The short version
- Recorded in Berlin in late 1974 and released on Brain in January 1975.
- It is the only Schulze solo album on which he can be heard playing a drum kit.
- It has more sleeve designs than any other record of his. The art changes by country and by edition.
- That confusion over sleeves is part of why its place in his album order was wrong for decades.
Some time in the 1990s a man sat reading his own diaries. Klaus D. Müller, Schulze's biographer and publicity manager, was assembling a detailed discography and wanted to settle one date: when this record actually went to press. The diaries said early 1975. That single line swapped the places of two albums.
Where this record sits
Discographies listed this as the third album for years, with Blackdance as the fourth. What Müller found reversed that. This one was recorded in the autumn of 1974 but did not go to press until early 1975, which makes it the fourth. Schulze's official site now dates it to January 1975. Müller is the person who maintains that site.
The guide does not include it in its five. One thing lives only here, though. The English Wikipedia notes this as the single solo album where you can hear Schulze on a drum kit. Before going solo he drummed for Ash Ra Tempel, and on later records he brought in other drummers, Harald Grosskopf among them, or used machines.
The instrument list has grown as well: EMS VCS 3, ARP Odyssey, ARP 2600, a Farfisa Professional Duo organ, plus drums and percussion. Looking back in 1989, the British magazine Audion called this Schulze's first true synth album.
- Released
- January 1975, Brain (West Germany)
- Recorded
- autumn 1974, Berlin
- Played by
- Klaus Schulze (EMS VCS 3, ARP Odyssey, ARP 2600, Farfisa Professional Duo organ, drums, percussion)
- Sleeve
- painting by Jacques Wyrs (it differs by edition)
- Total time
- 79:57 (2005 reissue)
Track listing
| 1 | Totem | 23:45 |
| 2 | Mental Door | 23:00 |
| 3 | C'est pas la même chose (bonus) | 33:00 |
The original LP holds one piece per side. French CD editions have the A and B tracks exchanged, and on the French Clementine LP side two plays first in error. "Mental Door" is the one with drums.
Through the two pieces
- "Totem." 23 minutes 45 seconds. Three synthesizers and an organ stack up in layers. Long stretches pass with nothing counting time for you. Follow where the sound thickens and where it thins out.
- "Mental Door." 23 minutes, and the drums arrive. Writing in Trouser Press in November 1977, Allen Gunnison said Schulze had returned to percussive devices and that rock drum patterns accompany the electronic images. Listen knowing that the person at the kit is Schulze.
How to listen
- Take the two pieces back to back. Together they run 47 minutes.
- Through "Mental Door," follow only the drums. A machine and a pair of hands do not wander by the same amount.
- If you found a French pressing, check that "Totem" comes first. Some copies are the other way round.
What happened next
In Rock & Folk in June 1975, Jean-Marc Bailleux wrote that the line running from Irrlicht through Cyborg breaks here. He called the music live and direct, and noted that Schulze swings, which he said was a rare thing in music filed under cosmic.
The sleeve kept changing after that. In 1975 Schulze commissioned Urs Amann to make new covers for his earlier records, and Amann painted one for this album too, a man bound to a ceiling. Brain did not want to pay for a new design and turned it down. The painting ended up on a French Isadora edition. A Belgian Ariola pressing used a portrait of Schulze; around 1980 a budget Brain series used art drawn in house to avoid royalties, a framed portrait of a child standing on one corner in a bare field. In 1985 Gramavision in the United States laid printed circuit boards over landscape photographs. The 2005 CD reissue finally used Amann's painting together with his back cover, which had never appeared anywhere, and gathered the earlier sleeves inside the booklet.
One track to send a friend
Send "Mental Door." 23 minutes. Add one line: the person playing those drums is Schulze, and this is the only solo album of his where he sat at a kit.
Where to get it
The 1975 Brain first pressing carries the Jacques Wyrs abstract. For Urs Amann's painting, look for the French Isadora edition or the 2005 Revisited reissue, which also holds the bonus piece. Lay the sleeves side by side and it is hard to believe they belong to one record.