? Well, given the sheer number of Berlin school inspired copyists who choose to plagiarise Klaus's style and sound to the hilt, one must assume that there may just be a market out there for his particular brand of entertainment. If we concentrate purely on Schulze's unchanging style, it remains difficult to delineate between the old and the new, making the subject of relativity no easier a question to answer. The truth of the matter must lie with the listener's own interpretation of the music, rather than the music imposing itself upon us like a trite message in a three minute pop song. Not unlike a Chekhov play, where the audience is required to think about what is happening on stage, it is said that the true meaning of the story is carried between the words, so Schulze could be said to provide lulls in the music giving it space to breathe where we in turn create our own interpretation/reality from the ambiguity. Klaus has said before now that "active listening" is required with some of his releases. Perhaps this is what he meant (critics having previously passed this terminology off as a footnote for musical economy). So is the music relevant? It's a very personal thing. How can we say that this album or that is his finest work when the opinions of others may differ so greatly? In his music we each find what we're looking for. 

Today I still hear the same intensity that first drew listeners in four decades ago. It's repetition without repetition, and that, my friends, is the art of what Schulze does; it's an arena in which he is second to none. His music continuing to strike a chord at the heart of what all the world's greatest music seeks to achieve, to uplift and affect the human condition. Klaus retains a joyous fascination of music, producing vibrant, fresh sounding albums, captivating fans across the globe (in the process confounding and confusing critics just as widely). He has avoided cliché and popular trends, and he has eluded a certain commerciality which over the long term displays a continuity and strength in his recordings that his contemporaries simply fail to muster.

Klaus could not have predicted his own musical future all those years ago, he had to first invent it. Long live Schulze! 

(Blue22, Summer 2013)