Klaus Schulze obituary

Musician and composer whose music covered many genres, including classical and jazz, mainly expressed through electronic means

Klaus Schulze, who has died aged 74 after suffering from renal disease, released more than 60 albums in his lifetime. He was often the recipient of such accolades as the godfather of techno music, was considered part of the Berlin School of electronic music and was credited with being an inspirational figure in ambient and IDM (intelligent dance music).

Perhaps it would be more accurate to describe him as a versatile and gifted composer whose music encompassed ideas from many genres, including classical and jazz, which he expressed through mainly electronic means. Though he started out as a rock drummer who was briefly a member of Tangerine Dream, he always knew that he “wanted to play with harmonies and sounds”. The revolutionary arrival of synthesisers in the early 1970s gave him the tools that could express his bubbling musical ideas. The film music composer Hans Zimmer used one of Schulze’s pieces as part of his score for the movie Dune (2021), and described his work as “the perfect balance between the soul and technology”.

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by Adam Sweeting via Electronic music | The Guardian

Jörg Thomasius: Acht gesänge der schwarzen Hunde review | John Lewis's contemporary album of the month

(Bureau B)
A compilation of DIY releases smuggled out of 1980s East Berlin on cassette includes glistening minimalism, pulsating grooves and wonky techno

Cassette culture may now seem like some quaint hipster affectation but, for a generation growing up in East Germany in the years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was the prime medium for underground music. Fans would smuggle in recordings of new music from West Germany on tape, while avant-garde musicians in the eastern bloc’s most repressive country could circumvent state controls over vinyl pressing plants – and avoid the watchful eyes of the Stasi – by copying their own music on to cassettes and distributing them (like samizdat newsletters) to likeminded freaks.

One of these freaks, Jörg Thomasius, ostensibly worked in East Berlin as a boiler mechanic and art gallery technician, but his real vocation was music. He was a member of the Zappa-ish collective Das Freie Orchester, ran a home studio called Tomato and hosted a show on pirate radio, drawing inspiration from experimental krautrock bands on the other side of the iron curtain. In the 1980s, he sneaked out three albums on cassette, and Acht Gesänge der schwarzen Hunde (Eight Songs of the Black Dog) – the latest in Bureau B’s Experimenteller Elektronik-Underground DDR series – compiles 10 tracks from these DIY releases.

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by John Lewis via Electronic music | The Guardian

Drumming, drones and drifting bliss: 10 of Klaus Schulze’s greatest recordings

The prolific German musician, who has died aged 74, released an astonishing range of music, spanning techno, prog rock, ambient and more. Here are 10 of his best

• Electronic music pioneer Klaus Schulze dies

Klaus Schulze’s first appearance on vinyl was as a drummer in the nascent Tangerine Dream, a band that bore no resemblance whatsoever to the Tangerine Dream who were famed in the mid-70s for their beatless, beatific electronic epics. The frazzled, occasionally terrifying contents of their debut album Electronic Meditation sounded like early Pink Floyd with all the songs removed and the freeform experimentation cranked up to 11. The second track, Journey Through a Burning Brain, features atonal guitar soloing, vast swells of menacing organ, someone doing something supremely nerve-jangling with a flute and Schulze’s battering drums fading in and out of the mix. If this was psychedelia, it was psychedelia from long after the flower-power dream had curdled, reflecting the turbulent state of West Germany in the late 60s.

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by Alexis Petridis via Electronic music | The Guardian

Klaus Schulze, German electronic music pioneer, dies aged 74

Multi-instrumentalist who played with Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel before admired solo career is hailed for his ‘innovative spirit’

Klaus Schulze, the German multi-instrumentalist whose work with drones, pulses and synthesisers was hugely influential on generations of electronic music makers, has died aged 74.

Frank Uhle, managing director of Schulze’s label SVP, wrote: “We lose and will miss a good personal friend – one of the most influential and important composers of electronic music – a man of conviction and an exceptional artist. Our thoughts in this hour are with his wife, sons and family. His always cheerful nature, his innovative spirit and his impressive body of work remain indelibly rooted in our memories.”

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by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian

‘It’s just good energy!’ How TikTok and Covid made drum’n’bass hot again

The 90s genre is being freshened up by young, often female artists mixing hyper-fast breakbeats with soft vocals. But why is it so suited to our post-lockdown, attention-deficient era?

When Lincoln Barrett started making drum’n’bass tracks in the late 90s, he says, “people were kind of mocking me for being into it. People were already saying drum’n’bass is dead. Going into the record shop in Cardiff, Catapult, you would kind of get the piss taken out of you by people who were, I guess, into trance.”

He laughs. In the intervening period, Barrett became High Contrast, one of the most respected drum’n’bass producers in the world: he’s about to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his debut album, True Colours. Drum’n’bass, meanwhile, has steadfastly refused to die – in fact, it is enjoying an unexpected moment in the sun, freshening up 2022’s pop music. “It’s people who aren’t really part of the drum’n’bass scene just coming through and doing jungle in their own way, and it’s really in a separate lane from established artists and what drum’n’bass is now,” says Barrett. “It’s amazing that it’s been led mainly by young women artists as well.”

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by Alexis Petridis via Electronic music | The Guardian

Annie Lennox’s 30 greatest songs – ranked!

As the Scottish pop icon’s debut solo album Diva turns 30, we run down through her best work with the Tourists and Eurythmics and as a solo artist

Amid the marquee-name covers on Medusa – Bob Marley, Al Green, Procul Harum – lurks this gorgeous take on the Blue Nile’s masterpiece of careworn romance. You could argue the source material is so good you can’t go wrong, but Lennox really inhabits the lyric: its emotional climax – “I’m tired of crying on the stairs!” – is suitably gut-punching.

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by Alexis Petridis via Electronic music | The Guardian

‘He would get high before teaching’: how Mills College gave birth to music’s boldest minds

Fuelled by psychedelic counterculture, the Californian university has nurtured Steve Reich, Laurie Anderson and more – and caused riots at its concerts. But can it survive?

In the late 1960s, Morton Subotnick’s groundbreaking electronic work Silver Apples of the Moon was both a bestselling classical record and an underground nightclub sensation, since acknowledged as an influence by Frank Zappa and Four Tet alike. But back in 1958, the very first big public presentation of his work did not go quite so smoothly. He’d written a piece for two people playing a single piano and Subotnick was convinced it was “really fresh”. The audience less so. By the third movement they were already growing restless. The players on stage practically had to stare them down. At the end, the crowd rose in a fury, screaming at the stage. The pianists ran for their lives.

Subotnick had just graduated from Mills College in Oakland, California, and his former lecturer, the exiled French composer Darius Milhaud, had helped to arrange the concert. Feeling sick to his stomach, Subotnick spies Milhaud in his seat with tears in his eyes and apologises for what he presumes to be his teacher’s disappointment. “No, my dear,” Milhaud reassures him. “Those are tears of joy. It reminds me of the old days.”

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by Robert Barry via Electronic music | The Guardian

Favourite festival sold out? Here are the best alternatives

After two long years, festivals are back – but tickets are in short supply. Here are some options if you’ve missed out, featuring rave-jazz parties, fairground rides and organic psychedelia

The original
The West Country dairy farm shindig by which all other musical events are judged
Worthy Farm, Somerset; 22-26 June (sold out)

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by Kitty Empire, Kathryn Bromwich and Jude Rogers via Electronic music | The Guardian

Mira Calix obituary

Artist, composer and musician whose work ranged from electronica to opera and interactive sound sculpture

Mira Calix, who has died unexpectedly aged 52, was a composer, electronic musician and installation artist who started out working for indie record labels and organising club nights in the experimental hinterland of the 1990s rave scene. From the moment she arrived in the UK from South Africa in 1991 (then known as Chantal Passamonte), she was making connections and changes in the music world.

In 1996, she released her first record, the EP Ilanga, for Warp Records, becoming one of the first female artists to sign to the label. She came to prominence in 2003 when the London Sinfonietta premiered her work Nunu at the Royal Festival Hall, as part of the Warp Works/20th-Century Masters concert, a collaboration that was pivotal for her and the record label in expanding beyond electronica. From then on Calix was unconstrained by medium, creating work in sculpture, spoken word and conceptual art as well as musical composition and performance.

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by Joe Muggs via Electronic music | The Guardian

Nik Colk Void: ‘On stage is the only time I can let go and stop the worry’

From her first guitar to hyped post-industrial trio Factory Floor, the musician struggled to find an identity – but wild experimentation and parenthood have helped

“Full of carnage and tension,” is how Nik Colk Void describes playing with Factory Floor, the ferociously intense, wildly hyped group who created a clattering concoction of post-industrial electronic rock, noise and live techno.

That intensity contrasts starkly with Void herself. When she bought her first Fender Telecaster guitar, she sanded off the red paint because she felt it was too much of a statement. At a recent solo show, when playing her song Interruption Is Good – a crisp, bristling piece of electro-techno – the yelps and eruptive dancing from the crowd forced her to hide behind the desk to mask her reaction. Even in Factory Floor, her face was often hidden behind a curtain of hair.

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by Daniel Dylan Wray via Electronic music | The Guardian

Prison, lawsuits and a glovebox of fake cash: the film the KLF didn’t want you to see

The enigmatic rave duo refused to approve Chris Atkins’s documentary on them – and then he got five years for tax fraud. He explains how he channelled their anarchic spirit and made it anyway, Ford Timelord and all

In 2009 my long suffering producer Ian Neil sent me a text: “You should really make a film about the KLF.” This enigmatic and brilliant band were a mainstay on Top of the Pops in my youth, and were best known for burning all their money in the mid 90s, when I was a middle-class teenage anarchist and thought that torching a million pounds was by far the best thing you could do with it. “Aren’t they dead?” I replied.

It turned out that the two members of the KLF, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, were very much alive, but had gone to extreme lengths to destroy their legacy. They had deleted their entire back catalogue in 1992 and written a vow of silence on a car, which they promptly pushed off a cliff. A few enquiries revealed we weren’t the first people to suggest making a documentary, but the band had told everyone else to piss off.

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by Chris Atkins via Electronic music | The Guardian

XLR8R News and Features: Oakland’s Space Ghost Delivers New Album on Vancouver Label Pacific Rhythm

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Oakland’s Space Ghost Delivers New Album on Vancouver Label Pacific Rhythm Vancouver label will Pacific Rhythm will release a new album from Sudi Wachspress (a.k.a Space Ghost), entitled Private Paradise. As Space Ghost, Wachspress purveys a soulful breed of deep house that's sure to make you move. A resident of Oakland, California, he grew up in a small town a few hours from the East Bay area, but his relationship with house music kickstarted through his teenage years while he studied at the California College of the Arts. As he became deeply engrained in Oakland's rich experimental music community, he launched Late Feelings, a series of all-vinyl dance parties, and began channeling a profound love for '80s funk minimalism and ambient lo-fi beats into releases for Sweat Lodge Guru and Astro Nautico. He signed to Tartelet in 2018, delivering 12 cuts which, with their sweeping sci-fi synths and twinkling sound design, recalled Lone's cosmic psychedelia, but the record still felt uniquely meditative. Aquarium Nightclub, a boogie album inspired by African and Brazilian music from the '80s, came a year later, then last year Wachspress delivered Dance Planet, an album of shimmering deep house "created to heal and energize." Private Paradise is an ode to Wachspress’ time spent at Sea Ranch on the northern California coast, a place he and his partner visit to refresh their spirit and regain optimism for the outside world. Like Dance Planet, Private Paradise possesses a “rare ability to restore, rejuvenate, and inspire through each listen.” We’re told to expect “deep, contemplative, and uplifting audio that compels its listeners to focus on the positive forces in the world and the power of being present in a moment.” Tracklisting 01. Virtual Age 02. Inner Focus 03. Save Point 04. Sounds of Peace 05. Time Station 06. Heal 07. Private Paradise 08. New Day

THE JAZZ CHILL CORNER New Releases: Arpeggio Jazz Ensemble; The Electric Jazz Room; Spirits Rejoice; Dennis Bovell

New Releases: Arpeggio Jazz Ensemble; The Electric Jazz Room; Spirits Rejoice; Dennis Bovell Posted: 03 Apr 2022 03:00 AM PDT Arpeggio Jazz Ensemble - Le Le (LP) Recorded in the 1980's and snapped up upon arrival in Europe by the Soho Boho's, Acid Jazzuals,Cuboppers, Jazz Massivists and Mojo Jazzmuziker, "Le-Le" by The Arpeggio Jazz Ensemble is a unique one off Spiritual Soul-Jazz outing with Avant Garde touches and more than a hint of Afro-Cuban Orientalism.The percussion drenched title track has that special Worldwide Sound and the Cool Jazz Get Down Groove of "Wet Walnuts and Whipped Cream" is a DJ's delight, whether played over the Airwaves or to a crowded Dancefloor. An adventurous jazz outfit that has been playing around Philadelphia since its formation in 1979. The Ensemble was founded by Warren Oree, an acoustic bassist, producer and composer who continues to lead the band. Eclectic and far from predictable, on this album the Ensemble has embraced a variety of acoustic and electric jazz styles combining them with African and Middle Eastern influences and mixed together with the "New Thing" have managed to make a timeless underground classic. The Electric Jazz Room - The Electric Jazz Room E.P. (feat. Walpataca & Vienna Art Orchestra) (LP) Two Underground London Jazzfloor hits from Paul Murphy's Jazz Room Records.On the A side Latin Supergroup's wild and infectious "Caliente" with Paquito's Banging piano riff and heavy Bass Line action from Descarga originator Cachao overlaid with Driving vibes from Tany Gil and a Percussion Meltdown from Walfredo De Los Reyes. On the B side the Vienna Art Orchestra provide a dark and mysterious version of the Bud Powell classic "Un Poco Loco" keeping that Be-Bop Afro-Cuban vibe but adding that East of the Border darkness you'd expect from a sound recorded at the time the city was on the Cold War fault line. Gilles Peterson (Worldwide / Brownswood): "Paul Murphy found almost every jazz dancefloor classic. He is the original messenger of jazz. He opened the door to an alternative way of being a Dj. The rest is history. Spirits Rejoice - African Spaces (LP) A defining musical statement in South Africa's jazz canon – pinpointing the moment of social and musical ferment in which the country's terms of engagement with jazz were irreversibly changed. Forged when township kids were facing down bullets this is an electric mulberry funk – slick, intense and complex. Heavyweight 180g vinyl with remastered audio, inner sleeve with new photographs and additional liner notes by Francis Gooding. At a distance of more than forty years, the radicalism and significance of African Spaces can be seen more clearly. Ambitious, uncompromising, and resolutely progressive, it represents a unique high-water mark in South Africa's long musical engagement with the newest developments in American jazz – a response to the cosmic call of Return To Forever, and an answer to Miles' On the Corner. Spirits Rejoice drew together some of South Africa's most abundantly talented and forward-thinking jazz players and created  a complex and challenging jazz fusion that shifted the terms of South Africa's engagement with jazz towards new music being made by pioneers such as Chick Corea, Weather Report, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny and others. African Spaces, their debut recording, is one of the key documents in the South African jazz canon. Emerging in the aftermath of the 1976 Soweto uprising, and taking its place alongside the crucial mid-1970s music of Malombo, Abdullah Ibrahim, and Batsumi, it is a defining but unsung musical statement of its era.