Klaus Schulze Moondawn (Reissue) Please go to the Store to buy this item.

'Moondawn' has arrived on the re-issue roster and again we are confronted with another slice of real classic Schulze, realising as l write that this recording is now exactly 30 years of age!!! Is it me getting old or the music??? On this his sixth outing Schulze expands upon his truly cosmic style, producing music with a greater sense of dynamics and a harder hitting edge. A major feature of his music now being the seamless transitions from spacey nothingness into all out speaker pounding sequencing, (joined here by Harald Grosskopf on drums to further fill out the percussive ends of things).

In the context of the time - the mid seventies, it seems that musicians right across the musical spectrum had come to a similar realization that synths used en masse,( for those that could afford it) could be used to devastating effect in the studio to create these otherworldly effects and musical timbres. Numerous grandiose and pretentious cosmic epic's surfacing to a sickening extent from the prog rock scene at the time. Not one of them getting anywhere near Schulze in the realms of the really 'out there' cosmic stakes, Klaus hitting all the right notes. A 'cult' album? Klaus muses over why this may be in the sleevenotes. Obviously no clear answer, but for me it's the fact that the whole package is just so typically of the seventies!!! It's everything about the album right from the way that the cover art is put together through to the way Schulze looks and dresses,( mind you, if he came down our way looking like that these days there'd be a scuffle). In complete contrast to the previous years truly cosmic 'Timewind', 'Moondawn' see's Schulze drifting ever so slightly towards his musical counterparts with a light fettering of contemporary trappings. Whilst 'Moondawn' fails to paint as vivid a picture as its predecessor, Klaus utilises his ever growing collection of hi tech electronic noise makers to create music with real momentum and a very obvious move towards sign's of compositional development. The sequencing being kept very bright, punchy and dare l say that there's a certain 'slickness' in Schulze's handling of the equipment various. A copious amount of drumming goes on as Klaus works with the synths retaining that organic feel to the music as it builds to fever pitch during both of the original pieces.

The re-issued album is presented in a card slipcase with the now standard process of inlaid transfers to highlight the artwork and/or photos together with a 16 page booklet with more photos from the era and an insight from Schulze himself about the making of the original sound recording. The twenty seven minute plus 'Floating' starts the album off in an instantly spacified style, synths twittering away to themselves in a totally random fashion. An uncredited sermonic voice is heard and l think l'm in for a religious experience! Klaus maintains that the spoken word meant nothing to him personally, but he liked its tonal quality and wished to include it purely for sonic effect. Fizzy synth strings take over and a hypnotic little sequence line takes centre stage. Nothing stands still for long here as another fatter sounding sequence steps in gradually shifting and mutating into something with abit more bite for the drums to play against, Mr Grosskopf turning in a flawless machine like performance on this piece. The real soloing commences at the halfway mark over a thick soundbed of silky smooth strings,(ala Timewind). The sound set all appears to be very well rehearsed even though the whole album was recording in the space of one night, those solo voicings fitting in with all else perfectly. An electric piano emulation is then followed up with a reedy sounding Moog solo and already the track is approaching its end. At the twenty minute mark the intensity is cranked up a notch or two instinctively, (real musical genius at work here with no particular changes musically, just the odd filter opened up little here and a change of modulation there) and we're really racing towards the finale firing on all cylinders. Only in the last thirty seconds does the main sequence fade and cut leaving us with the briefest of closures.