Live @ KlangArt [Live]

 

 

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The Grand Old Master of the Berlin School of Electronica has, with "Live @ KlangArt", put out an album that may well be a defining embodiment of both his current work and a beautiful summary of everything he's done throughout his 5 decade career.

As a live album it's impeccable. The sound is full-spectrum and beautifully mixed. The compositions are carefully crafted and they beautifully demonstrate Schulze's very elegant sense of form and detail. He builds layers of sounds that all relate to each other, rather than competing for your attention. His music makes you feel lifted up and flown along a mysterious flightpath of imagination. Schulze's sound is somewhat Classical, much attention being paid to traditional harmony and melody, and he mixes that with a good ear for contemporary popular idoms such as dub and reggae. His abiding love of the cello too gets its representation here as well with the lovely intuitive playing of Wolfgang Tiepold. And, of course there are Schulze's requisite electronic "effects" that often open or close pieces like parentheses. It would be good too see him use those more aleatory elements as the bases of compositions, as an alternative to using them as introductions and closings. But it is really the hypnotic, trance-like nature of Schulze's music that is its most distinguishing and successful characteristic. So both music and effect meld together seamlessly and naturally. And that is the most singular feature of all Schulze's later work, it's confident ease and impeccable construction.

A lot of KS's music is in minor keys or eastern modalities, something a lot of the Berlin School of Electronic music has always taken a liking to. It works. Add in the lush string harmonies, grand choral flourishes and the oboe-esque melodies, all played without cheap flash, and one is carried along by these elements in sonic meditations that invite you to lose yourself in them. Enter the stream of Klaus Schulze's live music and you do just that. Enabled by the rythmic constancy and the hypnotic harmonic centering the tracks on "Live @ Klangart" seem to expand time and yet keep you in a sumptuous present of an otherworldly majesty. Each song is like an extended dream, a journey into the imagination that the listener ultimately defines.

If anything, while Schulze's music hasn"t changed its directions or basic formats much since his early works such as "Moondawn" and "Cyborg", it has become completely MASTERED and REFINED. Both to a very high degree. Everything is in balance now, all elements being orchestrated by a master craftsman to achieve an elegant richness that is both plum with detail and spaciously wide open in epic scale.

Each of the 10 long pieces of this 2-disc set 5 & 5 are both separate entities, with different stylings, and movements of an entire suite from start to finish. To experience the real beauty of Klaus Schulze's music it is best to be able to surrender oneself completely to an expanded, almost universal sense of time. And while each piece is a cosmos unto itself it is also supremely intimate and personal. This is the triumph of the Berlin School, and particularly of Klaus Schulze, one of it's founders and most successful practitioners.

The CD package is beautifully done - artful live shots, layout and design and an insert booklet that has some very affecting comments from Schulze himself that are both fascinating and quite humourous. As worshipped as he is in Europe, he takes his fame in stride and is able to be quite realistic about it, even delightfully funny. Were it not for "Rheingold", the live performance recording he did with Lisa Gerrard, of Dead Can Dance fame and his extraordinary, recent studio album "Kontinuum", I would say that "Live @ KlangArt" could very well be the best representation of all Schulze's work. But one could easily award that distinction to either "Rheingold" or "Kontinuum" as well.. In fact, I would class the three CD's as the trinity of that distinction.

If you are a fan, this is a MUST. If you have never experienced Schulze's music but you really enjoy hearing something of great power and beauty in the electronica genre, THIS is going to blow your mind.

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