Klaus Schulze Audentity (Rerelease) Please go to the Store to buy this item.

'A man must be able to define his limitations, then strive to exceed them'. In 1983, when Klaus hit us with his latest release 'Audentity' l think he achieved just that, producing an inventive album that takes all your notions about Schulzes cosmic mastery and gives them a good shake down leaving us with a fantastic recording that doesn't appear to have really aged one jot since its conception 22 years ago!!! This is without a doubt an adventurous and boisterous outing, the music remaining strident, at times bombastic and it has to be said compelling throughout. 'Audentity' lacks any real gentle ambience, going for the jugular consistently with music that doesn't ask for your attention, but demands it!!! Like a sonic smack in the teeth this is an album that's not only intent on assaulting your eardrums but also wants to take your granny outside and mud wrestle her too!!!

Akin to a synth powered jazz excursion this tour de force steams along providing us with some of the most vibrant and accessible of Schulze's music to date, paradoxically the album also showcasing some of the most perplexing of his work too. 'Audentity' is reissued with the cover artwork reproduced once again utilising high quality inlaid transfers. The enclosed 16 page booklet provides photos of Schulze from the era, a section of interview with the great man himself in 2004, and a two page write up about the making of the album,( strangely this being a subject he doesn't necessarily discuss, digressing into anecdotes about the 70's 'Go' sessions. Fascinating, but we are none the wiser about circumstances regarding this release, shame). The bonus track this time around is a piece lasting almost an hour that was recorded at the same time as the rest of the album. With sampling technology becoming a recognised and more mainstream musical affair at around this time, Schulze employed it in a devastatingly effective manner throughout 'Audentity'. He also makes full use of his partners in crime on this recording – Wolfgang Tiepold returning once more on Cello, Michael Shrieve on drums and Schulze's own custom built EEH rhythm computer. Rainer Bloss appears on glockenspiel and FX, each member putting their own particular spin on things, most all of the material produced here being an absolute musical reverie!!!! Klaus on this occasion having hit a creative high again, producing an album that showed the electronic world that he'd moved forward, but was still a master of the old synth knob twiddling game!!!

'Cellistica' opens the set in fine style with some over modulated enharmonic scales coming in from all directions, all wonderfully obscure. The sound of Cello twists and turns, gradually working its way around an electronic riff; pacey percussion and bassline arriving at the four minute mark. The intermittent use of powerful sounding Simmons drums dance in and out of the piece as a sprightly melody forms. Huge synthetic samples rush into the piece unsupervised throughout adding unyet another dimension to the overall sound. The pitch rises and again the electronic percussion interweaves with the other festivities. With so much going on the Cello fights to stay ahead of the game here. So the melody returns, and all of a sudden you realise you've just spent nearly 25 minutes listening to this freewheeling, spellbinding noise. What a way to begin!!!

'Speilglocken'(21.24), and Klaus opens up with a familiar sounding riff, a drifting lead sound appearing just as one might expect from Schulze. Again the tension rises until the pressure is released at the five minute mark with the steady pulse of percussion and glockenspiel melody played by Mr Bloss against a sequenced sample of the same instrument, the result - magical. Things gently skew off centre until at the fourteen minute mark things are stepped up a gear and we are straight into some hi-tech electro pop, typical of the era……..only better and more aggressive!!!! The final four minutes merely serving to wind things down from the pitch we have now reached, that steady kick drum percussion keeping the whole piece in check. Without a doubt the highlight of the album, and for me the highlight of Schulze's eighties work!!! This is a very busy track where l think all the protagonists really got the same feel/vibe about where the piece should be heading next and nailed it perfectly.

'Sebastian im Traum'(28.21) has to be one of the strangest tracks ever from Schulze, stepping through many episodes separated by a sample of a creaking door opening and closing. It starts well enough with vocoded synth and sonic effects which wouldn't have been out of place on 'Dune'. Tiepolds Cello work is prolific treading an uneasy path through a mass of synths and effects. Obscure, abstract or avant garde, call it what you will, it's all these things and more. Schulze holds the piece together for about 20 minutes before it starts to loose its cohesion. With a track of such great length that never really finds its true direction l think it's fair to say that after all these years, it's not the easiest listen in the world. A gentle synth sequence re- emerges several times throughout the track, but it's a very fragmented piece!!! I'm still not sure as to if this was ever a serious piece or Klaus just muckng around with all his musical toys for half an hour???

Onto disc two and 'Tango-Saty'(5.47) is first upon the play list. Make of this what you will!!! I've always assumed that this was a fun track that Klaus just decided to leave in. A bouncy little rhythm interspersed with bland synth brass hits and wild slices of wavetable synthesis. A counter rhythm comes in at the halfway mark to rescue the piece, but l think it's beyond that kinda' help. Is this just Klaus messing around……….l do hope so. The ten and a half minute 'Amourage' is very interesting as Schulze mixes the old with the new. Piano plays counterpoint to some very percussive sounding flutesy sample. As the 70's synth pads arrive in classic Schulze style we find that the lead used is a sample which emulates the tone of an original analogue synth, giving the track a more revitalised feel and harder edge. Lovers of Schulzes 70's drifting works will love this track even with its modern overtones, though it is that progression in sound design that makes it fit so well with the rest of the 'Audentity' set. 'Opheylissem'(5.11) is a rythmn based track which sounds good and edgy coming straight in with arpeggiated bass and Shrieve giving that electronic drum kit a darn good thrashing,( Shrieves solo work recorded alittle later sounding decidedly influenced by his work with Schulze, check out 'In Suspect Terrain'). Relying too heavily on Shrieve to carry the piece with his drumming alone the synth riffs and hits just sound to be in too much of a state of disorder to pull the track together as they should, the piece soon loosing its way.

Moving onto our bonus track this time and we are presented with the 58.10 minute 'Gem'. The track plays continuously through five titled sections,(Gem/Tiptoe on the Misty Mountain Tops/Sink or Swim/At the Angle of an Angel/Of White Nights). The sleevenotes tell more of the origins of the piece, but without massive variation in the piece l think it's fair to say that the music suffers because of this. Commencing with a gentle delay on Schulzes PPG synth the piece gets underway in a very disjointed manner. Things calm down alittle as Klaus moves on through some of the PPG's internal sounds programming as he goes, some of it hitting the mark some not. Things pick up significantly as the second section plays in with a pair of arpeggiated sequences playing in sync with a smattering of percussion thrown in. The PPGs gritty leads are harsh indeed and again it's about five minutes into this section before some kind of order is found. The piece progesses with some semblance of direction for a quarter of an hour, but as the third section starts we spot the problem with the music as it continues without any real change in the basic sequence. Unfortunately events remain unchanged throughout the duration of this improvised section, Klaus still switching through the PPGs wavetable sounds and programming on the fly. Arrrgh!!! section four commences unabated and though we've switched down a key and Schulze has the solo voicings sorted nothing has really developed for nearly half an hour now!!! Though this fifteen minute section is by enlarge the most cohesive of all the parts l'm now getting tired of the repetition as l'm sure many will by this stage. The final section returning to the choppiness of the earlier parts with several voicing changes as before, then finally fades away, that rhythm still ticking over after nearly fifty minutes of the same pattern!!!

So how does the definitive version of 'Audentity fare? Well going through the album again after all these years is like revisiting an old friend, the original double vinyl album was a rather well proportioned affair in the first place, the bonus set on this issue serves as just that, a bonus, an addition, but for my money does not unfortunately enhance the original tracks. Completists may argue the toss here, but the quality of the input on the bonus work pales by comparison with that of the other studio pieces. The top notch production job still comes across beautifully on this CD, (which l remember being of startling clarity back in 83'). I really feel that 'Audentity' managed to capture the mood of the moment between the musicians involved,( which is more than can be said for the cover art which l still think is completely misplaced, seemingly thrown together as an afterthought). The album, like 'Dig It', has an industrial quality to it; machine like at times. Though it suffers several inconsistencies this is a powerhouse of musical artistry and invention. With the other musicians heavily involved the pieces the quality throughout shows itself time and time again. The bonus track, recorded largely on the fly, doesn't really add anything to 'Audentity', it's just too long winded. Then again, better to have than have not!!! Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.... or something along those lines. (B22)