Klaus Schulze

He also used the alias Richard Wahnfried and was a member of the Krautrock bands Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel, and the Cosmic Jokers before launching a solo career consisting of more than 60 albums released across six decades.

[5][3] In 1969, Schulze was the drummer of one of the early incarnations of Tangerine Dream – one of the most famous bands that got the nickname "Krautrock" in English speaking countries (others included Kraftwerk and Popol Vuh) – for their debut album Electronic Meditation.

In 1976, he was drafted by Japanese percussionist and composer Stomu Yamashta to join his short-lived "supergroup" Go,[6] also featuring Steve Winwood, Michael Shrieve, and Al Di Meola.

[9] Throughout the 1970s he followed closely in the footsteps of Tangerine Dream, albeit with far lighter sequencer lines and a more reflective, dreamy sheen, not unlike the ambient music of his contemporary Brian Eno.

Often he would throw in decidedly non-electronic sounds, such as acoustic guitar and a male operatic voice in Blackdance, or a cello in Dune (1979) and Trancefer.

Schulze often takes German events as a starting point for his compositions, a notable example being on his 1978 album "X" (the title signifying it was his tenth album), subtitled "Six Musical Biographies", a reference to such notables as Ludwig II of Bavaria, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georg Trakl, and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach.

[23] Starting with Beyond Recall, the first half of the 1990s was his "sample" period, when Schulze used a wide variety of prerecorded sounds such as screeching birds and sensuous female moans in his studio albums and live performances.

[24] The decade also saw the release of copious amounts of previously unreleased material, of varying quality, in several limited-edition boxed sets.

[25] In 2005 he began re-releasing his classic solo and Wahnfried albums with bonus tracks of unreleased material recorded at roughly the same time as the original works.

In the latter part of the decade, Schulze produced albums and staged numerous live appearances with Lisa Gerrard.

[26] Big in Japan: Live in Tokyo 2010 was Schulze's fortieth album, and its release in September 2010 marked the beginning of his fifth decade as a solo musician.

They are published by the label Revisited Records (a division of German company InsideOut Music), and distributed by SPV.

[25] Sources:[43][44][45][46] "The Dark Side of the Moog"[24] is a Klaus Schulze collaboration with Pete Namlook (joined also by Bill Laswell on volumes four to seven).

Klaus Schulze, portrait