He was a pioneer of electronic music and anticipated pop trends such as techno and ambient. Klaus Schulze has now died at the age of 74.
Klaus Schulze in Tokyo in 1975.
For some he is considered the forefather of techno, others see him as the inventor of ambient or new age music. One thing is certain: Klaus Schulze, born in Berlin in 1947, was one of the pioneers of electronic music. In his long career, which began in Berlin in the late 1960s, he had a significant influence on a number of the music trends that define the pop scene today.
It all started in Berlin in the late 1960s. In the district of Wilmersdorf, the youth music school had set up a small “beat studio” which was directed by the Swiss experimental composer Thomas Kessler. This is where Klaus Schulze and his bandmates from the Tangerine Dream group came and went. “We grew into rock, but we wanted to go beyond that,” Schulze later recalled. “We didn’t want to imitate bands from England and the USA anymore, we wanted to find our own music.”
From drums to keyboards
Schulze’s musical interests were widely spread. In the Berlin scene he was known as a drummer. He also tinkered around with tapes at home. “I ran tapes backwards and forwards, cut them and glued them back together. I ran these tapes at concerts with Tangerine Dream. That didn’t go over so well with my bandmates. So I left the band.”
Schulze quickly found new comrades-in-arms. In 1970 he founded Ash Ra Tempel with other musicians from the “Beat Studio”. It got off to a promising start. The music took off into wide sound spheres. But the cooperation did not last long. “I wanted to do more electronics, but the others didn’t go along with it,” he said. Annoyed, he threw in the towel and from then on only performed as a solo artist.
With what was initially extremely primitive electronic equipment, he managed to create astonishing soundscapes. His debut album “Irrlicht” from 1972 was a work of sparkling imagination. Schulze replaced traditional tones with spherical sounds. At first there were no rhythms. An underlying drone forms the background color. He lays shimmering sounds on top of it, surging up and down in wave-like movements. “Ambient music” was what they called it a few years later.
Klaus Schulze soon bought his first synthesizer directly from the manufacturer in London, “because it was much cheaper there”. At home, the puzzle work began. There was no instruction manual for the electronic instrument, each sound had to be explored by hand. “What sometimes came out at concerts surprised me even more than the listeners,” says Schulze.
The electronics nerd stocked up. He immediately incorporated every new synthesizer into his range of instruments, which grew more and more into a pool of instruments. On stage, it soon looked like he was acting in a space capsule, with so many keyboards and gear piling up. From the mid-1980s, computers and many other digital sound machines such as samplers were added. Technologically, Schulze was always at the forefront.
film music
The change to the British Virgin label brought the worldwide breakthrough. Now he has performed in major concert halls in America, Japan and Europe and produced album after album – over 60 in all – with enduring success. David Bowie and Brian Eno came out as fans. Michael Mann and Sofia Coppola used his tracks for the soundtracks of their films. Schulze was soon better known internationally than in Germany.
Ten years ago, Klaus Schulze retired from the concert business for health reasons. Muscle weakness in his legs and problems with the pancreas bothered him. Nevertheless, he continued to tinker with new sounds in his home studio as long as he could. The electronic musician has now died at the age of 74.