Apollo Sunshine - Happiness. Some early Crimsonesque chamber prog from a "pop" band who's album has now fallen into obscurity. Glorious Mellotron starts in the middle.
Advent Horizon - A Cell to Call Home This recent (last October) release seems a natural follow on to my recent Threshold listens. Advent Horizon makes highly melodic heavy prog/prog metal that is more melodic and metallic than progressive. Of instrumental note is some very creative drumming, but the music's standout feature is the accessible compositions and soaring melodies. This is often crowd swaying with lighters raised prog metal. Now to be clear, I don't mean that in a disparaging way; this is finely crafted and beautifully produced music, but not entirely without bite. Some of the lyrics reflect a pseudopolitical/emotional worldview mentality that doesn't jive perfectly with mine, but the craftsmanship and musicality here is undeniable and this album makes for a mighty fine listen.
Yeah, I think you could say what I did about a lot of his output - I've said before that he tends to pick a few sounds and then just farts around with them for up to 30 minutes. But I also think some of his albums are good in their own way. And I think two of them, Mirage & Picture Music, are much greater than the sum of their parts and therefore unusually successful. In fact, I think Mirage manages to create a particularly magical and immersive sound world. I guess whatever minor developments happen in his music are sufficient when the sound fabric or atmosphere is working for me. But I think Trancefer is especially boring. It strikes me as completely aimless and uninspired. But that's just me. (And maybe you.) Anybody else feel differently about this one?
Well... that's Klaus Schulze for you! It's like saying boiled potatoes have no flavour... that's boiled potatoes for you! Nothing missed, you just don't like it (or not as much as the fans). I could tell you what I like it, but then again, that's just me. I don't want you to read my explanation and then tell me why I'm wrong... Could point to Steven Wilson's ideas on the music of KS (and early TD, "Zeit" specifically), which to me sounded insightful, but then again, KS himself disagreed! (watch the interviews on the video for "Rheingold"). Maybe someday it will click, depending on your mood, life circumstances, changes your brain, etc. But IMHO most of the time that stance ("I did not use to like it, then it clicked") has nothing to do with "understanding", "getting it", or "missing anything". We just like to think that way! all IMHO, of course
Gotta' be tough to maintain adequate dexterity to play guitar or keyboards at winter temps in the Great White North!
Thanks. I might have misread what you wrote, but I'm not really looking to understand Schulze. I have and enjoy several of his albums. I just feel that Trancefer has even less development than usual for him and was curious to know if there was some quality about the album which somehow wasn't reaching me. But considering my criticism of his tendency to linger on certain ideas and sounds for far too long, it's inevitable that some of his music falls even shorter for me than usual in that regard. And indeed there are other Schulze albums about which I feel the same way; Miditerranean Pads comes to mind, for example. But I used to think Trancefer held promise - promise which never wound up materializing for me. I guess that's why I was moved to post about it.
With X, KS has pretty much defined the genre and all of his previous albums are IMO essentials. Each of them been different and showing a constant evolution in the synth technology area. Style wise and sound wise, the gap is quite wide between Irrlicht and X but again there’s a moment for each KS album listening. Timewind, Mirage and Moondawn would probably win any fans poll. The space age cosmos type of lengthy compositions of the 70’s were moving towards another direction during the 80’s. After X, it looks like KS was trying to escape a kind of musical blank page syndrome and sincerely I think that he succeeded but at some costs. Looks like Klaus took a lot of his fans by surprise with albums like Dune, Digit and Audendity. Concerning Trancerer, I consider it as a “passage obligé” to Audendity which I highly value. A transitional album if you like. It is not a bad album considering that you have Michael Shrieve on percussions and a cello player but it is not in his top tier albums.
My interest in Schulze tapers off after X (although I have 25 releases of his in my collection after that ). My favorite is probably the cold, stark, in-your-face primitive intensity of Cyborg. Another favorite is the Mental Door track from Picture Music — I wish he had done more subtle tracks like that. The Mirage album as a whole is a creative peak, what an expertly crafted synthetic world. I thoroughly enjoy Timewind, Moondawn, Body Love and X, but after that a lot of material just sounds alienating to me. He sort of gets back on track with In Blue in 1995 and many of the later of his later releases are enjoyable (e.g., Moonlake, Kontinuum, Virtual Outback as random examples), but far away from his creative peak. For Trancefer, it’s a minimalist effort that definitely sounds like it’s on autopilot and the random percussive bursts of Michael Shrieve don’t help its cause and just become annoying. He was a master at creating analog moods and soundscapes that were nearly devoid of melody, a la Mirage in the 70s, but was not able to create those same soundscapes using more modern synths later on.
Trancefer is an interesting foray into the use of the new digital technology but it comes off sounding like he just took what he was doing in analog and "trancefered" it to digital without exploring the possibilities that the new technology offered much, unlike Tangerine Dream. Comparing Phaedra to Exit, for example, TD had changed quite a bit in terms of composition. KS was a master of analog and Picture Music through to Mirage in particular are masterpieces of Berlin School that can carry you away into the sublime within their slowly pulsating soundscapes. But after that he seems to get stuck making the same compositions over and over. Still, if you like that stuff, there's plenty to explore there.
NP: This is my only KS live album... any other recommendations? Is La Vie Electronique Vol.3 any good? Klaus Schulze – ...Live... 1980 Manikin Records – MRCD 7008
I woke up today with an itch only the Giant could scratch. Gentle Giant: The Power and The Glory Ist US press 24-96 LP rip (Capitol ST11337)
Relistened to Trancefer last night. Both pieces are mainly a canvas for Michael Shrieve to improvise on percussions while KS and WT are providing background drones and ambiance. The percussion improvisation gets redundant after a while. Strangely, Michael Shrieve released an album in 1984 titled Transfer Station Blue with KS as a guest. I am listening to it right now. It’s a more interesting and varied album. It looks like they have started the album where they have left Trancefer with the opening track Communiqué and the first minutes of the title track to a certain extent.
This came in the mail. Took a while to find a copy on CD, but here it is! One of the first albums to feature guitar synth. Symphonic Slam – Symphonic Slam 1976 Musea – FGBG 4366.AR
Galahad - Seas of Change Presented as a single almost 43 minute song (listed with 12 movements), Seas of Change is a reverent but modern neo prog commentary on Brexit. As such, the album is overtly political, but not necessarily extreme or intentionally divisive. While the lyrics do seem more trite than insightful at times, the music is good enough to carry the day. Sound and production are more than solid, musicianship is easily up to par, and the vocals are strong. Overall, a very worthwhile 2018 release.
Great album. My favorite cut is Smoke (Extended Edit) and I really like how the clarinet is featured in a few places (not a common occurrence on a track like this). The guitar solos are just total Prog ear candy.
NP: Art in America - Cloudborn For any fellow Michiganders out there (not sure how far awareness of them extended). Art in America discography - RYM/Sonemic I was a huge Art in America fan back in the day and enjoyed seeing them at the Royal Oak Music Theatre. Produced by Eddie Offord, it was prog-to-me-in-83. Here’s a pleasant-sounding track called someday with some nice archival pics.
Thanks for posting. I'm aware of the band, but have never heard their music. Very interesting..... it's a little Alan Parsons, MOR, Camel, Cafe Jaques but has a genuine emotional quality about it, with some (for the era) nice production touches and musical ideas. Good vocalist too. Something about it grabbed me from the start. I'm guessing that their other music is more spirited/prog like.
