The short version
- April 1977, Schulze's eighth solo album, on Brain and Island. He plays it alone.
- The subtitle is "Eine elektronische Winterlandschaft", an electronic winter landscape.
- Two pieces, one per side, each made of six named sections that run into each other without a break.
- The 2017 40th anniversary CD was restored to sound close to the original tapes. MIG says the earlier reissues used a 1980s digital remaster.
January 1977, the middle of winter. Klaus Schulze recorded a new album in Hambühren and Frankfurt. The sleeve that appeared three months later carries two lines: an electronic winter landscape, and a dedication to Hans Dieter Schulze. Echoes' John Diliberto, citing the notes to the 2005 reissue, wrote that much of the album was composed while Schulze's brother was dying. A year earlier, on Moondawn, Schulze had found a beat with a Moog and a drummer. This time he left the drummer out.
Where it sits in the history of music
Timewind was one sequencer. Moondawn added a Moog and drums. Between Moondawn and this record came the film score Body Love. Mirage breaks the run. Diliberto wrote that the driving sequencers of the records before it are simply not here. Instead it reaches back to the drones and string-like textures of the first two albums, Irrlicht and Cyborg, only now with far more equipment to hand. English Wikipedia counts it as his eighth album.
- Recorded
- January 1977, Hambühren and Frankfurt. Recorded and mixed at Studio Panne-Paulsen
- Released
- April 1977, Brain 60.040 in Germany, Island ILPS 9461 in the UK
- Line-up
- Klaus Schulze alone
- Subtitle
- Eine elektronische Winterlandschaft
- Dedication
- Hans Dieter Schulze
- Length
- 28:20 + 29:12
Tracklist
| A | Velvet Voyage · Schulze | 28:20 |
| B | Crystal Lake · Schulze | 29:12 |
Two pieces, timed from the German first LP. Each one has six named sections. "Velvet Voyage" runs through 1984, Aéronef, Éclipse, Exvasion, Lucidinterspace and Destinationvoid. "Crystal Lake" runs through Xylotones, Chrom Waves, Willowdreams, Liquidmirrors, Springdance and A Bientot. English Wikipedia notes that there are no hard divisions between them in the music itself. The CDs do not index them either, because the original LP never did.
Listening through "Velvet Voyage"
The first sound is a siren, something like whale song. Diliberto wrote that it seems to pick up from the middle of Pink Floyd's "Echoes". Synthesizers run underneath like an undertow, and Schulze crossfades long, thick chords one into the next while Mellotron choirs drift in. Listen for the change of key. As the piece grows, the synthesizers move into a major key, and a low bass figure quietly starts pushing it forward. Near the end a bell-like sequencer pattern pings from one side to the other, a preview of side two. There is a climax, but a muted one, and then the piece dissolves again.
"Crystal Lake", twenty-nine minutes
Diliberto called side two the hit of the album and the track that lives up to the subtitle. Sequencer loops and delays throw short patterns back at each other, and the patterns seem to form in mid-air and lock together as they turn. Diliberto heard Steve Reich's Drumming (1974) in it. Listen at around seventeen minutes, where the piece melts down into textures close to "Velvet Voyage". The end of side two leads back into the start of side one, and the record closes the circle.
How to listen
- Lights off, headphones on. The sound moves between your ears.
- Do not go looking for the section names. The piece is built so that you cannot hear the joins.
- Both sides, twice through. When side two ends you can go back to side one and nothing breaks.
What happened next
Body Love Vol. 2 followed the same year, and in 1978 Grosskopf was back on drums for the double album X. He plays on both. Mirage is the winter between them. Before the beat came back, Schulze stood out on the ice on his own for one season.
The one track to send a friend
Send "Crystal Lake". Warn them it runs twenty-nine minutes. Then add one line: there are six named sections inside it, and nobody can tell by ear where one ends and the next begins.
Where to get it
The 2017 MIG 40th anniversary CD is the one to have. According to MIG, the reissues before it all used a digital remaster made in the 1980s, the 2005 Revisited edition and MIG's own first reissue among them. For the anniversary edition Tom Dams, Schulze's sound engineer since 1998, restored the material to something as close to the original as possible. It adds "In cosa crede chi non crede?" (19:39), a long piece recorded six months before the album, the complete version of music used in a Dutch film. On vinyl there is the 2018 Brain/Universal 180g pressing, remastered by Eroc, with a download voucher that includes the bonus track.