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Posts tagged ‘Klaus Schulze’

Van Der Graaf Generator, Gentle Giant, Woody Shaw, Klaus Schulze, Camel, Caravan; Fifty Year Friday: April 1976

Van Der Graaf Generator: Still Life

If ever there was one album in the history of rock to hold up and proclaim, “Even Schubert would praise this work for its seamless blend of music and lyrics,” it has to be this one.

I can only stumble in trying to describe the artfulness of Hammill’s compositions, or how perfectly his music supports his well-crafted lyrics, or how seamlessly the lyrics are part of the music. Released on April 16, 1976, Still Life is the best-recorded Van Der Graaf Generator album up to that point. Hammill’s broad range of vocals is effectively captured, and the organ passages, the bass, and David Jackson’s flute and sax contributions are all clear and distinctly independent elements in the colorful palette of sound.

All five tracks of the original LP are exceptional, but “La Rossa,” the final track of side one, is one of the masterpieces of 20th-century music. The work begins with an evocative organ introduction that contains the seeds of later material. Hammill enters with a matter-of-fact delivery of the first lines:

Lacking sleep and food and vision
Here I am again, encamped upon your floor
Craving sanctuary and nourishment
Encouragement and sanctity and more

The intensity picks up as more lyrics follow:
The streets seem very crowded
I put on my brave disguise
I know you know that I am acting
I can see it in your eyes

And it is at this point that the music shifts into high gear with another verse:

In the harsh light of freedom
I know that I cannot deny that I have wasted time
Have been a little away in idle boasts
Of my freedom and fidelity
When simple words have never profited me most
It isn’t enough in the end when I’m looking for hope

This is followed by the “organ monkey” chorus, performed at moderate intensity, leaving ample runway for the intensity to follow. After two more verses, the chorus returns, intensity further heightened by the percussion imitating the movements of the hopping organ monkey. A reflective bridge-like section intervenes, providing musical pathos to effectively set up new melodic and harmonic material. The percussion and saxophone increase their intensity to transition to a short, active organ/sax instrumental that breaks back into previous melodic material, with vocals at even greater intensity:

All bridges burning behind me
All safety beyond reach
The monkey fears its chains and runs blindly
Only to find himself released

After “released,” new musical material is briefly interjected with the immediate incorporation of earlier melodic material as we proceed to an unbridled coda with sizzling percussion, heavy organ, a soaring saxophone, and a final, no-frills, and uncompromisingly definitive cadence.

Side Two starts with the melodically addictive “My Room” with its unforgettable opening line, “Searching for diamonds in the sulphur mine.” Hammill effectively captures the poignancy and heartbreak of abandonment and isolation through musical pacing, melodic phrasing, and overall mood.

The album ends with the longest track, “Childlike Faith in Childhood’s End,” which neatly ties together the lyrics and music of the first track, “Pilgrims,” with the reflection of life’s purpose expressed in “Still Life,” and reuses, transformed, musical material of the chorus from “La Rossa.” Hammill effectively leverages Arthur C. Clarke’s novel, Childhood’s End, and its theme of humanity transmuting into a collective, cosmic consciousness, and provides a philosophical finale, with the music relentlessly driving towards its transformative climax, the destruction of the individual for the ascension of humanity, the musical cadence taking us to the highest peak, where there is no air left to breathe.

Gentle Giant: Interview

A year before Interview was released in April 1976, Gentle Giant had recorded their seventh studio album, Free Hand, one of the pinnacles of progressive rock, and their most successful album up to that point, released in August of 1975 and soon climbing to the 48th position of the Billboard 200. Gentle Giant finally headlined decent-sized venues and were establishing themselves as a recognizable name in popular music. Two factors would work against them. The first: progressive rock had reached its peak and was now declining in popularity. This was out of their control.

The second factor that worked against them was their eighth studio album. Free Hand had a hard rock edge, was accessible, and was based on an easily relatable concept: reflections on the breakup of a relationship. Specifically, it addressed their breakup with a non-supportive record label, but the lyrics were written with enough ambiguity to effectively apply to romantic breakups. “Just the Same” was about defiance and authenticity, “On Reflection,” with interwoven counterpoint, represented the complexity of looking back at a break-up, and “Free Hand” was about the relief of finally being free, along with lingering bitterness associated with a bad relationship. Like Free Hand, Interview‘s concept and lyrics dealt with the music business, but it lacked a more universal message. Instead, it focused on the mundane elements of an interview with a touring band, highlighting their general dissatisfaction with touring, promotion, and the inane, banal questions of the generally clueless musical press. There was no ambiguity in the lyrics that allowed any other interpretation to a more universally relatable concept, and for those fans who aspired to or envied the fame of a rock band member, an album complaining about the drawbacks of being famous was not naturally resonant.

But if the lyrics fell short of universality, how did the music of Interview fare? Unlike Free Hand, where all tracks were focused, finished, and created a unified musical statement, Interview was their first album since, well, their first album, that lacked musical cohesion. Each track seemed a separate invention, completely independent of the other tracks. In addition, the music was more exploratory than Free Hand, containing the largest number of meandering, though interesting, musical sections since their first album. Where Free Hand had broken the top 50 of the Billboard Chart, Interview never made it past position 137.

And yet, Interview is a masterpiece compared to the three studio albums that would follow. There is cleverness in the music and a range of styles that make it a very engaging listening experience. The first track, the title track, is strong and indicates that here might be another album to rival the previous three in terms of intensity and merit. But the second track, “Give It Back,” takes a detour, mimicking reggae to create a musical parody — effective, but less musically interesting than what the band was capable of. The third track starts as a beautiful ballad, with Minnear on lead vocals. It begins a cappella with the band providing effective backing vocals before breaking into a fragmented, pointillistic display of vocal counterpoint and imaginative percussive counterpoint, ending with a return of the original melodic theme followed by a coda formed from the second theme. Brilliant but far from commercially mainstream.

Side Two starts with “Another Show” about the chaos and financial challenges of touring. The music is exuberant and accurately reflects the tumult of being on the road and playing a string of varying venues. Once again, we have adventurous musical instrumental incursions of high merit and unmistakably pure Gentle Giant, but not instinctively organic. Irresistibly enjoyable, even well-integrated, but not an inevitable outcome of the initial theme. That’s a high bar, but one effectively cleared in their previous five albums.

“Empty City,” the fifth track, is an amazing ballad with a stark contrasting B theme that invokes Gentle Giant’s trademark stride style (see Fifty Year Friday: July 1971 with additional examples mentioned in Fifty Year Friday: July and August 1975, Fifty Year Friday: September 1973, Fifty Year Friday: December 1972, Fifty Year Friday: April 1972, Fifty Year Friday: November 1970.) This is followed by “Timing,” which, like “Another Show” and “Design,” is a strong track with a compelling musical excursion: one with a strong Gary Green guitar solo and some fascinating off-kilter “timing” effects.

The album ends as strongly as it started with “I Lost My Head,” a classic Gentle Giant track that weaves beautiful ballad material with a contrasting heavy rock section. All in all, this album is far above most material from 1976, but for me, back in April 1976 when I bought the album, it failed to meet the expectations set by the previously released “Free Hand” and “Power and the Glory.” I have listened to Interview many times since then, but it still falls short of the greatest classics of progressive rock. It doesn’t comfort me to reflect that even if Gentle Giant had released their best album ever after Free Hand, it wouldn’t have made the difference needed to even momentarily slow the ensuing popularity decline of this musically amazing band or of progressive rock in general.

Klaus Schulze: Moondawn

If you are a fan of Klaus Schulze, the Berlin prog rock electronic school, or, like me, just an easy mark for sequencer-driven bass pulses, Moondawn, released on April 16, 1976, is a rewarding, immersive experience at over 52 minutes on the original LP or over 73 minutes on CD with the inclusion of an alternate version of the first track.

The first track, “Floating,” is aptly named—the music slowly gathers momentum until around the five-minute mark. Here, the crescendoing, from nothing to a fully noticeable isochronal ratcheting (the sequenced ostinato of sub-beats so prevalent in the electronic music of the mid-seventies Berlin school), provides the rhythmic currents to figuratively lift the music airborne. The music gathers intensity slowly, dramatically, immersing the listener until, a little bit after the twenty-six-minute mark, it decrescendos to its gentle conclusion.

Side two of the original LP is also a single track: “Mindphaser.” It begins with the introspective and calming sounds of the sea, interspersed with some hints of stormy weather. It remains uplifting until the second part takes off with drums (Harald Grosskopf) and organ-like droning, culminating in the eventual inclusion of that famously pulsing ostinato, driving it to its conclusion.

Camel: Moon Madness

Camel released one of their finest albums, Moonmadness, on March 26, 1976. Word has it that the label exerted pressure on Camel to produce more commercially accessible material than their previous album. This seemed to have some slight influence, as the album has a bit of a Pink Floyd sound, particularly on “Song Within a Song” and parts of “Another Night.” However, the music is unmistakably Andrew Latimer/Peter Bardens material, whether upbeat and heavily synthesized as with the opening tracks, “Aristillus” and “Chord Change,” or evocative and wistful as with “Song Within a Song,” “Spirit of the Water,” or “Airborne.” Also notable is the closing instrumental track, “Lunar Side,” which starts off wistful but then leans heavily into the synthesizer in its middle section, and then turns into a lively jazz-fusion-influenced piece with a strong guitar solo from Latimer. Though this album was released domestically in the States, it was rare to spot a copy in most record stores, and my first exposure was on the KPFK-FM program “The Import Show.” The show featured a rotating musical intro that once highlighted a section from “Aristillus,” and on a couple of occasions used excerpts from “Song Within a Song” (once the instrumental passage at the 4:25 mark, and another time starting at 3:07)—a perfect opening for a record show dedicated to the best releases in progressive music.

Caravan: Blind Dog at St Dunstans’

This seventh studio album by Caravan is a blend of progressive and quirky pop, but its Canterbury prog-rock roots are unmistakable. With the departure of Dave Sinclair, Pye Hastings does all of the writing for this album, with the exception of one track, which he co-writes. This album often gets overlooked, but it shouldn’t, as it is full of pleasurable, highly enjoyable music with their new keyboardist, Jan Russell Schelhaas, performing admirably. Don’t be dissuaded by the one-and-a-half-star rating at allmusic.com; this is a four-star album.

Woody Shaw: Love Dance

My best guess is that this album was released on the Muse label around April 1976, though not sure. I have it as part of the Mosaic Records set of Woody Shaw’s complete Muse sessions, and it occupies CD 2 of the seven-CD set. As far as I know, the Love Dance album is the only time Billy Harper and Woody Shaw recorded together. That alone would be enough to require one to check out the music; however, the material also establishes itself independently as must-listen modal bop jazz.

“Love Dance,” written as the title track by the album’s pianist, Joe Bonner, is a modal work that would not be stylistically out of place in the catalogue of Coltrane/Tyner, even though written a generation later. Besides Bonner, Harper, and Shaw, the album includes René McLean (Jackie Mac’s son), Steve Turre on trombone (and as a nice treat, particularly on “Sun Bath,” bass trombone), Cecil McBee on bass, Victor Lewis on drums, Guilherme Franco on percussion, and Tony Waters on congas.

Shaw is one of the most amazing trumpeters to listen to. He is an improvisational architect, working through interval and harmonic relationships with a relentless ear for logical connection and abstract melodic appeal. And I love his tone — never wispy or uncertain, but strong, focused, and direct, yet beautifully evocative when appropriate. And I love how Billy Harper understands the musical ethos of a great master like John Coltrane, yet uses that as a starting point and not an end objective. All of this comes together perfectly on my favorite track of the album, “Zoltan,” a tribute to Hungarian composer Zoltan Kodaly, most famous for his Hary Janos suite compiled from music of his opera of that name. The opening melody of Woody Shaw’s “Zoltan,” which first appeared as the opening track on the classic Larry Young Blue Note Unity album, is derived from the march theme of “Entrance of the Emperor and his Court” from Kodaly’s Hary Janos opera and suite, or maybe more accurately derived from Shaw’s earlier version, as he drops out the direct quote of the march intro from the original Kodaly work, and launches into his abstraction of the main theme. Overall, this version is even more intense, compelling, and musically imaginative than its earlier appearance on the Young album. Listen to both and let me know.

And let me know your thoughts on this album. How does it compare to his previous masterpiece, The Moontrane? Or the two classic albums that follow? How does it compare to contemporary jazz albums of its time?

Category:

Fifty Year Friday, jazz, Progressive Rock, Rock

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Gentle Giant: Free Hand, Renaissance, Klaus Schulze. Harmonia; Fifty Year Friday: July and August 1975

Progressive Rock in the Summer of ’75

The summer of 1975 marks the zenith of progressive rock: the moment when the genre reached its cultural and commercial apex. The journey had been remarkable. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw its birth and evolution, a period of explosive creativity as bands honed their technical abilities and expanded their conceptual ambitions. The artistic potential evident in foundational works like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Days of Future Passed was fully realized in a wave of masterpieces, each pushing the boundaries further: In the Court of the Crimson King, Fragile, Thick as a Brick, and Brain Salad Surgery.

By 1975, progressive rock was no longer an exceptional burst of creativity; it had become a normal, even dominant, mode of musical expression. The audience for long-form, complex compositions—accommodating multi-part suites, shifting time signatures, and grand conceptual themes—had been built. The music was not only artistically impressive but commercially triumphant, filling the largest concert halls, arenas, and stadiums across America and Europe.

Yet, this peak was also a turning point. Just as any artistic movement has its heyday followed by phases of sustainment, adaptation and imitation, whether finely-crafted Baroque, emotionally-evocative Impressionism, or intoxicating Swing, so too did progressive rock begin its next chapter. Having reached its summit, the genre moved out of the creative spotlight and began to solidify its place in history, setting the stage for new bands to adapt its sounds and for its original architects to navigate the changing tastes of a global audience.

Gentle Giant: Free Hand

Progressive Rock certainly had to be popular for one of the most underpromoted and generally ignored progressive rock groups to have an album climb as high as number 48 on the U.S. Billboard chart. One was still likely to get blank looks when recommending Gentle Giant to friends, but they had made such considerable progress in achieving recognition that they were now more often the main attraction rather than a predominantly supporting act, playing larger and larger venues, getting placed into multi-act festivals and headlining the 7,000-capacity Montreal Forum Concert Bowl and selling out the Centre Municipal des Congrès in Quebec City.

This well-deserved increase in success was crucial, as it helped buffer the band psychologically during a bitter two-year conflict with their UK label, WWA Records. The disputes were numerous and severe: WWA’s US counterpart, Columbia, had refused to release the brilliant but challenging In a Glass House; the band’s management was siphoning off an obscene amount of money; and the label was relentlessly pressuring them to become more commercial and produce a hit single.

After much legal maneuvering (and at what was apparently a significant financial cost), the band finally managed to extricate themselves from their contract. They promptly signed with the more prog-friendly Chrysalis, which had already expressed interest should they become available. This move was not just a business transaction; it was a liberation.

Now on their new label, Gentle Giant could create without constraints. The result was an immediate celebration of this freedom. The first side of their new album, Free Hand, serves as a defiant and musically intricate declaration of independence. Its overarching theme is interwoven with introspective lyrics on a fractured relationship, functioning both as a literal commentary on their breakup with WWA and as commentary on a romantic breakup.

The opening finger-snapping is overlaid with Kerry Minnear’s simple, syncopated piano line, which is quickly joined by Gary Green’s guitar—first with on-beat chords, then with off-beat stabs that accentuate the rhythm. Derek Shulman’s voice enters as another independent line, creating as exhilarating a syncopated opening as has ever been created in rock music.

During the verses, the rhythm section of Ray Shulman on bass and John Weathers on drums lays down a solid six-to-the bar beat. Superimposed over this foundation, the lead vocal and the primary melodic instruments (piano and guitar) operate in a conflicting meter of 7/4. This is not merely a display of technical prowess; it is the lyrical theme made manifest in rhythm. This irrationally persistent dual-meter creates a feeling of daredevil friction — a propulsive yet unsettling groove that is constantly pulling against itself. It musically represents the band’s position: they are intentionally “out of step” with the standard pulse of the industry but are perfectly in sync with their own complex internal logic. The two meters coexist, creating a challenging but ultimately coherent whole — a sonic metaphor for forging one’s own path.  

The track ends with a coda carved from the intro, leading directly into the dramatic fugato opening of “On Reflection.” The texture builds with breathtaking complexity: first a single voice, then a second independent voice, then a third, and a fourth. After a short contrasting section, the four-part vocal polyphony is doubled by instruments. The track then shifts to a new, ballad-like theme, delicately supported by recorders, violin, and vibraphone, before the opening fugato returns on instruments alone, trailing off into silence.

The first side culminates with the title track, “Free Hand”, which serves as the narrative and thematic centerpiece. The swaggering, layered opening provides musical continuity, while the lyrics offer a triumphant and unambiguous celebration of autonomy. The aggressive first section is effectively contrasted by a reflective, free-flowing instrumental interlude. Derived from the opening theme, this section alternates between fluid passages and sharp, staccato outbursts. Exciting, climactic transitional material then builds tension before a final recapitulation of the primary theme. A short coda indulges in a few moments of development and ends with a notable cadential flourish — an in-your-face flip of the heels — a musical “so there!”

With “Killing the Time”, side two unexpectedly and amazingly opens up with the sound of Pong — the unassuming, but highly popular video game once found in pizza parlors, pubs, and hotel arcades throughout the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Japan and much of Europe in 1974 and 1975. The brief sound of Pong is followed by musical tone painting at its finest — the music captures idleness effectively with its representation of the seeds of the rhythm searching for a groove and coalescing into what I call Gentle Giant’s stride style (see Fifty Year Friday: July 1971 with additional examples mentioned in Fifty Year Friday: September 1973, Fifty Year Friday: December 1972, Fifty Year Friday: April 1972, Fifty Year Friday: November 1970.) 

Functionally, this track extends the album’s concept of new found freedom, portraying the band killing time between concerts. Though primarily minor and minor/modal with its distinctive off-kilter character, once past the opening section, the structural form relies on traditional verse and chorus relationships with a contrasting bridge after the third verse — but with the welcome addition of a sixteen-bar development section after the bridge with a standard repeat of chorus, verse, chorus and fade out. Though the harmony is generally straightforward, using a dominant key and the relative major as contrasting tonal areas, the deployment of chromatic passing chords and controlled dissonance adds to the overall musical interest.

“His Last Voyage” is the most lyrical work on the album, a soft and beautiful Kerry Minnear composition. The form is generally strophic, but constant variation and development provide a sense of passage through tumultuous seas, turning a tragic narrative into a powerful musical metaphor.

This is followed by the penultimate track, “Talybont,” a refreshing neo-Renaissance instrumental that lightens the mood with its cheerful Mixolydian mode and playful counterpoint. Originally composed for a never-released Robin Hood film, its inclusion here provides effective contrast while its melodic contour echoes the album’s opening track, adding to the record’s cohesive feel. It is in rondo form (A B A B A B A) with some musical variation to further increase interest. Interestingly, while the track provides necessary contrast, it also shares the melodic contour of the main theme from “Just the Same.” This subtle connection enhances the album’s sense of unity.

The album ends with “Mobile”, describing life on the road and returning to the album’s general conceptual theme.

“… Moving all around, going everywhere from town to town
All looking the same, changing only in name
Days turn into nights, time is nothing only if it’s right
From where you came, don’t you think it’s a game?
No, no, don’t ask why
Do it as you’re told, you’re the packet, do it as you’re sold…”

The music rocks hard with a solid 4/4 time signature but is enriched with aggressive syncopation, rhythmic displacement, use of synthetic stretto (my term for removing notes in a repeated pattern) for creating momentum and tension, implied metrical shifts (while still in 4/4) and hints of polyrhythm. Add to this effective musical support of the lyrics, and ample musical development, and we have an exhilarating conclusion to one of Gentle Giant’s most unconstrained, most unified albums — an album celebrating, and ultimately documenting, their creative freedom.

Renaissance: Scheherazade and Other Stories

Renaissance’s sixth studio album, Scheherazade and Other Stories, released in July 1975, captures the band operating at the peak of their artistry. Side one starts with John Tout’s piano solo, setting a dramatic tone for the album. Annie Haslam’s ethereal, wide-ranging, and always captivating vocals soar over the first track, “Trip to the Fair,” with its waltz-like foundation reminiscent of a merry-go-round. The 3/4 meter extends into the instrumental middle section, punctuated by snippets of 5/4 that nicely set up the return to the primary theme. This is followed by a short, upbeat, and energetic piece, “The Vultures Fly High,” with its effective modulation in the middle instrumental section. “Ocean Gypsy,” a reflective ballad with subtle musical twists and turns, closes side one.

The highlight of the album is the nearly 25-minute “Song of Scheherazade,” based on the multicultural classic collection of folktales, One Thousand and One Nights. The work is so effectively arranged to incorporate the London Symphony Orchestra that the orchestration seamlessly supports the musical and narrative effort. Annie Haslam is in top form, her voice navigating the epic’s dynamic shifts with grace and power, and John Tout contributes some truly memorable and impressionistic piano interludes that serve as narrative turning points.

Fifty years later, this is an exceptional album to revisit, beautifully showcasing Renaissance’s unique blend of progressive rock and classical influences. This truly effective, enduringly relevant, and genuinely engaging album is one of those artistic excursions that showcase how great music transcends stylistic boundaries to establish its own identity, one ultimately independent of time and genre.

Klaus Schulze: Timewind

Released in August of 1975, Timewind is a turning point for Klaus Schulze, a monolith of sequenced sound that answers the artistic challenge thrown down by Tangerine Dream’s Phaedra. Schulze’s response was to forge his own approach to the analog step sequencer, using its relentless, hypnotic ostinato patterns to create a new musical language that taps into the listener’s subconscious desire for rhythmic order. Time is no longer measured; it is created. This gives Klaus Schulze the freedom to forgo conventional melody, yet provide an accessible, orderly musical landscape: a slow tectonic drift of ambient continents stratified from electronic synthesis.

Even with this new technology, the album demands patience, which in turn allows the listener to fully enter and remain within the two slowly evolving universes that occupy each side of the original LP. This transformation of a mechanical pulse into the catalyst for a new realm of immersive experience now gives talented musicians like Klaus Schulze entirely new architectural tools to build previously undiscovered worlds. For the willing listener, the opportunity is that of complete immersion into the inner dimensions of pioneering soundscapes where time and space are collectively managed by the composer’s creative capabilities and the listener’s personal engagement.

Harmonia: Deluxe

Released in August of 1975, Deluxe, the second album from Harmonia — brimming with sonic colors, warmth and optimism — provides one of the best examples of listener-friendly German “Kosmische Music” (cosmic music). Where some of their contemporaries explored challenging dissonance or more Stockhausen-influenced content, this trio of Neu! guitarist Michael Rother and Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius from Cluster, supplemented by drummer Mani Neumeier from Guru Guru, successfully crafted a sound that was both innovative and accessible, at least to those more adventurous listeners who explored the alternative avenues of music of the 1970s.

The album unfurls a vibrant, welcoming sonic world, seamlessly blending kaleidoscopic electronics with an insistent, forward-driving momentum that immediately engages the listener. The overall architecture relies on rhythms, ostinatos and the artful use of a drum sequencer. This is not consistently pulse-driven, rigid music, but music that appropriately flows, changes course, provides calm and turbulence, and ultimately invigorates with a sense of exploration, motion and scenic excursions.

The synthesizer work is particularly appealing, controlling the tint, brightness and saturation of the passing soundscape so colorfully it becomes visually evocative. The rich, shimmering textures seem to radiate a sonic equivalent of the visual spectrum allowing one to perceive the music in vibrant, shifting hues. With the addition of Rother’s contrasting guitar lines melodically interacting with the multitracked shimmering keyboards, the composite result creates the necessary wonder and interest to give Deluxe its overflowing positive and enduring energy.

Category:

Fifty Year Friday, Gentle Giant, Progressive Rock

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