HOW TO BUY
10
The Cosmic Jokers The Cosmic Jokers
KOSMISCHE MUSIK, 1974
You say: “A fraud and a con, but when the music’s this good who’s complaining.” Gordon Campbell, via e-mail
According to Manuel Göttsching, these live cosmic jam sessions were recorded with full knowledge of the participants. Klaus Schulze, on the other hand, still insisted they were recorded and released by Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser without the permission of the participants. Live-mixed by Dieter Dierks, the first and best of the releases features Göttsching and Schulze alongside drummer Harald Grosskopf and keyboardist Jürgen Dollase lost in a kind of heavy dub kosmische dynamic, a phased, floating sound of echo and delay. If you like this, check out the same year’s heavier and harder Galactic Supermarket, with vocals from Rosi Müller and Kaiser’s equally spaced-out partner Gille Lettmann.
9
Klaus Schulze Blackdance
BRAIN, 1974
You say: “Julian Cope isn’t the biggest Klaus Schulze fan but this is his choice, so that’s good enough for me.” Belishabeacon, via mojo4music.com
A perfect midpoint between the unholy darkness of Irrlicht and the ambient placidity of later releases such as Moondawn and Mirage, Schulze’s third solo LP incorporates synthesizers, phased trumpet, acoustic guitar and, shockingly, another individual: opera singer Ernst Walter Siemon, who provides gloriously doomed lieder on side two’s epic subterranean travelogue of phased organ and drum machine, Voices Of Syn. Like a post-apocalyptic Debussy’s La Cathédrale Engloutie, Blackdance is a work of profound eerie symbolism, summoning a cursed Gothic soundworld far removed from the kosmische utopia envisioned by Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser.