Klaus Schulze: La Vie Electronique 16 (2015)

La Vie Electronique 16  (1970 to 2002)

Track Listing (CD 1):

1.	Chinese Eyes	13:20	2001
2.	Landpartie	10:47	1972
3.	Berlin Zehlendorf	21:26	1976  Live
4.	Get the car, Harry	19:05	1978
5.	Acta non verba	09:57	1985  Live

Track Listing (CD 2):

1.	Der Ursprung der Welt	26:26	1977  Live
2.	Midnight at Madame Tussaud's	16:20	1977  Live
3.	Totally Wired	34:02	1977  Live

Track Listing (CD 3):

1.	And now for something completely different	00:38	1981  Live
2.	From and To	20:40	1981  Live
3.	Leiden mit Manu	38:31	1981  Live
4.	Face of Mae West	08:16	1990
5.	Trakl Sans Vox	08:34	1993

Track Listing (CD 4):

1.	Der Welt Lauf	41:50	1981  Live
2.	Ein Ruhiger Nachmittag	31:22	1984-85
3.	Totemfeuer Live	03:39	1973  Live

Track Listing (CD 5):

1.	Whales	19:51	1991-92
2.	Unikat	11:26	1989
3.	Das Lyrische Ich	16:19	2002
4.	Melange	06:52	1978
5.	Just Skins	24:39	1970

Notes:

(1) Harald Grosskopf plays drums on "Get the car, Harry".

(2) Rainer Bloss plays keyboards on "Acta non verba".

(3) Manuel Göttsching plays guitar on the live tracks on the third CD and "Der Welt Lauf".

(4) Wolfgang Tiepold plays cello on "Melange".

Rating: 4½ Stars

"Berlin Zehlendorf" was recorded at a concert in Berlin, Germany on 15th December 1976. I was in Berlin at the time, but I didn't know the concert was taking place. Those were the dark ages before the Internet.

The tracks on CD 2 were recorded at a concert in the London Planetarium on 12th April 1977. I missed this concert because I was still in Berlin. Another track from this concert, "Fear at Madame Tussaud's", is included on LVE-6.

The first three tracks on CD 3 and "Der Welt Lauf" were recorded at a concert in Leiden, Netherlands on 22nd November 1981.

"Totemfeuer Live" was recorded at a concert in Paris, France on 15th February 1973.

As you can see, the tracks on this super-sized set aren't in chronological order. For the reasons, see the liner notes by KDM quoted below. It's the only album in the set to contain music from the 21st Century, beginning with "Chinese Eyes". It's an unusual piece of music. It begins with typical Schulze sequeners, then slows down into oriental sounds, before returning to the sequencers. It's followed by a track from 1972 with Schulze's early droning organ sounds. The contrast couldn't be bigger. "Get the car, Harry" is an amazing piece of music, possibly the best track on the album. How did it stay hidden for all these years? It should have been on one of Klaus Schulze's official albums.

"Berlin Zehlendorf" isn't a perfect recording. It sounds slightly fuzzy, but the music itself is outstanding and there aren't any audience noises. The live track from 1985, "Acta non verba", is embarrassing. It sounds like Klaus and Rainer are attempting to play a pop song.

The London concert on the second CD is also outstanding, but once more the recording is slightly fuzzy. I wish I'd been at the concert. I remember that when I returned to England in summer 1977 there were still posters advertising this concert on the walls. I could have wept.

"And now for something completely different" is a soundcheck. "From and To" begins with five minutes of the fans in the audience shouting "Schulze! Schulze!" Five freaking minutes! And they don't even stop when the music starts. They need another 30 seconds to cool down. Okay, if I'd been in the audience I would have been shouting as well, but I don't want to hear stuff like this on a CD. I only want to listen to Klaus himself. I'll discreetly ignore this faux pas by KDM, because if I included this track in the album's overall rating it would pull it down below four stars. "Leiden mit Manu" is one of the infamous word-plays mentioned by KDM in the liner notes. Manu refers to the accompanying guitarist, Manuel Göttsching. The concert was played in a town called Leiden, so it means "Leiden with Manu". On the other hand, "Leiden" is the German word for "suffering", so it can also be translated "Suffering with Manu". It's difficult to rate "Leiden mit Manu". It starts off slowly, then rips into a fantastic sequencer track, and for the last five minutes it's so quiet that you can hear someone coughing in the audience. It's a poor ending to an otherwise good piece of music.

"Face of Mae West" is an eccentric sample-laden track, but it's somehow enjoyable. "Trakl sans Vox" is somehow empty. I prefer "Trakl avec Vox". I know that KDM doesn't like "Totentag", but I think it's a brilliant album of Wagnerian proportions. It divides Klaus Schulze fans; some love it and some hate it. I'd say it's a 50-50 split, but when KDM has a strong opinion on a piece of music, he assumes that everyone agrees with him.

"Der Welt Lauf" is a better track than anything on the second CD. The music is better, and it's better recording quality, even though the audience's cougher makes himself heard again in the last few minutes. "Ein ruhiger Nachmittag" is just what the title suggests, a quiet piece of music; uncharacteristically laid back for Klaus. "Totemfeuer Live" is very good, but it's the only few minutes that have survived from a much longer piece of music. I wish I could hear the rest.

"Whales" is a very good track. I wonder if the sounds were intended to sound like whales. Maybe not, but when KDM heard the track he thought about whales and picked the title. I like "Unikat", although it's not as exciting as most Schulze tracks. The same applies to "Das Lyrische Ich". "Melange" is a curiosity. It's a 2000 remix of music recorded in 1978. Klaus doesn't usually return to his older music.

The album, and the whole series, ends with a very unusual track. It's what the title says: "Just Skins". It's a 24-minute drum solo, recorded at the beginning of Klaus Schulze's musical career in 1970. I like this track a lot, but I have to address something I've heard when fans speak about Klaus. They say that he's a great drummer. Yes, he's good, in fact he's very good, but is he great? I think not. He's not on the same level as drummers like Michael Shrieve and Harald Grosskopf, and I'm sure he wouldn't claim to be. If Klaus had decided to follow a career as a rock drummer or even a jazz drummer, he would be long forgotten. He chose to become an electronic keyboard player, and that's where he excelled. That's where he became the world's best. That's what he'll always be remembered for.

The liner notes were written by KDM (Klaus Dieter Müller), summing up the whole La Vie Electronique series. The notes were written in German and translated into English, but the English version omits whole paragraphs from the German original. Sorry, I'm too lazy to translate what's missing.

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La Vie Electronique 16 Liner Notes

I call this 16th album "The Rest of Klaus Schulze". Yes, that's a pun, and of course its not the first play with words by KS or me. Normally a sampler album is called "The Best of", but the present set is not a collection of the best titles from Klaus' classic albums; it's a remainder that I could not put on Volumes 1 to 15 of LA VIE ELECTRONIOUE.

Note from Dansator: The German word "Rest" has a negative association missing in English, something like "leftovers" or "residue". This means that the album's unofficial title means "The Worst of Klaus Schulze". 

The first fifteen LVE volumes contain the music from my old EDITION sets from the 1990's, but this time in chronological order. When I started to put the LVE set of rereleases together, I was told it would be ten sets with a total of 30 CDs, which would indeed be a "Best of". I was sceptical, because I knew that the fans would cry out for all of it, for all  the tracks of the former (and now deleted) fifty CDs from the ULTIMATE EDITION. Shortly after I was told, "Okay, maybe it will be 13 sets", which would still not be enough, I said, and prepared myself for fifteen. Some tracks did not fit (mostly because of their length), and I left them out for a final large set. Yes, that's the set that you now have in your hands. When the bit by bit releases of the sets were already in force and running, the label did not exist anymore and the new label wanted to rerelease the complete material from the sets. Therefore, my early plan for a final set was not in vain. Hopefully, the designer has included here the two pics from my notices: one from the nineties which shows part of my plan for JUBILEE EDITION, and one pic from 2008 with part of my list for the LA VIE ELECTRONIQUE series.

In this final set there's one difference from the former fifteen releases: set number 16 is not chronological; it contains all the tracks that did not fit in the early and officially planned series, whether it was because of their length or other reasons that I've meanwhile forgotten. Complicated? Yes it is, and I'm sorry. As a consolation I've put some bonus tracks into this final set, and give here the explanation of where they've come from.

"Chinese Eyes" is one of the tracks that was only found on a limited edition CD (333 copies) that was given to the first 333 people who ordered the CONTEMPORARY WORKS 2  box set.

"Acta non verba" is an encore from the 1985 concert in the German town of Aachen. It's more or less the "Maxxi"/"Macksy" theme played before an audience. I put another encore from this concert on LVE 10 ("Welter, weiter").

Over the years, many have asked for the plain music (without the voices) of Schulze's opera about Georg Trakl, TOTENTAG, because the singing and recitativo is not to their taste. I found a part in the original tapes that has no voices, and so I took it and called it "Trakl sans vox" (Trakl without voice). In earlier times, on the rare event of recording a singer, KS used to write the word "vox" below the singer's channel and the recording sheet because it was short.

The earliest public concert by Klaus Schulze was in Paris in February 1973. I can present here the few musical minutes from a French concert film when the narrator over Klaus' music makes a break and we can hear Klaus' pure music. Schulze himself had called this rhythmic piece "Totemfeuer", and so I call the concert version "Totemfeuer Live".

In 2002 KS sent me two handfuls of CD-Rs with freshly recorded music to choose what could be released in another set, asking me to think up titles for the tracks I selected. From the parts that weren't used for CONTEMPORARY WORKS 2, I present here one and call it "Das lyrische Ich" (The Lyrical Ego).

The track "Melange" was only available on the American multi-CD sampler "Ohm - The Early Gurus of Electronic Music" from the year 2000. "Melange" is a remix done by Klaus especially for this sampler; he took two parts of "My Virtual Principles", a recording from 1978 (available on LVE 7), to make a new piece of music. Sidenote: The rhythm used here is also from the very old "Totemfeuer" drum recording (by KS), reshaped by the use of a phase shifter.

One sentence about the very last track, "Just Skins": With this finale we go back to Klaus Schulze's beginning, the drumming. 

I was asked to write something about the former fifteen sets of this series, but I believe that all who have this five-CD set in their hand know exactly what's on them, simply because they own them all. If not, you should hurry before they are also deleted again.

Thanks to all who have followed us for all (or some) of these many years.

(KDM, June 2014)

One last note from Dansator: It now seems unlikely that the La Vie Electronique series will be deleted. The previous large box sets were limited editions with only 2000 copies available, but the LVE sets are already in their second pressing, and it seems like the MIG label intends to keep them available for as long as fans still want them.