Klaus Schulze: Stars are burning (2014)

Klaus Schulze - Stars are burning

KS Album 57

Track Listing (CD 1):

1.	Stars are burning	48:48
2.	The Nightingale's Complaint	23:24

Track Listing (CD 2):

1.	Tell me where all the past years are	33:43
2.	There shall be sung another golden age	33:45

Rating: 2 Stars

This is the 57th solo album recorded by Klaus Schulze. After "The Schulze-Schickert Session", this is a second attempt by KDM to defeat the bootleggers. A bootleg double-LP called "Stars are burning" had been circulating for years. It was a typical bootleg, a concert recorded on 16th April 1977 in Brussels, probably on a small cassette recorder.

KDM found the tapes in his archives that matched the bootleg. The official tapes are better than the bootleg, of course, but they're not up to the quality of the live tracks included in the La Vie Electronique series. There are a lot of audience noises, including occasional coughing. It's a recording that KDM would never have released if it hadn't been for the bootleg.

The first three tracks are the contents of the bootleg LP. A fourth track was added to fill the second CD, a live recording from a concert in Arnheim, Netherlands on 28th October 1979. This track has better recording quality. It has some audience noises, but they're less intrusive.

The music is excellent, as it always was in Klaus Schulze's 1970's concerts. It's let down by the poor recording quality of the first three tracks. My 2½ star rating is the average of two stars for the first three tracks and four stars for the fourth track.

The CD is no longer in print. I don't think it will be missed, except by Klaus Schulze completists... like me. What I mean is that I'm glad I have it in my collection, but I don't intend to listen to the first three tracks again.