KLAUS SCHULZE: Le Moulin de Daudet (1994/2005)

“Well...I might be wrong but I never felt that Schulze was really at ease with the ambiences of this movie”

1 The Beginning/The Delegates 4:03

2 Mother Sadness 3:01

3 The Loss of the Factory 1:56

4 The Youth 1:46

5 Fiday's Departure 00:48

6 The Mill of Maître Cornille 1:46

7 Maître Cornille in the Fields 1:08

8 Folk Dance 1:27

9 The Discovery of Maître Cornille Secret 1:48

10 Joy Of Maître Cornille/Garden & Youth (Reprise) 3:14

11 Landscape/Way to the Old People 2:36

12 Old People's Piano 3:25

13 Old People's Farewell 2:00

14 Exodus 4:50

15 Le Petit Dauphin I 5:29

16 Le Petit Dauphin II 1:34

17 First Church Sequence 1:59

18 Second Church Sequence & Organ 6:55

19 St. Pierre 2:15

29 Paradise & Inferno 5:53

21 Finale 4:57

22 The Ion Perspective 15:58 Studio recording from 2004 (Bonus Track)

Virgin France (1994)

(CD 63:00) (V.F.) **½*** Revisited Records (2005)

(CD 79:09) (V.F.)

(OST, Symphonic EM)

Here is one of the most unknown albums to the catalog and by the fans of Klaus Schulze. Even so it respects the ideologies of the musical sampling that he experiments from the beginning of the 90's. LE MOULIN DE DAUDET is the 3rd soundtrack made by the German synthesist. And if its 63 minutes of music would have grown better in one big track, instead of 21 very short ones, this album would have doubtless received better criticisms. So much among the fans and of the so musical experts of that time. Except that instead we find about ten tracks which hardly passed the 2 minutes time, making almost impossible to structure the visionary frenzies of the German master. And nevertheless, this soundtrack contains the same symphonic aura which flows on the works of KS for the last years. It's an unequal opus which contains beautiful small musical pieces, but we feel that he doesn't feel at ease here. There are still a lot of flutes, ghost melodies and jerky ambiences with sonic prisms always set up by the MIDI technology, like in Mother Sadness and its weeping cello. A title that I like and, like several others, suffers of a short time. We feel that Schulze has some difficulty identifying well the ambiences of shorter tracks, exception made of The Discovery of Maître Cornille Secret, noticed that melted to Joy of Maître Cornille/Garden & Youth (Reprise) it would have would have allowed to deepen better these ambiences. The same goes for Le Petit Dauphin I and II. But overall, I still have this impression that he seems to be uncomfortable at the idea of creating a music that sticks to feelings other than his. However, the adventure Angst and Body Love went very well and turned out to be successful. But at the end, the music here doesn't seem to fit that much to the atmosphere of the movie, that I watched in fast forward mode if I want to be honest.

Having said that, Revisited Records has re-released LE MOULIN DE DAUDET in a very nice 3 panel digipack, as always, including a small notebook which includes extracts of interview, explanatory memorandums of Schulze on the music, new photos as well as a bonus track issued from a studio session in 2004. The Ion Perspective was initially composed as promotional music to promote the Alesis equipment during the electronic fair of Frankfurt in April 2004. In short, this is the Klondike to every fan of Klaus Schulze! In a mood oscillating between a progressive techno and a hollow jazz, Schulze mystifies the listener with a synth style trumpet which makes waltz and which makes spin solos on a rhythm supported by good dynamic percussions, a good bass line and an great sequencer modulated in loops. It's an interesting track which is worth the spending if we know how to shop on the Internet. Roughly, it's not with LE MOULIN DE DAUDET that one becomes a fan of Schulze's music, but The Ion Perspective could help it understand why!

Sylvain Lupari (February 16th, 2016) ***½**

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