The 1990s: where did this music go?

The short version

In 1991 the British magazine Record Collector called Jean-Michel Jarre and Klaus Schulze electronic dinosaurs, walled in by their synthesizers.
Over the decade Schulze made records with the techno producer Pete Namlook, and a Jarre track, taken apart by the Orb, reached number 4 in the UK singles chart.
Vangelis found a new audience through the film 1492, Kitaro through a Golden Globe, Tangerine Dream through seven Grammy nominations.
Three pieces to hear the decade by are at the end.

In April 1991 the British magazine Record Collector reviewed the KLF's Chill Out. While electronic dinosaurs like Jean-Michel Jarre and Klaus Schulze walled themselves in with banks of synthesizers, computers and gadgets, it said, the KLF had gone the other way and made a crafted record with the bare necessities. The people who had made this music new in the 1970s began the 1990s being called dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs and the young

Schulze did not carry the label for long. On 10 October 1994 the German label FAX released The Dark Side of the Moog, made by Schulze and Pete Namlook: a single piece, "Wish You Were There", 51 minutes and 21 seconds long. The title bends two Pink Floyd albums into one.

Namlook had founded FAX in 1992. English Wikipedia says his inspiration came from Tangerine Dream, Pink Floyd and, most importantly, Klaus Schulze. A figure from the early-1990s wave of ambient and house artists was making a record with the first name on his own list. A second volume followed the next May.

Schulze knocked on the same door under another name. As Richard Wahnfried he released Trancelation in 1994, which his official site describes as a first techno try-out. The first edition of Are You Sequenced? in 1996 came with a second CD of remixes by other people.

Looking back in a 1998 interview, Schulze said he had got interested in modern techno, ambient and trance, remixed a few techno tracks for German labels, and met and worked with some of the young artists. Then he added that sometimes the young techno people seemed to use the instruments exactly the way he had 26 years earlier.

The remix that broke the original

Jarre's decade opened and closed with enormous crowds. His official biography puts the audience for the La Défense concert in Paris on 14 July 1990 at 2.5 million and calls it a Guinness record; English Wikipedia and the UK chart side say around two million. On 6 September 1997 he played the Sparrow Hills in Moscow for the city's 850th anniversary, and the official biography says 3.5 million came.

In between, in February 1997, came Oxygène 7-13, a sequel to the 1976 Oxygène, which reached 11 in the UK album chart. Then came a small row. According to English Wikipedia, the British ambient group the Orb was asked to remix "Oxygène 8", broke it apart and rebuilt it from a few fragments. When Jarre chose not to release it, the Orb put it out themselves as "Toxygene". On 8 February 1997 it reached number 4 in the UK singles chart, the highest the Orb ever went. Jarre's own "Oxygène 8" peaked at 17 six weeks later. The Orb's Alex Paterson told The Sunday Times in 1997 that the French were always five years behind.

The next year Jarre opened the door himself. Odyssey Through O2 in 1998 handed Oxygène 7-13 to a line of remixers, among them DJ Cam, Loop Guru, Apollo 440 and Takkyū Ishino from Japan.

Films, boxing and prizes

For Vangelis, one film carried the decade. His music for Ridley Scott's 1492: Conquest of Paradise came out in 1992 and was nominated for the Golden Globe for best score in 1993. In Britain the album stopped at 33 and the single at 60. Germany was another story. In 1995 the boxer Henry Maske took the theme as his victory music, and a 1998 press release from the Vangelis camp said the single had become the biggest-selling single in German chart history, with 1.5 million copies; the figure is the press release's. In 1996 Oceanic became his first album nominated for the Grammy for best new age album.

Kitaro reached number one on the Billboard new age chart with Kojiki in 1990. In the early 1990s he moved from Japan to the United States, and from 1994 he recorded for a new label, Domo. His score for Oliver Stone's Heaven & Earth won the Golden Globe in 1994, and in the 1990s alone he was nominated four times for the Grammy for best new age album.

Tangerine Dream changed from the inside. In 1990 Edgar Froese's son Jerome officially joined. Over the decade the band was nominated for a Grammy seven times and never won. In 1996 they founded their own label, TDI, and from 1995 they released the Dream Mixes series. English Wikipedia says that with Jerome the band turned away from new age and towards electronica.

From dinosaurs to ancestors

Of the two called dinosaurs in 1991, one was making records for a techno label by 1994, and the other's music went through the hands of the techno generation to number 4 in the singles chart in 1997. In between, the listeners changed. They heard Vangelis in cinemas and boxing halls, picked Kitaro from the new age racks and heard Schulze's heirs in clubs. The long pieces of the 1970s came back round, a decade on, under dancing feet.

How to listen: three pieces to hear the decade by

"Wish You Were There" (Klaus Schulze and Pete Namlook, The Dark Side of the Moog, 1994). 51 minutes 21 seconds. Give the first ten minutes without a break. The breath of Schulze's long 1970s pieces, on a techno label.
"Oxygène 8" (Jean-Michel Jarre, Oxygène 7-13, 1997). Play it after the 1976 Oxygène and hear what changed in 21 years.
"Conquest of Paradise" (Vangelis, 1492, 1992). Wait for the choir. This is the piece Henry Maske took as his victory music.

If you send a friend one piece, make it "Wish You Were There", and tell them this: three years after a magazine called him a dinosaur, Schulze put out a record on a techno label with 51 minutes given to a single track.