Cyborg

Four full LP sides of Schulze creating worlds. The focus is organ and synth, with some orchestral and percussive fleshing out. He really lets each track unfold from what the synth patches do. When I talked elsewhere here about the German cohort respecting the machines and listening to them, this is what I meant. Kraftwerk were convinced they knew better than everybody, even the machines. This is the inverse, Schulze just drinking in the magical texture and resonance of his oscillators, letting it flow and feel and prosper. Doesn’t sound much like a cyborg, for what it’s worth. My favorite is side four, “Neronengesang”: dark and airborne. The feral “roars” are worth the price of admission.

Schulze’s first album of synthesizer music (1972’s Irrlicht featured organ and manipulated tapes of an orchestra), Cyborg is a double LP containing four 25-minute tracks. (The two-CD reissue adds a nearly hour-long bonus track.) There’s a powerful pulse running through “Conphära,” and the eerie hums and sudden stabs of “Synphära,” “Chromengel” and “Neuronengesang” take the music far beyond the ambient realms of Tangerine Dream, into powerful and often unsettling areas. Listen in the dark and you may find yourself looking nervously over your shoulder.