As both a solo artist and as a member of groups including Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel, Klaus Schulze emerged among the founding fathers of contemporary electronic music, his epic, meditative soundscapes a key influence on the subsequent rise of the new age aesthetic. Born in Berlin on August 4, 1947, Schulze began his performing career... [+] Read More

As both a solo artist and as a member of groups including Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel, Klaus Schulze emerged among the founding fathers of contemporary electronic music, his epic, meditative soundscapes a key influence on the subsequent rise of the new age aesthetic. Born in Berlin on August 4, 1947, Schulze began his performing career during the 1960s, playing guitar, bass and drums in a variety of local bands; by 1969, he was drumming in Tangerine Dream, appearing a year later on their debut LP Electronic Meditation. The album was Schulze's lone effort with the group, however, as he soon co-founded Ash Ra Tempel with Manuel Gottsching and Harmut Enke, debuting in 1971 with a self-titled record; again, however, the band format appeared to stifle Schulze, and he mounted a solo career a few months later.

While Schulze's previous recorded work had been in a typically noisy Krautrock vein, as a solo artist he quickly became more reflective; although he acquired his first synthesizer in 1972, it did not enter into his solo debut Irrlicht, its long, droning pieces instead assembled from electronic organ, oscillators and orchestral recordings. The double album Cyborg followed in 1973, and a year later he issued Blackdance, his first recording to feature synths; Timewind, regarded by many as Schulze's masterpiece, appeared in 1975. Around that same time he began producing prog-rockers the Far East Family Band; the group's keyboardist, who went on to become the new age superstar Kitaro, frequently cited Schulze as the central influence behind his own plunge into the world of synths and electronics.

After collaborating with Stomu Yamash'ta on 1976's Go, Schulze resurfaced with a flurry of new solo material, including the LP Moondawn, 1977's Mirage and two volumes of the porn soundtrack Body Love. He remained extraordinarily prolific in the years to follow, with 1979's Dune, inspired by the Frank Herbert sci-fi classic, becoming his 11th solo record released during the 1970s alone. The 1980s were no less fertile, with Schulze issuing a steady stream of new work in addition to various productions released on his own IC label; Dig It was his first fully digital recording. By the following decade, Schulze had immersed himself in contemporary dance music, occasionally working in conjunction with Pete Namlook (as Dark Side of the Moog). ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide [-] Hide

Celebrated as the European electronic music community's premier ambassador, composer Jean-Michel Jarre elevated the synthesizer to new peaks of popularity during the 1970s, in the process emerging as an international superstar renowned for his dazzling concert spectacles. The son of the famed film composer Maurice Jarre, he was born August 24,... [+] Read More

Celebrated as the European electronic music community's premier ambassador, composer Jean-Michel Jarre elevated the synthesizer to new peaks of popularity during the 1970s, in the process emerging as an international superstar renowned for his dazzling concert spectacles. The son of the famed film composer Maurice Jarre, he was born August 24, 1948, in Lyon, France, and began studying piano at the age of five. Abandoning classical music as a youth, Jarre became enamored of jazz before forming a rock band called Mystere IV; in 1968, he became a pupil of the musique concrète pioneer Pierre Schaeffer, joining Groupe de Recherches Musicales. His early experiments in electro-acoustic music yielded the 1971 single "La Cage"; the full-length Deserted Palace followed a year later.

Jarre's early works were largely unsuccessful, and gave little indication of the work to follow. As he struggled to find his own voice, he wrote for a variety of singers, including Françoise Hardy, and also composed for films. Seeking to push electronic music away from its minimalist foundations as well as the formal abstractions of its most experimental practitioners, he slowly developed the orchestrated melodicism of his 1977 breakthrough effort, Oxygène, an enormous commercial hit that reached the number two spot on the U.K. pop charts. The follow-up, 1978's Equinoxe, was also a smash, and a year later Jarre held the first in a series of massive open-air concerts at the Place de la Concorde in Paris, the estimated one million spectators on hand earning him a place in The Guinness Book of World Records.

Only in the wake of 1981's Les Chants Magnétiques (Magnetic Fields) did Jarre mount a proper tour, traveling to China with a staggering amount of stage equipment in tow; the five performances, performed backed by some 35 traditional instrumentalists, later generated the LP Concerts in China. Released in 1983, Music for Supermarkets instantly became one of the most collectible albums in history -- recorded for an art exhibit, only one copy was ever pressed, selling at a charity auction for close to $10,000. The master was then incinerated, guaranteeing the record's rarity. Jarre's next proper release was 1984's Zoolook, which failed to connect with audiences with the same success as its predecessors.

A two-year hiatus followed before he resurfaced on April 5, 1986, with an extravagant live performance in Houston celebrating NASA's silver anniversary; in addition to the over one million in attendance, it was also broadcast on global television. Rendez-Vous appeared a few weeks later, and after another highly visual live date in Lyon, France, Jarre assembled the best material from the two events as the 1987 concert LP Cities in Concert: Houston/Lyon. Revolutions, featuring the legendary Shadows guitarist Hank B. Marvin, followed in 1988, and a year later a third concert LP, dubbed simply Jarre Live, hit stores. After 1990's En Attendant Cousteau (Waiting for Cousteau), Jarre mounted his biggest live experience yet, with an attendance of over two and a half million fans converging on Paris to see him perform in honor of Bastille Day.

The decade to follow proved surprisingly quiet, however, and apart from the occasional live appearance Jarre was largely removed from the limelight; finally, in 1997 he issued Oxygène 7-13, updating his concepts for a new musical era. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide [-] Hide

The American ambient/neo-classical composer who has most closely allied himself with the increasingly sympathetic independent-rock underground -- through his collaborations with the Cocteau Twins' Robin Guthrie -- Harold Budd is also one of the very few who can very rightly be called an ambient composer. His music, a sparse and tonal wash of... [+] Read More

The American ambient/neo-classical composer who has most closely allied himself with the increasingly sympathetic independent-rock underground -- through his collaborations with the Cocteau Twins' Robin Guthrie -- Harold Budd is also one of the very few who can very rightly be called an ambient composer. His music, a sparse and tonal wash of keyboard treatments, was inspired by a boyhood spent listening to the buzz of telephone wires near his home in the Mojave Desert town of Victorville, California (though he was born in nearby Los Angeles). Though interested in music from an early age, Budd was 36, already married and with children of his own, by the time he graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in Musical Composition in 1966. He became a respected name in the circle of minimalist and avant-garde composers based in Southern California during the late '60s, premiering his works The Candy-Apple Revision and Unspecified D-Flat Major Chord and Lirio around the area. In 1970, he began a teaching career at the California Institute of Arts, but continued to compose while there, writing Madrigals of the Rose Angel in 1972. After leaving the Institute in 1976, Budd gained a recording contract with the Brian Eno-affiliated EG Records, and released his debut album The Pavilion of Dreams in 1978. Two years later, he collaborated with Eno on one of the landmark albums of the ambient style, Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirrors. After recording two albums for Cantil in 1981 (The Serpent [In Quicksilver]) and 1984 (Abandoned Cities), Harold Budd again worked with Eno on 1984's The Pearl. A contract with Eno's Opal Records resulted in one of Budd's most glorious albums, The White Arcades, recorded in Edinburgh with Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins. Budd left Opal after 1991's By the Dawn's Early Light, and recorded two albums for Gyroscope: Music for Three Pianos (with Ruben Garcia and Daniel Lentz) and the lauded Through the Hill, a collaboration with Andy Partridge of XTC. In the mid-'90s, he recorded albums for New Albion and All Saints before signing to Atlantic for the release of The Room in mid-2000. In 2004 Budd decided to retire, claiming he had said all he wanted to, and that he "didn't mind disappearing." His final outing, Avalon Sutra/As Long as I Can See My Breath, appeared on David Sylvian's Samhadi Sound imprint as a double disc. The album featured 14 new pieces, some recorded solo, some recorded with saxophonist Jon Gibson, and some with a string quartet.

His collaboration with Eraldo Bernocchi, Fragments From the Inside, issued on Sub Rosa arrived in spring 2005. ~ John Bush & Thom Jurek, All Music Guide [-] Hide

Without doubt, the recordings of Tangerine Dream have made the greatest impact on the widest variety of instrumental music during the 1980s and '90s, ranging from the most atmospheric new age and space music to the harshest abrasions of electronic dance. Founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese in Berlin, the group has progressed through a full three... [+] Read More

Without doubt, the recordings of Tangerine Dream have made the greatest impact on the widest variety of instrumental music during the 1980s and '90s, ranging from the most atmospheric new age and space music to the harshest abrasions of electronic dance. Founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese in Berlin, the group has progressed through a full three dozen lineups (Froese being the only continuous member with staying power) and four distinct stages of development: the experimentalist minimalism of the late '60s and early '70s; stark sequencer trance during the mid- to late '70s, the group's most influential period; an organic form of instrumental music on their frequent film and studio work during the 1980s; and, finally, a more propulsive dance style, which showed Tangerine Dream with a sound quite similar to their electronic inheritors in the field of dance music.

Froese, born in Tilsit, East Prussia in 1944, was little influenced by music while growing up. Instead, he looked to the Dadaist and Surrealist art movements for inspiration, as well as literary figures such as Gertrude Stein, Henry Miller and Walt Whitman. He organized multimedia events at the residence of Salvador Dali in Spain during the mid-'60s and began to entertain the notion of combining his artistic and literary influences with music; Froese played in a musical combo called the Ones, which recorded just one single before dissolving in 1967. The first lineup of Tangerine Dream formed later that year, with Froese on guitar, bassist Kurt Herkenberg, drummer Lanse Hapshash, flutist Voker Hombach and Charlie Prince. The quintet aligned itself with contemporary American acid rock (the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane), and played around Berlin at various student events. The lineup lasted only two years, and by 1969 Froese had recruited wind player Conrad Schnitzler and drummer Klaus Schulze. One of the trio's early rehearsals, not originally intended for release, became the first Tangerine Dream LP when Germany's Ohr Records issued Electronic Meditation in June 1970. The LP was a playground for obtuse music-making -- keyboards, several standard instruments, and a variety of household objects were recorded and filtered through several effects processors, creating a sparse, experimentalist atmosphere.

Both Schulze and Schnitzler left for solo careers later in 1970, and Froese replaced them the following year with drummer Christopher Franke and organist Steve Schroeder. When Schroeder left a year later, Tangerine Dream gained its most stable lineup core when organist Peter Baumann joined the fold. The trio of Froese, Franke and Baumann would continue until Baumann's departure in 1977, and even then, Froese and Franke would compose the spine of the group for an additional decade.

On 1971's Alpha Centauri and the following year's Zeit, the trio's increased use of synthesizers and a growing affinity for space music resulted in albums that pushed the margin for the style. Atem, released in 1973, finally gained Tangerine Dream widespread attention outside Europe; influential British DJ John Peel named it his LP of the year, and the group signed a five-year contract with Richard Branson's Virgin Records. Though less than a year old, Virgin had already become a major player in the recording industry, thanks to the massive success of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells (widely known for its use in the film The Exorcist).

Tangerine Dream's first album for Virgin, Phaedra, was an milestone not only for the group, but for instrumental music. Branson had allowed the group free rein at Virgin's Manor Studios, where they used Moog synthesizers and sequencers for the first time; the result was a relentless, trance-inducing barrage of rhythm and sound, an electronic update of the late-'60s and early-'70s classical minimalism embodied by Terry Riley. Though mainstream critics were unsurprisingly hostile toward the album (it obviously made no pretense to rock & roll in any form), Phaedra broke into the British Top 20 and earned Tangerine Dream a large global audience.

The follow-ups Rubycon and the live Ricochet were also based on the blueprint with which Phaedra had been built, but the release of Stratosfear in 1976 saw the use of more organic instruments such as untreated piano and guitar; also, the group added vocals for 1978's Cyclone, a move which provoked much criticism from their fans. Both of these innovations didn't change the sound in a marked degree, however; their incorporation into rigid sequencer patterns continued to distance Tangerine Dream from the mainstream of contemporary instrumental music.

Baumann left for a solo career in 1978 (later founding the Private Music label), and was replaced briefly by keyboard player Steve Joliffe and then Johannes Schmoelling, another important member of Tangerine Dream who would stay until the mid-'80s. In 1980, the Froese/Franke/Schmoelling lineup was unveiled at the Palast der Republik in East Berlin, the first live performance by a Western group behind the Iron Curtain. Tangerine Dream also performed live on TV with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra one year later, and premiered their studio work on 1980s Tangram.

Mike Oldfield had shown the effectiveness of using new instrumental music forms as a bed for film on Tubular Bells, and in 1977 The Exorcist's director William Friedkin had tapped Tangerine Dream for soundtrack work on his film Sorcerer. By the time the new lineup stabilized in 1981, Hollywood was knocking on the band's door; Tangerine Dream worked on the soundtracks to more than 30 films during the 1980s, among them Risky Business, The Keep, Flashpoint, Firestarter, Vision Quest and Legend. If the idea of standalone electronic music hadn't entered the minds of mainstream America before this time, the large success of these soundtracks (especially Risky Business) entrenched the idea and proved enormously influential to soundtrack composers from all fields.

Despite all the jetting between Hollywood and Berlin, the group continued to record proper LPs and tour the world as well. Hyperborea, released in 1983, was their last album for Virgin, and a move to Zomba/Jive Records signaled several serious changes for the band during the late '80s. After the first Zomba release (a live concert recorded in Warsaw), 1985's Le Parc marked the first time Tangerine Dream had flirted with sampling technology. The use of sampled material was an important decision to make for a group which had always investigated the philosophy of sound and music with much care, though Le Parc was a considerable success -- both fans and critics calling it their best LP in a decade. Tyger, released in 1987, featured more vocals than any previous Tangerine Dream LP, and many of the group's fans were quite dispirited in their disfavor.

Schmoelling left in 1988, to be replaced by the classically trained Paul Haslinger and (for a brief time) Ralf Wadephul. Optical Race, released in 1988, was the first Tangerine Dream album to appear on old bandmate Peter Baumann's Private Music Records. Several more albums followed for the label, after which Haslinger left to work on composing filmscores in Los Angeles. His replacement, and the only other permanent member of Tangerine Dream since, was Edgar's son Jerome Froese (whose photo had graced the cover of several TD albums in the past). Another record-label change, to Miramar, preceded the release of 1992's Rockoon, which earned Tangerine Dream one of their seven total Grammy nominations. In the mid-'90s, the music of Tangerine Dream increasingly began to reflect the group's influence on a generation of electronica and dance artists. The duo continued to record and release live albums, remix albums, studio albums, and soundtracks at the rate of about two albums per year into the late '90s. Bringing back founding member Edgar Froese for concerts during this period, the live Inferno documented their performance of Dante's classic novel by the same name. ~ John Bush, All Music Guide [-] Hide

Composer Wendy Carlos spurred electronic music to new commercial heights during the late '60s, popularizing the synthesizer with the enormously successful Switched-On Bach album. Born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on November 14, 1939, Carlos pursued her M.A. in composition under Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening at Columbia University's famed... [+] Read More

Composer Wendy Carlos spurred electronic music to new commercial heights during the late '60s, popularizing the synthesizer with the enormously successful Switched-On Bach album. Born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on November 14, 1939, Carlos pursued her M.A. in composition under Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening at Columbia University's famed Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Following her graduation, she moved to Manhattan, where she found work as a recording engineer. In Manhattan, she met Dr. Robert Moog and, not long afterward, she began playing the Moog synthesizer. Carlos released her first recording, Switched-On Bach, in 1968. A showcase for the Moog synthesizer, Switched-On Bach interpreted the legendary composer's most renowned fugues and movements via state-of-the-art synth technology; purists were appalled, but the record captured the public's imagination and in time became the first classical album certified platinum by the RIAA. It also earned three Grammy Awards. A similar effort, The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, followed in 1969. In 1971, Carlos wrote the music for Stanley Kubrick's controversial film A Clockwork Orange, introducing the vocoder -- an electronic device designed to synthesize the human voice -- in her score. After 1976's Brandenburg Concertos 3-5, Carlos again worked with Kubrick, providing the score for his 1980 adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining. Two years later, she wrote music for the Disney film Tron. Subsequent efforts included a spoof of Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" recorded with Weird Al Yankovic and Switched-On Bach 2000. ~ All Music Guide, All Music Guide [-] Hide

Although Kraftwerk's first three albums were groundbreaking in their own right, Autobahn is where the group's hypnotic electronic pulse genuinely came into its own. The main difference between Autobahn and its predecessors is how it develops an insistent, propulsive pulse that makes the repeated rhythms and riffs of the shimmering electronic... [+] Read More

Although Kraftwerk's first three albums were groundbreaking in their own right, Autobahn is where the group's hypnotic electronic pulse genuinely came into its own. The main difference between Autobahn and its predecessors is how it develops an insistent, propulsive pulse that makes the repeated rhythms and riffs of the shimmering electronic keyboards and trance-like guitars all the more hypnotizing. The 22-minute title track, in a severely edited form, became an international hit single and remains the peak of the band's achievements -- it encapsulates the band and why they are important within one track -- but the rest of the album provides soundscapes equally as intriguing. Within Autobahn, the roots of electro-funk, ambient, and synth pop are all evident -- it's a pioneering album, even if its electronic trances might not capture the attention of all listeners. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide [-] Hide

Even before Carlos knew of a film project concerning A Clockwork Orange, the composer had begun work on a composition (Timesteps) based on the book. It's the best piece of music in the score (and one of the most famed in the early history of electronic music), fitting in well next to late-'60s minimalist works by Terry Riley as well as the... [+] Read More

Even before Carlos knew of a film project concerning A Clockwork Orange, the composer had begun work on a composition (Timesteps) based on the book. It's the best piece of music in the score (and one of the most famed in the early history of electronic music), fitting in well next to late-'60s minimalist works by Terry Riley as well as the emerging Tangerine Dream (pre-Phaedra). Carlos also pioneered the effect of synthesized vocals (known as a vocoder), and their eerie nature perfectly complemented scenes from the film. Much of the rest of A Clockwork Orange is filled with rather cloying synthesizer versions of familiar classical pieces (from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Purcell's Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary, Rossini's The Thieving Magpie) similar to Carlos' previous Switched-On Bach recordings. Still, it's worthwhile if only for Timesteps. A Clockwork Orange was originally released as a Warner Bros. soundtrack, containing only film cuts (which edited Timesteps down from 13 minutes to only four). Though Carlos released another version with more music, that issue was superseded in 1998 by the release of A Clockwork Orange: Complete Original Score by East Side Digital in the label's comprehensive reissue program. ~ John Bush, All Music Guide [-] Hide

The second offering from Cluster was recorded under the Kluster banner with the original line-up of Conrad Schnitzler, Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide

The second offering from Cluster was recorded under the Kluster banner with the original line-up of Conrad Schnitzler, Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide [-] Hide

The members of Tangerine Dream continued to hone their craft as pioneers of the early days of electronica, and the mid-'70s proved to be a time of prosperity and musical growth for the trio of Chris Franke, early member Peter Baumann, and permanent frontman Edgar Froese. The three of them had been delivering mysterious space records on a regular... [+] Read More

The members of Tangerine Dream continued to hone their craft as pioneers of the early days of electronica, and the mid-'70s proved to be a time of prosperity and musical growth for the trio of Chris Franke, early member Peter Baumann, and permanent frontman Edgar Froese. The three of them had been delivering mysterious space records on a regular basis, and their growing confidence with early synthesizers (the best that money could buy at the time) made them virtuosos of the genre, even as they kept things organic and unpredictable with gongs, prepared piano, and electric guitar. Rubycon has aged gracefully for the most part, making it a solid companion (and follow-up) to their 1974 album, Phaedra. The somewhat dated palette of sounds here never overshadow the mood: eerie psychedelia without the paisleys -- Pink Floyd without the rock. "Rubycon, Pt. 1" ebbs and flows through tense washes of echo and Mellotron choirs, as primitive sequencer lines bubble to the surface. "Pt. 2" opens in a wonderfully haunted way, like air-raid sirens at the lowest possible pitch, joined in unison by several male voices (someone in the band must have heard György Ligeti's work for 2001). Rising out of the murkiness, the synthesizer arpeggios return to drive things along, and Froese weaves his backwards-recorded guitar through the web without really calling too much attention to himself. The piece evolves through varying degrees of tension, takes a pit stop on the shoreline of some faraway beach, then ever so gradually unravels a cluster of free-form strings and flutes. The rest are vapors, your ears are sweating under your headphones, and the smoke has cleared from your bedroom. This is a satisfying ambient record from the pre-ambient era, too dark for meditation, and too good to be forgotten. ~ Glenn Swan, All Music Guide [-] Hide

Dedicated to Richard Wagner, Timewind is a 60-minute electronic expedition that is broken up into two half-hour tracks, "Bayreuth Return" and "Wahnfried 1883." The first 30 minutes involves icy pulsations and lengthy tonal flights that unnoticeably converge into each other. While one rhythm gains momentum, the other one slowly fades into a... [+] Read More

Dedicated to Richard Wagner, Timewind is a 60-minute electronic expedition that is broken up into two half-hour tracks, "Bayreuth Return" and "Wahnfried 1883." The first 30 minutes involves icy pulsations and lengthy tonal flights that unnoticeably converge into each other. While one rhythm gains momentum, the other one slowly fades into a bubbly electronic bath of bright swirls and meandering keyboard waves. Similar to early Tangerine Dream, the music here rises and falls above a distant sonic horizon, and the effect is truly mesmerizing. One specific flow can last for minutes, while small, detailed noises adhere themselves to the main electronic run. On the second track, more of the same far-off synthesized altering takes place, but the washes of keyboard become inoculated with a sharper, more precise sound. Longer notes build into resilient pieces with the same comforting result. This album will sketch a barren wasteland in the mind through the wispiness of the wind-like effects. Timewind serves as splendid mood music, and the ears are forever kept busy following Schulze's electronic wandering. ~ Mike DeGagne, All Music Guide [-] Hide