KLAUS SCHULZE - IRLICHT @ 50

Released in August of 1972, the debut solo album from Klaus Schulze, Irrlicht, is marking half a century on the planet this month. The album's complete title is: Irrlicht: Quadrophonische Symphonie für Orchester und E-Maschinen (German: "Will-o'-the-wisp: Quadraphonic Symphony for Orchestra and Electronic Machines"). Though Schulze may be known as a synthesizer master, there are actually none used on this album. The sounds all originate from a manipulated recording of an orchestra rehearsal and tonalities extracted from a broken and modified electronic organ.

The initial conceptions for the album arose while Schulze was still part of Tangerine Dream, but he came into conflict over the direction of the project with Edgar Froese and, failing to resolve their issues, Schultze left the band to work on it as a solo effort. Because he was still under contract with Krautrock label Ohr due to his association with Tangerine Dream, the label insisted that his solo recordings were covered under that contract and they released the album. This was actually not a problem for Schulze as the experimental nature of the recordings would have been a hard sell if he’d had to shop them around to other labels, so the fact that the record came out at all was to his benefit.

Stylistically, the music combines elements of Musique concrète with electronic drones in a manner which was a precursor to what would eventually become ambient music. It is alien and austere and evocative of science fiction vistas and atmospheres.

MICHAEL NESMITH - AND THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMIN'

 

Released in August of 1972, Michael Nesmith’s fifth post-Monkees solo album is celebrating its 50th anniversary this month. It was an album built on a whim, but it became one of Nesmith’s most nuanced and eloquent statements.

After three LPs with his “First National Band” and one with his restructured “Second National Band”, Nesmith was band-less when it came time for his next album, save for his stalwart pedal steel guitar master, Orville "Red" Rhodes. Red was the constant at Mike’s side throughout all the incarnations of the National Band and would remain so until his untimely passing in the mid 1990s.

With RCA Records breathing down Nesmith’s neck looking for some “hits”, Mike was feeling the weight, but he wasn’t about to try slapping together another band. Instead, he had the inspiration to go in another direction altogether. For this next record, he’d keep it simple with just Red on the steel guitar and himself on vocals and acoustic guitar. And by gosh, that’s just what they did for the whole album. In deference to RCA’s pleading for hits, he duly titled the album “And the Hits Just Keep on Comin’”, in a typically ironic, tongue-in-cheek move born from the frustration of lackluster sales which were the fate of his previous solo albums.

Sadly, at the time of its release, it continued the trend of being ignored in the charts and by the record buying public, but it would not go without eventual vindication. In the years that have followed its release, it has steadily gained stature within his solo canon as one of his most heartfelt, elegant and haunting releases. Its simplicity and restraint serve to highlight the beauty of the songwriting and Rhodes’ steel guitar dreaminess lifts it all into the heavens of sublime perfection. What began as a move of desperation resulted in an artistic triumph. Listening to it against the backdrop of the modern world, it has a timelessness that makes it one of Nesmith’s most important works.