Michael Brückner Klaustrophilia (Extended Edition) (2021)
Updated: Dec 29, 2022
“One cannot find a better musical homage to Klaus Schulze than this album so well done that even me I thought I was listening KS”
CD1 (76:14)
1 Klaustrophilia Part 1(11:08)
2 Klaustrophilia Part 2 (19:01)
3 Klaustrophilia Part 3 (14:05)
4 Klaustrophilia Part 4 (15:08)
5 Klaustrophilia Part 5 (8:54)
6 Klaustrophilia Part 6 (7:57)
CD2 (77:00)
7 Klaustrophilia Part 7 (10:59)
8 Klaustrophilia Part 8 (25:40)
9 Klaustrophilia Part 9 (13:19)
10 Klaustrophilia Part 10 (18:24)
11 Klaustrophilia Part 11 (8:35)
(CD-r/DDL 153:14) (V.F.)
(Berlin School, Prog ambient music)
Composed a music to accompany the release of a book on Klaus Schulze! Hmmm… Who would I ask? Michael Brückner? Without a shadow of a doubt. Think about it! Let's say that over the past ten years or so… Which artist has stood out the most in the field of Berlin School's style EM? An artist who year after year offers one or more albums where long improvised movements, like à la Belle Époque, are inundated with synth solos. An artist who seems to be involved in all projects while lending his music to the skillful hands of Tommy Betzler. An artist who, like Klaus Schulze, would bend over backwards to satisfy his audience. The very creative Michael Brückner meets these criteria, and well beyond. And this mega-album breathing the creativity and the daring genius of Klaus Schulze was conceived in one of his creative turbulence that the musician from Mainz knows regularly. Imagined and delivered in 2020, in the course of 5 big albums, KLAUSTROPHILIA was first designed to accompany Olaf Lux's book, Violins Don't Grow on Trees - The Life and Work of Klaus Schulze. The first draft, including a CD was released in November 2020. I was lucky to have a copy, but I did not know in what context to review the album since it was available only to accompany the sales of the book. I told Michael about it and I understood that there would be new developments in early 2021. And now this 2CD-R HQ edition comes out in early February 21. Two CDs for more than 2:30 hrs. of music on the same subject, is it too much? I invite your eyes to read what my ears have heard.
After a typical overture to the long movements of the retro Berlin School, it is through long bellowing coming from the void that the musicality of Klaustrophilia Part 1 takes shape. Layers bursting of reverberations extend this prismatic ambience specific to the label of the genre whose spin drying allows filaments growing in the hums of soft chthonic voices. And more than 110 seconds later, a line of the sequencer sculpts a beginning of rhythm zigzagging in perfumes of Tangerine Dream (yes-yes). Minimalist, this staggering rhythm roams corridors where the essences of Schulze gradually invade the ambiences, especially when the percussions, which fall around the 5th minute, reshape Klaustrophilia Part 1 in a good electronic rock of KS's Dreams years. All that's missing is the fluty mellotron breaths, and the illusion would be perfect. Klaustrophilia Part 2 is one of the atmospheric titles that gradually turn into something pleasant to discover. Beats and their echoes, strolling through an introduction sewn into the thread of dreams, intersect with scattered jingles. This is enough to create a membrane strong enough to install synth solos that come and go in a vision of discreti