Keller & Schonwalder
Concerts
These two artists were just made to work together. All their albums as a team have provided a different listening experience but all have been superb. The opening track uses a style of sequence and very similar sounds to what you would find on Peter Baumann’s magnificent first two solo albums ‘Romance 76’ and ‘Trans Harmonic Nights’. If you liked those you should go ape about this. This sequence lasts for the best part of half an hour building quite quickly but pounding along fantastically with all manner of Tangerine Dream type lead lines, circa Stratosfear, Encore and Force Majeure period, blasting over the top. Honestly, if you like the five albums I have mentioned here, particularly the Baumann ones you just have to buy the CD for this track alone.

The second track on the first disc is the shortest on the double album (obviously designed as the single) at a tad over twenty seven minutes. After a superb atmospheric start we get a very Klaus Schulze type sequence, I mean I can just see him sitting cross legged in front of his synths a fag welded to his bottom lip. The lead lines and everything take me right back to his late 70s albums. Surely Detlef and Mario are taking us all for a ride and they have really slipped a previously unheard KS classic in here. But hold on a second, not possible as how would it have escaped all the recent boxed sets. There is also quite a bit more variation than on this period Schulze but if you are in to the great mans work this track is an absolute must have.

On to the second disc. One track, 73 mins of it! OK so I thought the last track sounded like Klaus Schulze, but come on, this really MUST be Klaus. The style of sequence and choice of sounds are such a dead ringer for his work. When the rhythm is introduced it does sound slightly different, but not much. Things become very hypnotic as there is no let up from the sequence, if anything it seems to become more intense as we get further in . The synth pads are mesmerizing as if we are on a psychedelic sea, the currents ever shifting drawing us in. At about the half way mark the main sequence becomes very quiet and all the supporting sequences die away. All that is really happening however is that more sequences are being developed and then unleashed but they are no less Schulzian than before.

So in conclusion, if you want to buy a superb Klaus Schulze album where Peter Baumann guests on the first track then buy this. OK, I know Mario and he wouldn’t wind us up so we had better believe that he and Detlef are responsible for this set. It doesn’t really matter anyway if you are into the artists this sounds like (as I am) it is an essential part of the collection. At £13.95 for a double album you can’t really go wrong anyway. (DL)

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