2 languages
Klaus Schulze
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
Klaus Schulze was a German composer and pioneer of electronic music. He was born in 1947 in Berlin. In 1969 he was the drummer of Tangerine Dream and played on their debut Electronic Meditation. A year later he founded Ash Ra Tempel with Manuel Göttsching. There too he left after one album, to go solo in 1971.
Music and breakthrough
He made his first solo album Irrlicht (1972) without synthesizers, with an organ and a recording of an orchestra that was processed so that it became almost unrecognisable. The album is regarded as a milestone of early ambient. On Cyborg (1973) he used a synthesizer for the first time. Timewind (1975), full of references to Richard Wagner, and Moondawn (1976), his first album with a Moog, followed. With those records he became one of the founders of the Berlin School: long pieces in which repeated sequencer patterns change slowly. In the 1980s he began using digital instruments, and he produced Alphaville's The Breathtaking Blue (1989). He made more than sixty albums, also under the name Richard Wahnfried. He died in 2022.
Influence
Schulze sounded lighter and dreamier than Tangerine Dream, with occasional acoustic sounds such as a cello or an operatic voice. His music was appreciated by fans of new age, although he himself wanted nothing to do with that movement. Together with Tangerine Dream he laid the foundation for ambient and for much later electronic music.
Listening
Discography
Studio albums
- 1972Irrlicht
- 1973Cyborg
- 1974Blackdance
- 1975Picture Music
- 1975Timewind
- 1976Moondawn
- 1977Body Love (soundtrack)
- 1977Body Love, Volume 2 (soundtrack)
- 1977Mirage
- 1978“X”
- 1979Dune
- 1980Dig It
- 1981Trancefer
- 1983Audentity
- 1984Angst (soundtrack)
- 1984Aphrica
- 1984Drive Inn
- 1984Transfer Station Blue
- 1985Inter*Face
- 1986Dreams
- 1987Babel
- 1988En=Trance
- 1990Miditerranean Pads
- 1991Beyond Recall
- 1994Klaus Schulze Goes Classic
- 1994Le Moulin de Daudet (soundtrack)
- 1994The Dark Side of the Moog
- 1994Totentag
- 1995In Blue
- 1995The Dark Side of the Moog II
- 1995The Dark Side of the Moog III
- 1996Are You Sequenced?
- 1996The Dark Side of the Moog IV
- 1996The Dark Side of the Moog V
- 1997The Dark Side of the Moog V
- 1998The Dark Side of the Moog V
- 1999The Dark Side of the Moog V
- 2000Contemporary Works I
- 2002Contemporary Works II
- 2002The Dark Side of the Moog IX
- 2005Moonlake
- 2005The Dark Side of the Moog X
- 2007Kontinuum
- 2008Farscape
- 2008The Dark Side of the Moog X
- 2009Come Quietly
- 2013Shadowlands
- 2013The Schulze‐Schickert Session
- 2018Silhouettes
- 2019Next of Kin: Music From the Motion Picture Soundtrack (soundtrack)
- 2022Deus Arrakis
- 2022Vat Was Dat
- 2024101, Milky Way
In School of Rock
The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.
- Mixtape 8: Electronic MusicNL Reader
Mentioned in other articles
- Synthesizer orchestra, ambient and new age Genre
Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze in Berlin had preceded them, and in 1978 Brian Eno gave the genre its name, ambient, with Music for Airports.