Klaus Schulze was born in Berlin in 1947, and started his career in music drumming in a band called Psy Free. In 1969 He met Edgar Froese from Tangerine Dream in the Zodiac Club, in what was then West Berlin, and was invited to join them for the recording of their 1970 debut album 'Electronic Meditation'. In 1970 he left TD to form Ash Ra Tempel with Manuel Göttsching and Hartmut Enke, with whom he was also in the band Eruption. In 1971, he again chose to leave a newly formed group after only one album, this time to mount a solo career. In 1972, Schulze released his debut album 'Irrlicht', with organ and a recording of an orchestra filtered almost beyond recognition. Despite the lack of synthesizers, this proto-ambient work is regarded as a milestone in electronic music, and his follow-up album in 1973, 'Cyborg', was in a similar style, but added the EMS VCS 3 synthesizer. From this point on Schulze has released some 40 albums, highlights of which are 1975's 'Timewind', 1976's 'Moondawn' (his first album to feature the Moog synthesizer), 1979's 'Dune', and 1995's double-album 'In Blue', which featured one long track called 'Return To The Tempel', with electric guitar contributions from his friend Manuel Göttsching of Ash Ra Tempel.
In 1976, he was drafted by Japanese percussionist and composer Stomu Yamashta to join his short-lived "supergroup" Go, which also featuring Steve Winwood, Michael Shrieve, and Al Di Meola, releasing two studio albums, 1976's 'Go', and 1977's 'Go Too', and the live album 'Go Live From Paris' in 1976. Throughout the 1970's he followed closely in the footsteps of Tangerine Dream, albeit with far lighter sequencer lines and a more reflective, dreamy sheen, not unlike the ambient music of his contemporary Brian Eno. On occasions he would also compose film scores, including horror and thriller movies such as 'Barracuda' in 1977, and 'Next Of Kin' in 1982. In 1977 he released the 'Mirage' album, which has been acclaimed by aficionado's of electronic music as one of his finest works. To promote the album he embarked on a short European tour, and his concert at The Janson University in Brussels, Belgium on 16 April 1977 was captured for posterity. The gig consisted of four long improvised pieces, and lasted a total of an hour and three-quarters. The sound quality is excellent, as is the music, and the only down-side is that there was an audience member with a persistent cough, who constantly interrupted the performance. However, with the aid of MVSEP I've managed to remove most of these annoyances, and while I was at it I removed the minimal applause at the end of each track, so we now have a studio quality recording of previously unreleased music from the much-missed Klaus Schulze.
Track listing
01 Janson 1
02 Janson 2
03 Janson 3
04 Janson 4
