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Over the years, there have been a number of massive archival releases that all but define the phrase \u201cfor the completist.\u201d In 2011, the Grateful Dead went back to the source tapes for one of the band\u2019s best (or least-tedious, depending on one\u2019s perspective) live albums, the 3LP Europe \u201872<\/i>, and released a 73-disc set containing all of the tapes. It\u2019s still available; I just checked Amazon, and you can get it for a mere five grand.<\/p>\n
Progressive legends Yes exercised British restraint with their 2015 box set, Progeny: Seven Shows from Seventy-Two<\/i>, a 14CD set chronicling the band\u2019s perhaps best-ever tour. And Seattle grunge rockers Pearl Jam seem to have felt that nearly all of their live shows needed to be available (though not as a box). And in recent years, certain UK labels have released no end of closet-cleaning titles from progressive artists. (Don\u2019t even get me started on bootlegs like the Purple Chick 14CD set of all extant BBC recordings of the Beatles, or the 83CD set [really!] of the Fab Four\u2019s complete recordings from January 1969.)<\/p>\n
Forget nearly all of those, though, because a new \u2013 or at least new to this format \u2013 collection of releases chronicles outtakes, alternates, demos, experiments, home recordings and other leftovers that quite often equal the quality of their official-canon counterparts. I\u2019m referring to La Vie Electronique<\/i>, a new series of 2LP sets featuring the music of pioneering German musician artist Klaus Schulze.<\/p>\n
Schulze is best-known as the prolific musician who played in both Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel, in addition to releasing more than five dozen albums of his own. In the 1990s, Schulze released a series of CD compilations, Silver Edition, Historic Edition<\/i> and Jubilee Edition<\/i>; those were recompiled into a single set, 2000\u2019s The Ultimate Edition<\/i>, a 50CD set.<\/p>\n
That staggering amount of music might be entirely too much for even the most ardent fan of Schulze\u2019s work to assimilate, much less enjoy. Happily, One Way Static Records has embarked upon a re-re-reissue of the material, placing it for the first time (or nearly the first; who can keep up?) into chronological order. Better yet, the new releases are on vinyl.<\/p>\n
Currently there are three sets, subtitled Vol. 1.0, Vol 1.1<\/i> and Vol. 1.2<\/i>. Taken together, these six vinyl LPs contain all of the recordings found on La Vie Electronique 1<\/i>, originally issued in February 2009.<\/p>\n
As expected, a great deal of the music contained therein is synthesizer-based, but a surprising amount of it features Schulze on organ. Dating from the period 1970-1972, these recordings (in superb audio quality, it should be noted) are often of the hypnotic, elegiac quality often associated with German space rock, krautrock etc. For those uninitiated into this particular corner of the musical world, Schulze\u2019s recordings sound a bit like A Saucerful of Secrets<\/i>-era Pink Floyd, or at least Richard Wright\u2019s contributions thereto.<\/p>\n
There are exceptions. The brief \u201cInterview 1970\u201d lets listeners hear Schulze speak, but unless you\u2019re fluent in German, the 24-second snippet won\u2019t mean much to you. Some of the tracks toward the end of the 6LP collection are percussion-based; let\u2019s just say they\u2019re not nearly as meditative as their synthesizer counterparts on the other records. But they\u2019re worth keeping handy \u2013 alongside your Throbbing Gristle and Residents albums \u2013 to be retrieved whenever a house guest overstays his or her visit.<\/p>\n
But the lion\u2019s share of the material on La Vie Electronique<\/i> is wonderfully evocative stuff, the kind of thing that succeeds on multiple levels. It works as what kindred spirit Brian Eno famously described as \u201caural wallpaper,\u201d and it holds up to what Robert Fripp calls \u201cactive listening.\u201d Arty for sure, but eminently approachable, La Vie Electronique<\/i> won\u2019t set your foot a-tapping, but these six records are full of warm, lush and very human electronic recordings. Not<\/em> only for the completist; highly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over the years, there have been a number of massive archival releases that all but define the phrase \u201cfor the completist.\u201d In 2011, the Grateful Dead went back to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14871,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,26,40,43,65,73],"tags":[3490,3489,2116],"class_list":["post-14869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-compilation","category-electronica","category-instrumental","category-krautrock","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-ash-ra-tempel","tag-klaus-schulze","tag-tangerine-dream","cat-19-id","cat-26-id","cat-40-id","cat-43-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14869"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26795,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14869\/revisions\/26795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}