In 1994, Klaus Schulze was able to look back on a long, successful and highly influential career, but he was also able to embrace the new. He was in the midst of his ‘digital phase’, fascinated by sampling technology, and had a clear idea of where he could go with the technology, which resulted in albums like ‘Beyond Recall’; the Royal Festival Hall recordings; ‘The Dome Event’ and even to an extent his opera ‘Totentag’.
By contrast Peter Kuhlman a.k.a Pete Namlook had just started. In 1992 he had founded the seminal Fax label, which was both a vehicle for his own recordings and a chance to collaborate and release recordings from like-minded musicians from around the world: Robert Görl of DAF; Geir Jenssen of Biosphere fame; the ever-eclectic Bill Laswell; Ritchie Hawtin; Lorenzo Montanà; Gabriel Le Mar; Dr. Atmo and David Moufang to name just a few.
In an interview from 2002, Pete remembered:
“In fact, the detonation was ‘Air II’ - the spacey part of the track ‘Travelling Without Moving’ enthused Klaus. He wanted us to start to work together at once. It was the music that was of importance to him.
Although Klaus had had no interest in working together before on principle, I knew I could convince him with my music. That was the key of our co-operation. The track was in a sort of Schulze/Tangerine Dream style with it’s analogue synthi-bass sequences; it became apparent to both of us that we should approach things with analogue tools first of all. Although it wasn’t so easy initially, the musical result finally convinced him. I didn’t want to do just a remake of seventies space-music - I intended to meld it with the beats and sounds of today’s electronic music, and I think we succeeded.”
Klaus Schulze: “The whole series was a very unpretentious project. Because I had always kept total contro....... więcej