Conrad Schnitzler – Silber/Gold

Bureau B

Silber

When most people were glam(ming) it up in the mid seventies Mr. Conrad was studio tinkering with possible futures. Messing with the building blocks of rhythm, harmony and melody  to bleed  a snakey elixir that formed this sixty minute noir-riddled masterwork, suitably blighted in whir kittens and sci-fi weevils. The tracks, frustratingly untitled (as they are on Gold), ooze with encroaching darkness fish and elasticated light. Circuitry floating buoyant bayonets of percussion and cog-scarred arabesques,  later telepathically implanted into Aphex Twin‘s skull, seeding  comparison, evolution, gloop-swooping suspensions feeding the circle game for generations to come.

Gold

Clocking in at a further sixty minutes,  Gold continues the journey from ’76 through to ’78. Penned (I like to think ) when the majority were John Travolta(ing) it to the ceiling in tight-fitting white suits, this is more melodically inclined than Silber, with lots of addictive threads shining through. Tracks that bounce in Chinese banquets and finger-jutting compounds, a Jarre-like parade of waving flags and nodding Churchill doggies. Schnitzler is deliberately groping towards something more solidly kinetic, beat-bound, interspersing  his curiosity with sketchy down-tempo experiments. Rooting through the decaying composites of their DNA, the trembling ivories,  dripping magnetisms, all that eerie residue, charity shopping for interesting combinations to reshuffle into the next sequential spine.

A lot of water has certainly flowed under the bridge since these first saw the light of day, but without a doubt there’s still many a lesson to be heard amongst these wizardy electronics.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-

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