- The Guardian Monday 2 May 2022
6 Obituaries
K
laus Schulze,
who has died
aged 74 after
suff ering from
renal disease,
released more
than 60 albums
in his lifetime.
He was often the recipient of such
accolades as the godfather of
techno music , was considered part
of the Berlin School of electronic
music and was credited with being
an inspirational fi gure in ambient
and IDM ( intelligent dance music ).
Perhaps it would be more
accurate to describe him as a
versatile composer whose music
encompassed ideas from many
genres, including classical and
jazz, which he expressed through
mainly electronic means.
Though he started out as a
rock drummer who was briefl y a
member of Tangerine Dream , he
always knew that he “wanted to
play with harmonies and sounds”.
The arrival of synthesisers in the
early 1970s gave him the tools
that could express his bubbling
musical ideas. The fi lm music
composer Hans Zimmer used one
of Schulze’s pieces as part of his
score for the movie Dune (2021) ,Klaus Schulze
German electronic music
pioneer and member of the
band Tangerine Dream
own musical ideas,” he said in a 2015
interview. Schulze then joined with
Manuel Göttsching and Hartmut Enke
to form Ash Ra Tempel, with whom
he made the album Ash Ra Tempel
before leaving to pursue a solo career.
In 1972 he released his fi rst solo
album, Irrlicht, now considered a
noteworthy moment in the history
of ambient music. Schulze recorded
it using a broken organ and the
sound of a symphony orchestra
played backwards, but for his next
album, Cyborg (1973), he took a
leap into the future by deploying an
EMS VCS3 synthesiser, a pioneering
instrument also used by such
luminaries as Pink Floyd, Jean-
Michel Jarre and the Who.
After taking time out to record an
album with the so-called Krautrock
supergroup Cosmic Jokers (1974),
Schulze displayed increasing
artistic confi dence and a growing
command of his new medium,
as refl ected in such milestones
of electronic music as Timewind
(1975) and Moondawn (1976). These
exhibited a mastery of delicate
textures that would evolve and
blend over the course of extended
compositions fi lling a whole side of
an LP. Track titles such as Floating
and Mindphaser indicated the
eff ect Schulze wanted his music to
have on his listeners.
In 1975 his horizons had
expanded further when he went
to Tokyo to produce progressive
rockers Far East Family Band.
Their keyboard player Kitarō later
became a superstar of New Age
music, and always gave Schulze
credit for inspiring him to embrace
the world of synths and electronica.
In 1976, Schulze’s burgeoning
status found him performing
on Stomu Yamashta’s Go album
alongside Steve Winwood, Pauland described his work as “the
perfect balance between the
soul and technology”.
Born in Berlin to a ballet dancer
mother and a writer father, Schulze
studied literature, philosophy and
modern classical compostion at the
University of Berlin. In his teens
he played drums and sometimes
guitar and bass in a variety of local
bands. He recalled that he began
playing drums because of the
infl uence of his older brother, who
introduced him to jazz sticksmen
such as Art Blakey and Buddy Rich.
In 1967 he joined the rock trio Psy
Free, alongside the guitarist Alex
Conti and organ player Joachim
Schumann, then in 1969 Schulze
joined Tangerine Dream.
The group was in a fl uid,
formative phase and Schulze was
replaced by Christopher Franke
in 1970, having had his ideas for
adding experimental sounds
rejected by the bandleader Edgar
Froese. However, he did play
on their debut album Electronic
Meditation, a free-ranging mix of
jazz, rock and electronica.
He found the role of the drummer
too restrictive. “As a drummer you
are the backbone of a rock group,
but not the soloist who performs hisBuckmaster, guitarist Al Di Meola
and percussionist Michael Shrieve.
The musicians performed the
material live, prompting the album
Go Live from Paris, with a further
album Go Too appearing in 1977.
Schulze’s evocative, artfully
layered music lent itself to
soundtrack work. Body Love (his
seventh solo album, 1977) was
the soundtrack to Lasse Braun’s
titular pornographic movie, and a
Volume 2 followed. He would also
create soundtracks for fi lms such
as Barracuda and Next of Kin, but a
more signifi cant achievement was
his album Dune (1979), inspired by
Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novel.
Here, Schulze adopted an almost
neoclassical approach, mixing cello
and Arthur Brown’s vocals into his
often eerie electronic soundscapes.
When Zimmer composed the
soundtrack for Denis Villeneuve’s
2021 fi lm of Dune, he based
one of the pieces from his Dune
Sketchbook album on Schulze’s
composition Frank Herbert, from
Schulze’s album X (1978). “Klaus
Schulze’s music has never been
as relevant as it is now,” Zimmer
commented. “The world has fi nally
caught up to a true pioneer.”
During the 80s Schulze began
taking advantage of digital
technology alongside older
equipment such as the Moog
synthesiser, a shift detectable
0n albums such as Dig It (1980)
and Trancefer (1981). On his own
Innovative Communication
label he released work by artists
including Popol Vuh and Software.
In the 90s he temporarily became
infatuated with the use of pre-
recorded sampled sounds, as heard
on the album Beyond Recall. As the
new millennium dawned, Schulze
leaned more towards classical
music and jazz, mixing these with
electronica techniques.
Schulze engaged in a variety of
collaborative ventures. Between
1994 and 2008 he teamed up with
Pete Namlook to record 11 volumes
of The Dark Side of the Moog, each
one adapting a song title from
Pink Floyd (for instance Wish You
Were There or Obscured By Klaus).
He also worked with Code III,
Earthstar, Rainer Bloss and Lisa
Gerrard from Dead Can Dance, with
whom he also performed live, and
in 2000 he reunited briefl y with Ash
Ra Tempel. In 1979 he released Time
Actor, the fi rst of a series of albums
he recorded as Richard Wahnfried,
the name apparently an oblique nod
to the composer Richard Wagner.
In 2005 he began reissuing his
earlier works, including previously
unreleased material. In 2013 he
announced that he was giving up
performing live concerts. A new
album, Deus Arrakis, is due to be
released next month.
He is survived by his wife, Elfi ,
two sons and four grandchildren.
Adam SweetingKlaus Schulze, composer and
musician, born 4 August 1947;
died 26 April 2022Schulze giving
a concert in
Cologne in- During
the 1980s he
began taking
advantage of
new digital
technology
alongside older
equipment such
as the Moog
synthesiser
INTERFOTO/ALAMY
As a
drummer
you are the
backbone
of a rock
group,
but not
the soloist
who
performs
his own
musical
ideas