K. Schulze

With a career spanning more than 30 years and over 100 albums, German musician Klaus Schulze is one of the pioneers of electronic music. Born in 1947, Schulze initially made his mark as a drummer, first with the group Psy Free, later with Tangerine Dream (he played on their first album "Electronic Meditation" before he quit) and Ash Ra Tempel (with Manuel Göttsching). In 1971, however, Schulze started a solo career as an electronic musician and released a couple of heavily experimental albums, "Irrlicht" and "Cyborg". 1974's "Blackdance" was the first release where he used a "real" synthesizer, and later in the 70's he would record such landmark electronic albums as "Moondawn", "Mirage" and "X" and embark on several tours, documented across a number of live albums. In 1978 he set up the label IC (Innovative Communications), and the following year he also launched the pseudonym/project Richard Wahnfried. In the 1980's Schulze continued his hectic release schedule as well as recording several soundtracks and rebuilding his studio (he "went digital" in 1986), and whereas IC was shut down in 1983, the label Inteam was established the following year. In the 1990's Schulze recorded several electronic interpretations of works by classical composers (most notably Wagner) as well as collaborating with opera singers and other classical music performers on his own albums. He also started collaborating with German ambient/techno artist Pete Namlook in the series "The Dark Side Of The Moog" on the latter's Fax label, and steered the Wahnfried project into a more modern techno- and trance-inspired direction. Furthermore, the massive CD sets "Silver Edition" (1993 - 10 CDs), "Historic Edition" (1995 - 10 CDs) and "Jubilee Edition" (1997 - 25 CDs), which almost entirely consisted of previously unreleased material, were released and quickly became sought after collectors' items. These sets were compiled on 50-CD strong "The Ultimate Edition" (2000). In the new millennium Klaus Schulze is still active, and has released more CD-sets (two volumes of "Contemporary Works", consisting of 10 and 5 CD's, respectively) and live albums.