Klaus Schulze Dosburg Online (Reissue)

It was never the easiest of albums to get your hands on first time around, but now 'Dosburg Online' has returned!!! There's not much by way of changes on this reissue other than a corrective fade out at the end of the CD, it's seventy nine minute plus running time doing away with any possibility of bonus material being added to the disc. 'Dosburg' is most probably best considered a personal record of an event with which Schulze himself was extremely pleased. It's certainly an album of highs, lows and inconsistencies that will frustrate some listeners and fascinate others who admire Klaus' sense of freedom within his music.

'Dosburg' actually having been made up from recorded outtakes of two different shows back in 1997 and also worked on in the studio in spring and summer of that same year, (one would assume for overdubs, general edits and the removal of any other gremlins that found their way into the audio path). It's a disc of styles old and new; a marital fusion not made as successfully as it was on the previous years more fluid, 'Are You Sequenced?' album. Jorg Schaaf is on hand again to assist with the rigours of a live performance and to help Schulze tackle no small host of brand new equipment, (which he was pretty unacquainted with at the time, having only received his new synths a week before the show!!). There's not much else by way of any other similarity with 'Are You Sequenced?', though with the release of two live albums in consecutive years Klaus had set himself up to be critically shot down. The comparisons would be made, no matter how ill founded they were.

'Dosburg Online' is now reissued in a gatefolded card clip case with inlaid quality transfers of the artwork on the front cover, numerous photos of Schulze and of the show itself in the accompanying 16 page colour booklet. The attention to detail with this latest batch of reissues extending to the actual disc with a phoney vinyl groove effect on the disc transfer which now even includes appropriate breaks in the groove to show how the track separation on an old 12" vinyl album might have looked!!

With the mention of two 'live' shows and further studio work you may have thought that this whole album project sounded like abit of a hotch potch of cut and paste idea's just thrown together? With track one it's time to revaluate that idea as, 'L'Age Core'(11.50) starts the show off perfectly with a tinkling sequence reminiscent of 'Mirage' together with a chiffy flute sound playing a solo over the top of the arrangement. At times the flute sounds alittle shrill, but musically this is a first class track with a hint of Mellotron strings thrown in for good measure!

The strings crossfade into the second track,' Requiem fur's Revier'(15.01) and thing's get gray and mournful in a 'Timewindish' kind of way. Klaus invites vocalist, Roelof Oostwoud to the stage whose operatic voice adds an interesting deviation in the live set. The vocal performance is excellent and well suited to the music, but here we have one of those inconsistencies l mentioned earlier. It's not the use of an operatic voice that is wrong, nor is it that the voice is misplaced against the Schulze musical backdrop. The problem lies with poor lyrical content; gritty would be a good word to describe it. Unusually worded in 'very plain' English the descriptive terminology sung by Oostwoud is decidedly coarse, juvenile and ill conceived, not much thought gone into it. The sort of trite rubbish that may have been penned only minutes before going on stage,(apparently by Lorraine Oostwoud, a lyric to be proud of my dear!! Though to be fair she should have stuck to that which she had an aptitude for. Song writing obviously isn't her forte). All said and done, the joint Oostwoud onslaught leaves the track reduced to a nothingness not worthy of further comment, time to move swiftly on.

'Groove n' Bass'(6.16) is just that, a four on the floor rhythm is gradually set up and worked upon so that by the time we hit 'Get Sequenced'(3.28) the piece is in full flow. 'The Power of the Moog'(4.47) is abit deceptive as it's a further continuation of the groove that's ticking over with the addition of a fatter sounding bassline sequence which soon overlays the first without any true development from the dance rhythm now thumping along. The real power is switched on when we get to 'Up, up and Away'(8.21) which see's the tempo increase to fever pitch and the soloing reaching an entirely new level of filtered craziness. This is electronic music going over the top and l'm sure many will adore it as Klaus just gets alittle bit manic at the keys!!! This track brings the continuous play to an end with a fade out making for a slight break in the live performance, which l think is rather befitting of the mood going from flat out sequencerville back to the more atmospheric leanings of the opening piece.

Things soon getting off the ground again with,' From Dawn till Dusk'(4.01). Typical of the Schulze we all know and musically streets ahead of most anything we have heard in the previous section this track kicks off with a dramatic entrance leading the way to a gently synthesized Cello sound which improvises expertly over a moving sound bed of ambient strings, drifting slowly by until 'The Art of Sequencing' fades in with a simple step sequence and a topset of electronic percussion sounds on the backbeat. This piece instantly reminding me once more of Klaus' more recent work on the 'Moonlake' album. At eighteen minutes plus this track just cycles along effortlessly as Schulze shows off his rather deft use of the sequencer and how to modify the simplest of idea's into a chugging rollercoaster of a track. He gets absolutely everything right again on this piece as he sticks firmly to that opening sequence and works around it sounding truly epic by the halfway point, those good old Mellotron choirs getting a look in making thing's appear even more animated!!!

'Primavera'(7.02) was the encore piece of the live set which again see's the pairing of Oostwoud's excellent voice with a weak lyric. This track works well enough if not better than the previous vocal outing, but again begins to sound rather aimless and lame after a short time. At the seven minute mark the warbling fades out together with the music leaving a track that to my ears sounds improved but still truncated, all abit unsatisfying really.