KLAUS SCHULZE – Shadowlands – CD review

KLAUS SCHULZE
Shadowlands
Synthetic Symphony 2013

Album number forty one from Klaus Schulze. Which means about 28 albums behind in my listening. After all, I do have to sleep sometime. To be fair, I was never a huge fan. I mean Ash Ra Temple and Tangerine Dream did some good, innovative stuff, but there is only so much electronic noodling that I can take. Especially when so much of it sounds familiar. Which is certainly the case on this CD.

“Shadowlands” contains just five tracks spread over 2 CDs, with one of the ‘tunes’ – ‘The Rhodes Violin’ – clocking in at 55 minutes. And that’s nearly an hour in which nothing happens. Seriously. Nothing. There’s a wee bit synth, the odd spoken word bit and some faux Middle Eastern gubbins. It’s like one of those so-called art installations, where some overpaid, over educated eejit mikes up a piece of metal and projects it into an art gallery. It’s the kind of thing where you really, really want to punch someone in the face.

At it’s best, and I’m using ‘best’ in the loosest possible sense of the word, such as ‘In Between’, you can detect the kind of thing that the Magic Mushroom Band were doing twenty years ago. But that’s about it. Anyone who calls music “sonic sculptures” is going to end pretty high up on the list for when the revolution comes. If memory serves, the last original idea that Herr Schulze had would have been around about the time that “Dig It” came out. And that was, what? Over thirty years ago?  This sounds like pretty much everything he’s done since, which makes it an album that has no reason to exist.

Track Listing
Disc 1
1. “Shadowlights” 41:12
2. “In Between” 17:07
3. “Licht und Schatten” 17:23
Disc 2
1. “The Rhodes Violin” 55:24
2. “Tibetan Loop” 17:50

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