The machines brought to us the sound of wind and thunder, cathedral choirs and philharmonic chords.
They were living entitles and their red eyes vibrated in time to unidentified biomechanical rhythms.

Electricity ran along cables and filters, transforming into into frequencies and sound waves, random sounds which reverberated in the endless networks of the "Big Moog". But these perfect machines weren't inhuman.

A white silhouette surrounded by keyboards, sitting at the foot of black monoliths was piloting this futuristic invention which would leave university laboratories and music research centres for the heart of European towns. The audience was discovering a new kind of music beyond rock, jazz, popular & classical.

Unedited, original music which demanded of it's public a creative and dreamy ear, took one on a journey of sensual sound, where one drifts to the rhythm of cyclical beats and hypnotic pulsations, a creation stronger, more sturdy even than gothic cathedral arches.
Having contemplated with fascination the picture of a solo musician in his alchemic laboratory, the listener closes his eyes.

Each of Klaus Schulze's concerts was a journey. It was an intimate and personal experience where images followed memories and dreams. It was a collective experience where enormous rooms full of people were transported by the same emotion.

I discovered Klaus's music through "Irrlicht" and "Cyborg": without doubt amongst the rarest and most extreme of his albums. These works are witness to a real electro-acoustic creation, filled with electronic sound and curiously beautiful organ music. Then come "Blackdance" and "Timewind", cold, lunar, real introspective mirrors, simultaneously disturbing and serene. These were followed by the lunar Aurora, "Mooddawn" which has a mystical air to it. Harald Grosskopf's drums ending a beautiful musical sequence in the celestial heights. "Mirage" like "X" and "Dune" later on, was amongst the most adventurous of Klaus's work. These were herhaps the only real symphonies in the history of synthesizer music; Polymoog, Moog Modular, ARP Odyssey and 2600. Between Wagner, Sibelius, Mahler and the Carmina Burana, Schulze gave his synthesizers an orchestral power touched with romance and mysticism and a rich sonorous sound which accorded to them an undeniable identity in the small circle of all-time greats - Tomita, Wendy Carlos...

Klaus Schulze was an innovator; like Tangerine Dream he found a new way and created a public following somewhere between Pink Floyd, Pierre Scheffer and Classical music. He created a new way of listening, soliciting the imagination of the audience as this electronic music defied all previous formats and standards. He showed a kind of creative freedom, putting equal emphasis on abstraction, beauty, longevity, the gradual evolving of climaxes, and the hypnotic power of rhythm.

But Klaus's real genius lies in his humanisation of the machines and his way of creating electronic instruments. He understood better than anyone the creative & evocative power of synthesizers. "Timewind", perhaps the most profound and mysterious of all Schulze's work, is the result of improvisation and sleepless nights.

Others developed the cult the electronic and of Cybernetics. Klaus Schulze never stopped considering synthesizers as musical instrments capable of capturing nuances, bursts of inspiration, the violence of emotions. His concepts in the 70's were filled with moments of elegance and magic, moments when the musician transcended his inspiration and focussed entirely on the concentrated ear of thousands of listeners.

For many Klaus Schulze was a master of music who took the ark of listening to a creative level. His music is also a part of a school of imagination and sensitivity. A horizon. Perhaps also a way of life....

Christian Jacob (Paris, August 1993)