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Irrlicht

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The year was 1972 when former Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel member Klaus Schulze embarked on his lengthy solo career which continues to this day.
Although it is considered to be a pioneering classic in Electronic music today, Schulze's solo debut "Irrlicht" was not well received when it was first released 34 years ago. Many listeners (as well as members of the orchestra which Klaus used on the album) didn't quite know what to think at the time. However, the listening public finally caught up with Klaus's crazy ideas and the album has since become a blueprint for the ambient/drone genre.
Although Klaus Schulze has long been regarded as a pioneer of synthesizers, "Irrlicht" was actually created without any synths whatsoever as Klaus did not own one yet. The instruments and tools that were used were the above-mentioned orchestra as well as a primitive electric organ, a broken guitar amplifier, echo and effect devices as well as other miscellaneous objects.
"Irrlicht" is essentially an album-length piece divided into three distinct movements. The opening 23-minute movement "Ebene" opens with a giant orchestra rush which leads into a low-end organ drone centered around D-minor. As the organ drone shifts and pulsates, the orchestra creates and intense cinematic atmosphere around it. After about 10-minutes, the mood becomes more intense as Klaus brings in a dark chord sequence which builds with suspense. The panning effect as well as the shrieking background noises used towards the end of the movement add further intensity until it's all washed away by loud gong-like crash.
The crash begins the short second movement, "Gewitter". While it sounds like there is a primitive synthesizer being used on this track, it actually is Klaus using a broken-down amplifier and a rewired organ. The intense organ theme of the first movement is pushed to the backround while strange sound effects as well as various percussive sounds (which sound like cymbals, gongs and trash cans being hit while being drenched with echo) come to the forefront.
The last movement, "Exil Sils Maria", is probably the most experimental movement of the three. It begins with a dark orchestral/organ theme similar to the first movement only more forboding. This leads into an extremely avant-garde section consisting of a droning collage of backward-sounding noises and what sounds like a car motor being amplified. This section is a real treat to be heard with headphones. Afterwards, the movement shifts back to how it began with its dark organ theme.
The newly remastered edition includes a highly informative essay from Klaus Schulze himself as well as a never before released bonus track. "Dungeon" was supossedly recorded in 1976 (although there is speculation that it could have been recorded earlier in the liner notes) but is very much in the same style as the original "Irrlicht" album with its long held chords and drones.
With this said, if you've never heard Klaus Schulze's "Irrlicht" before, now's the time to do so especially since it has been given pristine treatment on this reissue. The sound is amazing and so is the music. This is definitely music that was way ahead of its time when it was first released in 1972. Now, three decades later, it's an influential classic!!!

In 1969, Klaus Schulze joined Tangerine Dream, a creative German band which created the genre of electronic rock. However, in 1969 it was still in its formative stage, where there was no musical direction specified, where there were absolutely no limits imposed on the creativity of members. As it was, the only album of Tangerine Dream Klaus Schulze contributed to was "Electronic Meditation", published in 1970, slightly before the differences between Edgar Froese, the leader of the band, and Klaus  went beyond the point of reconciliation. Schulze felt oppressed in the band, since his freedom of expression was not appreciated. In consequence, Klaus split from the band, and after a brief adventure with a krautrock band, Ash Ra Temple, he launched a solo career in early 1972.

His first attempts were not exactly successful, for "Irrlicht" as a musical material was not too attractive for the bosses of the recording companies. Klaus is fond of retelling the anecdote that when he played "Irrlicht" for one of the decision-makers, the latter writhed and requested that the tape stop, or otherwise he would lose his sanity. Schulze's music was then referred to as the sound of abrasive wheels screeching on metal. Indeed, that was an accurate metaphor, for one of the tracks features exactly those sounds  or at least they appear like that! Nevertheless, he was lucky to find a publisher in "Brain", an adventurous German company deeply rooted in the flower-power counterculture of the 60s. Idealistic as it was, the company later went bankrupt. However, one should not under appreciate its contribution to the development of music. Its mecenate over the wild penniless musicians allowed them to survive, and be heard. If you are not heard, then whatever the quality of your music, you are bound to fail  an old truth, indeed.

This said, we have a unique opportunity to evaluate "Irrlicht" from the perspective of exactly 20 years. Does it sound innovative? Yes. Is it pioneering? Again, yes. Was it prophetic for Schulze's career? Yes, yes, yes. In fact, this earliest recording of Klaus Schulze bears the stigma of all his works, to this day. It's highly monotonous, sometimes atonal, with themes developing very slowly over the space of several minutes. Indeed, Klaus has never failed to deliver the length  it was as if he stretched the medium to the maximum, accepted a given limit, and tried to completely fill it in. At times, he fails to deliver as much interesting material, other times, the whole album is interesting and enchanting. Whichever the case, one thing is true on Irrlicht as much as on all other records of Klaus Schulze  he remained consistent with his artistic vision of creating music which does not conform to any rules but his own, creating electronic music of meditation. Ironically, he took the Tangerine Dream album title he contributed to  as his motto. Electronic Meditation.

Made in GER in 1991, Serial# 833-127-2, Playing Time 50:30

Originally released in 1972. Being a fan of TANGERINE DREAM from their early days, I started to pick up KS's solo albums as they were coming out (yep, that's way back in 1972).

In those days, KS was making albums that were longer than anybody else's: granted they were long pieces (generally 1 per side), but 50 minutes on a piece of vinyl was EXTREMELY rare.

This is KS' first album, and most definitely is quietest. There's the rare presence of a string orchestra, but the rest of the spacey sounds heard on the album were made by synthesizers. Quite a shock considering I knew KS as TANGERINE DREAM's drummer!

The extraordinary advantage of being able to hear this on CD is that the music, extremely smooth, without true melody or rhythm, can be cranked up without risk: no hiss, no popping sounds, no compression due to the limitations of pressing to vinyl.

KS expanded significantly his experimentation in sounds with his next effort, the double-album "Cyborg". But on "Irrlicht", it's like listening to an aurora borealis.

Just lie down, crank it up, and you'll feel like you're travelling through time and space, to an unknown and far destination...

Klaus's first solo album after recording on both Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Temple's first albums- both of which are classic albums in their own right. Klaus uses transistors, rewired organs and a baffled orchestra with a conductor who kept speaking out loud much to Klaus's horror to create a dark eerie masterpiece from the bygone era of cosmic music. Right up there with Tanagerine Dreams Zeit and Edgar Froese's Aqua.

I haven't found any electronic music like Irrlicht. Only Cabaret Voltaire came close to making music that intrigues me as much as Klaus Schultze's first album.

On paper it should sound awful. There are no synthesizers, just a screwed up organ that only made a low bass note and lots of fuzzy noises. The orchestra was recorded by Schultze on a cheap cassette recorder about a mile away, and the conductor insisted on TALKING to the orchestra during the whole recording despite Schultze begging him to shut up. The rest of the noises are cheap percussion and whatever else Schultze found laying around that made noise.

All this junk comes together to make "sound" that's completely unique and unsettling. The one-note bass organ gets your attention immediately. The fuzzy noises make a swirl of sound that surrounds you and disappears into deep echoes without explanation. When the low-fi recording of the orchestra begins to play during this inexplicable racket, it sounds like a worn recorded artifact from an ancient civilization, back when dozens of people played music together on wooden instruments. The most surprising contradiction is that the incomprehensible yelling of the conductor doesn't ruin the recording but instead adds a feeling of extreme seriousness and importance to this strange music as if it were the only music of its kind left in the world. The noise and backwards recordings we hear on the subsequent "songs" are nearly as unsettling. Who would put all these odd sounds together? [Warning: Never listen to this music backwards. The actual sounds are very disappointing when heard in the right direction!]

What makes all this amateurish tomfoolery convincing is the outstanding quality of the final recording. The orchestra sounds like a faded broadcast, the individual noises are simple, but the album itself sounds excellent with all sounds reverberating in full stereo as if they had all been made by legitimate instruments in a first class production. Yes, enough echo can make almost anything sound interesting!

After appearing on the debut albums of Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel, he disembarked on a solo career. He was getting sick of what he felt was more time trying to get everyone in a band to decide on what to play than it was to actually play the music. Also he was losing interest in drumming so he switched to keyboards. Irrlicht was his first solo offering, and although he did periodically appear in other groups up until 1974, including The Cosmic Jokers (an unintended project with Wallenstein and Ash Ra Tempel members whose material got released behind their backs), Code III, and let's not forget the one-off reunion of the original Ash Ra Tempel at the end of 1972 that made up the album Join Inn (1973).

Irrlicht was originally released on the Ohr label with artwork by Schulze himself, but when he moved to Brain (thanks to the Cosmic Jokers fiasco that brought an end to the career Rolf U. Kaiser, head honcho of Ohr/Kosmische Musik, which went under thanks to the lawsuits), the album featured new artwork, the more familiar artwork by Urs Amman (who also did the covers to the Brain version of Cyborg, plus Blackdance and Timewind). It's interesting to note that Irrlicht was not recorded with any synthesizer. Schulze was on a limited budget and basically used whatever he could at his disposal. The organ is one, but he's also credited to guitar, voice, percussion, and zither, which, aside from the organ, you can't tell because it's so electronically processed. He hotwired the amplifier and rigged the organ to get it to do things they would not normally do, no surprise that doing this fried his amp in the process of recording the album, but that gave him enough material for an album. He also had a four piece orchestra helping out, which sounded so distorted you could get fooled for a Mellotron.

Schulze had a career very much parallel to what Tangerine Dream was doing around the same time, very highly experimental space music, and like TD, started going for synthesizer-dominated electronic music by 1974. With Irrlicht he was experimenting with extended drones, as demonstrated on "Satz: Ebene". Here it's lot of strange droning. Not the kind of stuff for people with short attention spans, to say the least. There's some pulsing later on in this piece, which leads up to the more spacy "Satz: Gewitter", which reminds more of the more mellow moments of Ash Ra Tempel's debut album (but of course, without Manuel Göttsching's guitar). The final piece "Satz: Exil Sils Maria" is a nice early experiment in ambient, it's one of those pieces that you'll be guessing what made those sounds. The whole album is quite tripped out. Then for a bonus, you get "Dungeon", which sounds like a later recording (perhaps 1974) because synthesizers are quite dominate, plus an Elka Rhapsody. But it has that same droning quality of Irrlicht, so it only made sense it should be included as a bonus cut here, even if it likely existed around the Picture Music or Blackdance time-period.

Really, Irrlicht is by far my favorite of the early Schulze albums, and it's little wonder how he became such an innovative figure in the worlds of electronic and Krautrock. Newcomers probably should try one of his electronic albums like Timewind, of course, but this is a great album to have to, to see how Schulze started off as a solo artist.

The year 1972 was a turning point both in Klaus Schulze's career as a musician and for modern music in general. His desire to play rock and/or rock-oriented music, as was the case with Tangerine Dream for whom he was the drummer, was waning and his desire to experiment with new ideas was growing at a maddening rate. IRRLICHT was Schulze's first attempt at a completely new kind of music, one which oddly had more in common with Eastern rather than Western music, in that it lacked anything even remotely connected to melody or rhythm. This was not only his first album as a leader but also the first in which the instrumentation was primarily electronic...there is obviously an orchestra present here but the sounds are mutated almost to the point of not being recognized as such. But the thing which makes IRRLICHT so groundbreaking is that it layed the foundation for the rise of the ambient electronic music which was to follow, not to mention its close cousins.

At first Schulze called this "floating music" because of the music's ethereal nature. The terms "cosmic music" and then "space music" soon followed, due to the strong (if not overwhelming) tendency for the sounds to produce images within one's imagination of traveling not only through space but time as well, which is why this music is also sometimes refered to as "contemplative." Regardless of the monikers used, one must wonder the impact this album had on people back in the early '70s when it was first released. I myself was barely a toddler at the time, but people like the radio host/producer Stephen Hill understood where Schulze was going with this, which along with other pioneering electronic music at the time inspired him to create the now-famous "Music From The Hearts of Space" show back in 1973, currently heard on National Public Radio.

The main instrument used is the Teisco organ, which Schulze "rewired" to create new sounds, much like the idea of programming a synthesizer today, but with not having a clue as to what he was looking for...a process of trial-and-error. But this laborious effort resulted in some rather startling sound constructions, such as the first track "Satz Ebene" which uses a powerful sequencer-like dervish before sequencers even existed, not so much like rhythm but more like a throbbing morass of claustrophobic sound. This seques into "Satz Gewitter", which is remarkably spare in comparison and much shorter in length. The closer "Satz Exil Sils Maria" is like a precursor to his "Heinrich Von Kleist" from his masterpiece, the double-volume "X"(1978), in that it is an intensely dark, foreboding composition of overlapping textures and well-placed sound effects. It is one of the most chilling pieces of music ever created, and to think he was only 25 when he recorded it is incredible in itself. Nearly 30 years after its release and despite the "primitive" instrumentation and recording technology, IRRLICHT has clearly stood the test of time.

Schulze's first ever solo recording (from 1972)strangely, uses no real synthesizers at all (quite a feat for someone known as the premiere synth player in electronic music in the last 30 years), but rather features Klaus on Organ and various electronic devises (sound effects might be more appropriate here) along with an electronically enhanced real string orchestral section. Very difficult, the music suggests a slightly eerie, barren winter landscape, and for the more attentive listener, quite a treat. This music is not for Schulze's fans of his later rhythmically charged drum machine rock music, but for listeners of avante-guarde music, and the Stockhausen's and Cages of the world, this is really a masterpiece. Too bad Schulze didn't do more of this before moving into a more Progressive Rock arena.

This is the perfect soundtrack to a space journey. Even if you are at home in your beed, it really feels like you're swirling through the outer regions of space when listening to this album and especially on headphones.

Here's a run down of the two tracks (although there are three "songs" listed on the cover):

1 Satz - Ebene:

The journey takes off in a cluster filled with hums and noise. After a while an orchestra is added to the palette, but very discrete. The sounds are very remote and dressed in alien-like echo. About 10 minutes into the first piece, the electronically treated organ takes the lead and comes up with several different chord progressions, which moves very slowly. Then it's time for the finale: various delays and reverbs form different types of rhythms (imagine that cool bit at the beginning of "Aumgn" by Can). This leads into some more spacey effects, some of which sound as if Klaus were bashing a spring-reverb unit!

The second track, 2 Satz - Gewitter energy rise - energy collaps / 3 Satz - Exil sils maria is a much more eerie trip. There aren't any melodies or chords or anything, but just long drones moving in and out of the picture. I recommend listening to this before you are going to sleep at night. You can get the most weird dreams if you're lucky (or unlucky, it's a matter of taste)!

So, if you're into experimental music with a lot of drones and not a lot of singable tunes, this is the CD for you. Listen to the soundtrack of "2001: A space odyssey", especially the part of the movie subtitled "Jupiter and beyond", and you'll get an idea of what this album is like... Happy travelling!

...and actually, it's not a solo at all. Klaus Schulze here appears with a string orchestra on this album, recorded during a hiatus from Ash Ra Tempel. But don't expect your typical synth + orchestra New Age here; "Irrlicht" is a droning, dark, bleak offering, with the depth and breadth of interstellar space in its sound. From the classic 'kosmische musik' period of German electronics, this album will be a startling revelation to those accustomed to Schulze's later sequencer-based work of the 1970s and early 80s, or the MIDI-based work dating from the mid-80s and on. But those interested in a real musical adventure will love "Irrlicht".