The short version
- Blackdance was recorded in Berlin in May 1974 and came out that year on Brain in Germany and on Caroline in Britain. It is the first Schulze record with a singer on it.
- Every quotation here comes from the page of period reviews on Schulze's official website. Each carries its outlet and date, and no outlet gets more than a line or two.
- The British local papers welcomed the new German name on the label, and several warned that not everyone would like it.
- Where the critics really parted company was the human voice on side two.
On 23 August 1974 the record column of the Luton Herald planned its readers' evening for them. Buy the album, stay up, put the headphones on: "fork out the £1.95, wait till late, plug in and take off!" The reviewer called Klaus Schulze's Blackdance a gem, and told fans of Perry Como or Gary Glitter not to bother.
What we read
Schulze's official website keeps a page of period reviews for each album. The Blackdance page has nine: six British local papers from 1974 (the five that carry a date are from August and September), the American magazine Walrus in September 1974, the French monthly Best in January 1975, and the American magazine Eurock in March 1975. The site sums the record up in one line: for the first time Schulze used "real" synthesizers and a singer.
There are three pieces. Side one holds "Ways of Changes" and "Some Velvet Phasing"; side two is "Voices of Syn" on its own. The official site gives them as 17:13, 8:23 and 22:40. The singer on side two is Ernst Walter Siemon.
Britain: a new name on the label
In Britain the album came out on Caroline, which the Welwyn Times called Virgin's own label. John Sivyer's column on 6 September started there: Virgin had scooped another German electronic experimentalist. Then he told his readers not to bother auditioning it. "No good listening to this in a record shop." Take his word for it, he said, and buy it.
Other papers were more careful. The Western Evening Herald in Plymouth opened its review on 30 August by predicting a split: "enjoyed by some and hated by others." The York Star praised Schulze that month for avoiding the habit of rivals who seemed to think success came from working one idea to death, then added that the music was frightening and eerie and best kept away from impressionable minds. The Woking News in Surrey, on 29 August, heard something baroque in it.
A voice among the machines
The disagreement was about side two. "Voices of Syn" opens with a long passage sung by a male opera singer, and this was the first time a human voice had turned up on a Schulze record.
The Malvern Gazette heard the voice as the point of the whole album. Its reviewer called Blackdance "a statement against the anti-humanity of most electronic composers", a celebration of life built from the human voice and a pile of keyboards. The Luton Herald was on the same side: Schulze had been described as one of the few composers to put feeling into dead machines, and this record proved it.
At the far end stood Eurock, in March 1975. Archie Patterson found the album less spacious than the two before it but still fascinating, and then turned to side two. The singer intones a liturgy over drones and, thankfully, soon disappears, leaving room for treated percussion. His verdict was short: "The only guests Klaus ever needs are his electronic devices." The singer, he added, could go back to the opera or join Magma.
The same voice was a manifesto to a paper in a small English town and an intruder to an American magazine.
Abroad: a sorcerer
Walrus, on 11 September 1974, managed it in a handful of words: the music takes you into the mind or out into space, whichever you prefer, and it is spacey without being difficult.
Best in January 1975 went furthest. Its opening news was that this genius, too, had signed to Virgin. The reviewer described the organ unrolling while a streak of guitar and bursts of percussion push in to open up other dimensions, and named "Ways of Changes" a masterpiece. Then he crowned the man: "Klaus Schulze a tous les pouvoirs d'un sorcier". He has all the powers of a sorcerer.
Listening fifty years on
The odd thing is what the critics barely mentioned. German Wikipedia says that once the album was finished, Schulze himself was not fully happy with it. It wasn't the voice that bothered him. It was the folksy sound the guitar and percussion gave it. While the British papers argued over the singer, the man who made the record was worrying about the twelve-string guitar on side one.
So start with side two. Headphones on, and take the Luton Herald's advice about waiting till late. First a single voice sings over the drone. Whether it warms the machines or interrupts them was not settled in 1974 either. Then the voice clears, the percussion comes in, and what is left in the room is one man and his machines.
The rest of Schulze's records are laid out in order in our Schulze guide. The album where the sequencer arrived, a year later, is in our Timewind review.
Where to get it
What the critics heard in 1974 was a single LP: Brain 1051 in Germany, Caroline CA 2003 in Britain. In 2007 Revisited put it out again on CD with two later recordings added.