The short version
- Timewind came out in Germany on Brain in August 1975 and in Britain on Virgin. Reviews ran in British papers and French monthlies that September and October.
- 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 critics split over one question: was this machine-made sound cold or warm?
- The British papers listened to side one. The French monthlies went for side two.
On 6 September 1975 the record column of the Evening Gazette in Yorkshire found room for a German name. The reviewer called Klaus Schulze's Timewind a clever release on Virgin, noted his growing technical sophistication, and signed off like this: "It may be scientific, but his music still has a rare warmth." That word, warmth, is what the papers argued about all autumn.
What we read
Schulze's official website keeps a page of period reviews for each album. The Timewind page holds seven British papers and magazines from 1975, two French monthlies from the same year, one American magazine from 1977 and one British magazine from 1989. One of the British cuttings has no name, only "another unknown newspaper, England". Whoever runs the site added a few remarks of their own in square brackets. We will get to one of them.
Britain: warm, or far too exact
The Daily Record in Glasgow, on 26 September, praised the stereo effects and singled out one moment: "the blasting jet take-off at the end of Bayreuth Return". The South Wales Argus heard the opening as a whistling wind and called the whole thing "almost compulsive listening". Once it is on, you keep it on.
The Cumberland Evening News & Star of 11 October was less sure. How far these sounds aspired to being music was debatable, the reviewer wrote, and what would Wagner, the album's dedicatee, have made of it? Still, side one built a slow tension and ended on a crash, and the paper allowed that. Its verdict on the record was "an introverted enigmatic world", one where only the artist might know what he was doing and why.
At the far end sat Alex Gordon's column, "Disc Dossier". The music was abstract, he wrote, and only a few brave souls could claim to follow it. He conceded that Timewind might yet be recognised as a classic of the seventies, then landed here: "for my taste it is too mathematically precise." After the line about a classic, the site's keeper added two words in brackets: "[how prophetic!]"
At Melody Maker, Karl Dallas kept it short on 4 October. Better than Blackdance, he said.
France: two monthlies and side two
Two French monthlies reviewed it that October. In Best, Hervé Picart said each side ran past 28 minutes and you hardly noticed. The Wagner dedication surprised him, since this sober, dreamlike music had nothing to do with Wagner's grand baroque. He looked at the scrap of score on the back of the sleeve. And he heard a change: the organ, left bare on the earlier records, was now wrapped in layers of synthesizer. His last line: "On a encore retrouvé l'éternité." We have found eternity again.
In Rock & Folk, Jean-Marc Bailleux went further. He heard the best of Irrlicht, Cyborg and Blackdance gathered in one place, and named side two, "Wahnfried 1883", the most complete thing Schulze had made. Of the album's 58 minutes 59 seconds, he reckoned a good 50 were moments of grace, and he told readers to play it very loud. The review ends on two capitalised words: "BEAU. BEAU."
So the British papers wrote about the tension and the ending of side one. The French went to the dedication and to side two.
Two years later, in America
The warmth question got its answer from across the Atlantic. In November 1977, Allen Gunnison in Trouser Press reported that the album had won the Grand Prix du Disque and wrote that Schulze showed electronic music could be "far more than the cold clinical sounds usually associated with the genre". Looking back in 1989, the British magazine Audion called it "Klaus' ultimate sequencer trip".
Our ears, fifty years on
In our review we wrote that this record sounds thinner and drier than what came after, because it is built from ARP, EMS and organ. Does that put us with "Disc Dossier"? Play side one again and the two camps turn out to be pointing at the same place. The sequencer line runs with mathematical precision. Schulze moves it by hand, a little at a time. The precision belongs to the machine; the warmth comes from the hand that shifts it. The Yorkshire reviewer and Alex Gordon each heard one layer of the same track.
The end of side one is worth another listen. The Glasgow paper heard a jet taking off, and the Cumberland paper heard a crash. Our review heard the silence that drops in straight after. Put on headphones and wait out the 30 minutes. In the few seconds when the roar clears and the room goes quiet, a 1975 newspaper and your own ears are standing in the same spot.
Where to get it
What the critics heard in the autumn of 1975 was a single LP: Brain 1075 in Germany, Virgin in Britain. Reissues on CD and LP are the easy way in now, and which one to pick is in the same section of the Timewind review.