Artist profile: Klaus Schulze
By Glenn Folkvord

Electronic Shadows presents here an exclusive interview with EM pioneer Klaus Schulze, who has produced electronic music since the early 70s, as one of the founders of the important Berlin School of electronica.

Electronic Shadows: Please tell us about your new concert in Italy in March. What's the theme or concept? (Editor's note: This concert has been cancelled due to Klaus' sickness.)

Klaus Schulze: There is no "theme and concept" behind. It will be just plain music, played by me in front of an audience, as in most of my concerts. Very rarely I gave concerts with an "idea and concept". If this had happened it was put on by the concert promoter, and I played my usual stuff anyway :-)
 
Electronic Shadows: You have released over 30 solo albums in as many years, plus many collaborations and various projects; how would you describe your own musical development since the early 70s and until now?

Klaus Schulze: This should be done by others.

Electronic Shadows: You played the guitar and drums before you got into synthesizers, how do you feel your experience with these traditional instruments influence your electronic music?

Klaus Schulze: Especially my drumming experience was very important. I still have a strong rhythmic feeling. One time my publisher and friend even wanted to call an album of me The Rhythm Man. Guitar was not important. Most men of my generation used to play guitar, trying to copy the fashionable and new beat music of the day (or being the new Bob Dylan :-). And I did not switch immediately to synthesizers (they were out of reach for me then, moneywise) but first I tried to create "weird sounds" on normal instruments like an electric organ, or I tried to alter the sound of an amplifier, or I played the guitar in a very unfamiliar way, used all kinds of things to get a special sound. Even used the tape recorder and its possibilities (cuttings, loops, backwards...) and I recorded a string orchestra with a very cheap microphone (for Irrlicht). It were these little crazy things that I did before I had my first synthesizer.

Electronic Shadows: You ran a synthesizer school in the late 70s; do you think it would be an idea to re-open such a school for a new generation of students of electronic music?

Klaus Schulze: I think this is not necessary anymore. What I see and hear from the young players is not a lack in knowledge of the technical side.

Electronic Shadows: Do you still dislike America? 

Klaus Schulze: I never "disliked America". Some of my best friends are Americans. I just see what kind of culture (from music to food) the masses in the USA like. And I notice some other bad things that at the moment the whole world outside the USA also notice; a religious fundamentalism ("believing" instead of "knowing") that reminds me of the Islamic fundamentalism... And of an era we thought we had long behind us: the Middle Age crusaders who wanted to free Jerusalem. Yes, I and billions of other, yes, we dislike that.

Electronic Shadows: Is it true that you introduced Kitaro to synthesizers?

Klaus Schulze: Yes. Just one thing is always reprinted incorrectly. It was in the year 1975 (and not 1972) when I met Kitaro in the band that I produced for, the Far East Family Band, where he was one of the two keyboard players.
 
Electronic Shadows: Your nine albums with Pete Namlook, The Dark Side of the Moog, should they be seen as some kind of musical humour, a tribute to Pink Floyd, or what?

Klaus Schulze: Money.

Electronic Shadows: What do you enjore more, solo work or collaborations?

Klaus Schulze: Solo.

Electronic Shadows: You were one of the first artists to create an album entirely with digital equipment, how was it to embrace this new technology then? Liberating or "scary"?

Klaus Schulze: Neither this nor that. It was hard work to understand the technology and to use it. This new instrument that I used was a new computer especially designed for producing (creating and storing) music. As so many of these early computers, it was complicated, huge, had not as much storage place as we are used to have today, and it was something completely different from the usual ways of playing and recording. But "scary"? No. "Liberating"? That is not the word I would use, in hindsight.

Electronic Shadows: What are your favourite electronic instruments or tools today?

Klaus Schulze: Oh my God. There are so many, and so many new things from time to time. And, "electronic instruments" as we know them from the past (the Minimoog, the ARP Odyssey, the VCS 3, etc) by and by fade away, for the benefit of working on a computer by using software.

Electronic Shadows: Do you enjoy software synthesizers and what do you think about the current softsynth revolution?

Klaus Schulze: Yes I use a lot of software programs in the studio. In the past, when an old instrument (for instance a keyboard or a modular synth) was "updated" you had to buy the whole new tool and throw away the old. I mean, it's also a way of saving room.

Electronic Shadows: What do you think of today's contemporary electronic music?

Klaus Schulze: Most of today's music is made electronically. I don't see anymore a special "contemporary electronic music". For example: For ages, we have a radio program in Berlin that deals with "electronic music". In the past it was playing just Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Kitaro, Tomita, and a little handful of others. Meanwhile it broadcast many British synthi pop music, many singers supported by an electronic background, many rock and pop music (they call it different today) fully played by computers, done by a young generation that was not grown up with Schulze, T.D. and Kraftwerk, but with a PC or a Mac and low-priced music-making-programs. They do their thing and only later they realize (maybe) that there is a history of this music, that there were (or still are) some guys who "invented" all this playing with Moogs, ARPs, EMS, Korgs, Rolands...
 
Electronic Shadows: You have often mentioned how immitators (younger artist-wannabe's) follow in the path of the pioneers, but isn't that just an effect of the democratizing of music?

Klaus Schulze: Democracy in music? That does not work. When I mentioned the copy-cats it was because I was asked for my opinion about them. And then I mentioned the low quality they often produce, which gave EM a bad image. When it was plain to hear (and even to see on their covers) that they copy me, it was witless. Like an amateur dixieland group trying on the weekend to copy what Louis Armstrong did a decade earlier. And worse: When the Schulze clones were asked "Hey, this sounds like Schulze" all of them (except one) insist that it's "of course their own music" :-)  At least the dixielanders agree that they adore Satchmo. These electronic "followers" are gone now, this phenomenon is a thing of the past. Now we have a new generation of players who often do not even know me or Tangerine Dream. And their music is very often fresh and new. This I like.

Electronic Shadows: Why is it that electronic music is not more popular than it is, considering it's presence in advertising, movies, TV, etc?

Klaus Schulze: Electronic music is popular. It is even in fashion, and I wait for the flash-back, that nobody wants to hear it anymore. But at the moment every artist says in interviews that he or she makes "electro", "electronica", "electronic music". Two or three years ago I remember seen on TV, a really cheap German girl singer (for the market of 10 to 14 years old German kids) and she was asked in a popular German TV talkshow by the old man who hosted the show: "What kind of music is it that you make? How would you call it?". And the answer of this little girl were two words: "Electronic music." I was speechless. Because she is just a little girl forced by a management to sing silly songs into a mike, and she had never touched a synthesizer in her young life. But I was also astonished when I realized that no one in that talkshow asked "what is electronic music?" (as most journalists had asked me, during the seventies right into the eighties). EM is normal today. No listener of pop music is taking notice anymore because he may miss the old guitar or real orchestra background behind the singers. No one cares (anymore) if it's "electronic" or not.

Electronic Shadows: Are there any particular areas of musical art you would like to explore more in the future?

Klaus Schulze: What do you mean? What could this be? I take "music", my music, as one thing.

Electronic Shadows: What do you do when you are not playing or listening to music?

Klaus Schulze: Living a normal life.

Electronic Shadows: What is your favourite food, and colour?

Klaus Schulze: Are you joking? :-)

Electronic Shadows thanks Klaus Schulze for the interview.