Klaus Schulze Drums 'n Balls (The Gancha Dub) CD / 5 tracks / 72.28 mins Please go to the Store to buy this item.

Actually, if you read the companion booklet notes Klaus does excuse himself for including this 1997 release stating that he only used the Wahnfried pseudonym when performing a collaborative work, but on this occasion he invented some invisible/non existent friends to assist in the albums construction???......one of us is confused, and l don't think it's me!!! I also noted that this album doesn't receive a re-issue number on the spine of the cover,(Trancefer is no.14; Ballet 2 is no.87 and Timewind no. 5) but thankfully Mr. Mueller is on hand with his back page technical input to explain exactly what's going on with this release,( and the other subsequent Wahnfried re-releases that will follow).

Either way 'Drums n' Balls' shares all the same repackaging characteristics of the rest of the re-issue sets for continuity. A 20 page accompanying booklet with more photo's of Schulze gives us Klaus's thoughts behind the making of the album and his seemingly confused reasoning behind releasing this recording originally as a Wahnfried album rather than a Schulze recording. Let's just hope that musically it's more drums than balls!

In goes the CD, and we're off with the fifteen and a half minute title track. Displaying an assortment of drums and bass that'll give the old subwoofer a pounding as the track progress's with a simple improvised bass line and a range of what l would describe as a random selection of vocal and instrument samples which appear at regular intervals throughout the piece. Schulze augments the basic rhythm pattern with more drum sounds played in real time and somehow,( don't ask me how) he rattles off a quarter of an hours worth of music that simply fly's by. So as not to alienate you hardcore synth nuts out there he does remember to include some Mellotron strings along the way, but retro this ain't.

'Percussy'(12.24) is an interesting mid tempo number which takes on the same musical ethos as displayed in the title track and builds on it. Opening up with light percussive vocal stabs the soloing commences with a sense of real direction, played out on a hybrid fretless bass and trumpet sound. The track comes over as sounding all rather spartan, but a closer listen reveals typical Schulze strings kept almost subliminal in the mix,( as to is the counter rhythm which keeps the piece from stalling completely). Timbales sound a resurgence of the percussive side of the track in the last five minutes making things sound much busier, but it's one of those occasions where by the end of the piece l'm wishing he'd done more with the music or brought the strings up more in the mix.

Track 3,'House of India'(15.26) sweeps in with a beautifully filtered and recurrent introduction, how very retro!! The sound of an Indian vocalist is heard, but this is no mystery studio guest. It is merely carefully edited samples of an uncredited Asian singer. A pulsing sequence arrives and the first class improvisation's get moving with the use of the vocal sample sounds utilised in 'Percussy'. This piece really gets into a steady Schulzian swing for the better part of it's duration before being tailed off once more with the return of the Indian vocalist's samples and more retroismic filtering.

'Bass of Orion'(13.44) is a great modernesque Schulze styled track with a broad spectrum of vocal and choral samples acting as an introduction to the piece. Hello hello, the Mellotron strings are back again, but sound alittle unusual against a smattering of modern sounding percussion and bass. Ok, several minutes have gone by and we still don't know where this one is heading. Suddenly a light electronic drum pattern arrives to just hold things together whilst we work out what comes next, the meandering Mellotron strings continuing on in the middle ground of the piece. It is only in the last five minutes that a 'Picture Music' styled arpeggiation rears its head in the mix and the whole piece makes absolute sense, truly a piece of Schulze magic, only brief but beautiful!!! The piece moves on to a logical conclusion, but for the majority of the time it's all alittle too stripped back for my taste. Non the less it struck a chord with me – best track on the album!

The bonus track on this occasion is entitled,'Chicken Biryani'(15.21)…….l'm hungry already. A dramatic introduction gives way to several Indian vocal chants and a sound set which would befit most any bangra track – only take it from me, bangra this ain't. With a typical Schulzian time signature and strings drifting around in the background this piece picks up the mantle left by the album's title track with a random selection of hit and miss samples spread across the piece as the rhythm motors along steadily without any real variation.

So is this a Schulze or a Wahnfried album?? Well if you listen to 'Are you Sequenced?' followed by 'Dosburg Online' and try to bare in mind that this recording fits between those two Schulze releases, then l think you'll come down on the Wahnfried side of things,(sorry Klaus). Its stripped back contemporary nature still not fitting in smoothly in with either of the two live Schulze albums,(even when you consider that to one extent or another a large portion of both those albums also feature's material of a more contemporary nature). I think it has more to do with the overall tempo; not of the tracks, but of the album as a whole. 'Drums n' Balls' scoring highly on that front as being pretty consistent and uniform in its nature rather than going for the combined modern and retro approaches of the Schulze 'live' works.