Greg Allen – “Klaus Schulze – Electronic Music Legend”
Greg Allen has made an excellent job of creating (through self-publishing group www.Trafford.com) the first large scale book on Klaus Schulze, combining interviews, history, photos and his personal album assessments into a fascinating insight on the man’s career.
Now some of this material is available elsewhere. Most of the photos have been seen inside recently re-issued CD covers, a lot of the discographies have been published in leaflet form by those connected to Schulze’s own website, and Allen’s personal opinions on each CD have to be taken with a pinch of salt (actually they’re mostly very sensible, he finds the awe-inspiring “Body Love” a career peak, but is much too easily impressed by the very ordinary “Dark Side of the Moog” collaborations with ambient musician Pete Namlook).
But taken as a whole, the book is something unique, an extremely well-balanced combinations of review reprints, personal assessments, and background interviews with Schulze collaborators from Japanese keyboardist Kitaro to German pop icon Marian Gold. The entire period from the late 1960′s to the recent “Kontinuum” album is covered, and though the picture reproduction quality in not of the highest in this form of short-run printing, it’s fascinating to see Schulze’s little stack of analog keyboards – the organs, ARP’s and EMS synths – grow into a Moog-dominated monster, then mutate into a MIDI module stack and beyond into a software-dominated computer conglomeration.
Having said that, I don’t think Allen is a keyboardist himself, but the technical questions he poses in the book (often directly to Schulze himself) offer plentiful illumination as to the exact usage of various instruments through the years. The way Schulze takes on unusual venues such as the London Planetarium, and collaborates sometimes at very short notice with singers, guitarists and other musicians is also clarified in fascinating detail.
The book can be ordered from www.Eurock.com in the USA at 40 US dollars plus mailing, and is well worth purchasing for anyone interested in the more experimental side of keyboard music.
