Blackdance: The 1974 Record Where a Voice Walks In

In August and September 1974, six small English local papers wrote about the same German record. Plymouth, Surrey, Malvern, Welwyn, York, Luton. One printed the price, £1.95, and told readers to wait until late, plug in headphones and take off. Another said to keep it away from susceptible minds. A third opened by saying Virgin had scooped another German electronic experimentalist.

Where this record sits

On Cyborg the only synthesizer was a single EMS VCS 3, and the keyboard work came almost entirely from a doctored organ. Both of those change at once here. The official discography sums the record up in one line: for the first time Schulze uses real synthesizers and a singer. The instrument list grows too, to synthesizer, organ, piano, percussion and 12-string acoustic guitar.

The singer is Ernst Walter Siemon and he appears on one piece, "Voices Of Syn." The English notices of that autumn kept returning to it. A paper in Malvern called the record a statement against the anti-humanity of most electronic composers and a celebration of life. The word baroque turns up on that page as well.

The guide does put this one in its five. It works as a door into Schulze's long pieces for someone arriving new.

Track listing

The two bonus pieces were recorded in 1976 and came with the 2007 Revisited Records edition. The original LP is the first three.

Through the three pieces

• "Ways Of Changes." The organ spreads out wide and guitar strings cross it a few times. Listen for where the 12-string comes in. There are not many places on this record where a hand is touching a string.
• "Some Velvet Phasing." At 8 minutes 23 seconds it is the shortest thing here. The title says what happens: the sound sweeps to one side and comes back. Put your ear on the speed of that sweep.
• "Voices Of Syn." 22 minutes 40 seconds, and the piece with the voice. Siemon is not carrying a lyric. It is closer to one more set of vocal cords placed among the long tones the machines are holding. Try to tell which side is the person.

How to listen

• Use headphones. That Luton paper had it right in 1974.
• Listen at night and take the three pieces in order. The first two build the ear for the last 22 minutes.
• On the second pass, count only the places where the voice enters and leaves. There are fewer than you expect.

What happened next

The English notices did not agree. The Plymouth paper called it the sort of record some will enjoy and others will hate. John Sivyer in Welwyn wrote that there was no point sampling it in a record shop and you should simply buy it. An American page described it as pulsating with an airy flow.

Then the order changed. This was taken for Schulze's fourth album for decades, because the packaging and print on later releases said so. Klaus D. Müller, his biographer and publicity manager, went through his own diaries and corrected it: Picture Music, long treated as the third album, was recorded after this one. The reissue still labels this record as the fourth.

One track to send a friend

Send "Voices Of Syn." 22 minutes 40 seconds. Add one line: the thing that settled where this album belongs was not a label document but one man's diary. The number on the box did not change afterwards.

Where to get it

The German Brain pressing and the British Virgin Caroline pressing both came out that year. If you want the two bonus pieces, take the 2007 Revisited edition. Late at night, go as far as the third piece and wait for the voice. Out of 22 minutes, it is not there for long.

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