Klaus Schulze
Moondawn

I wonder what impulse allowed him to express an idea like "Cyborg"? Nothing different from Riley. But the particularism he imparts to the notes is different, as they persist for minutes, gradually enriching, thus showing an analogy with the life process. There's a subdued beginning and then the various phases, the various moods, which effectively portray the sonic outline. We have stasis, tranquility, ethereal melodies that will even reach "Dark Train" by Underworld, and then the colossal character of his synths, sequencer, VCS3, and the Moog given to him by Fricke of Popol.

1976 is not the year of debut but of regaining inspiration, the efficiency of sonic skies to extend and cradle on his original sense of suspension. "Moondawn" is the work where he manages to capitalize on all the experience acquired so far, also recalling his past glories. In the previous "Picture Music" with "Totem," he had proposed a design that was too aseptic, self-serving, egocentric, excessively mannered, and lacking heart. It was like, and perhaps it was, an exercise on the experiments and novelties he had discovered at the time and the desire to show them to everyone. But those notes did not weave a real mood, or rather, a vast range of sounds that could materialize an ambiance and not just disperse effects one after the other. Hypnosis, anticipation, meditation, and crescendo are the essential features of his sound, and in this album, the composition that gives the title to the work is the perfect example.

The sequencer is the novelty we find with "Moondawn," along with percussionist Harald Grosskopf who followed him in subsequent works. In fact, the setting of the title track is enriched precisely by the thundering rolls indoctrinated by the spirit of "Amboss" and the roughness of "Electronic Meditation," even if little of the latter remains now. The influence of Ligeti, Stockhausen, Bach, and Wagner is serene, just look at the setting of "Ebene" or "Synphara." "Mindphaser," the other side of the vinyl (we're in '76..), is a slow ascent representing the last spiritual traces that distinguished the initial phases, even though I hear "Hergest Ridge" by Oldfield. At first contact with Schulze, it's inevitable to get lost in the most uncontrolled evaporation of sounds, risking not concentrating on the sonic magma. It is a true monolithic orchestra that does not incorporate the minimalisms of the masterpieces "Atem" and "Zeit."

The beauty of the krautrock panorama is that, as in the Canterbury scene or the West Coast, everyone had their own identity, which they couldn't even escape from deliberately. Schulze is enshrined in this monumental symphonic spirit symbolizing his complexity. And his connotations, like a person's flaws, will become increasingly extreme as time goes on, as we see in the subsequent "X" and especially "Mirage," pure ambient, useful for Moby and some forgotten works of trip-hop.