Conrad Schnitzler, early member of both Tangerine Dream and Kluster, must have found both of those oppressive bands too formulaic and stifling. By 1975, he had struck out on his own, producing music for films that had yet to be released or even made. Judging by the inner sleeve of the album, these are not films as we may recognise but were the products of his dabbling in the infancy of videography.
There are two volumes of these works, this being the second, and it contains material from the same source as the first volume, recently discovered master tapes dating from 1975. I think, bearing in mind that this is forty years ago and this is one man grappling with early electronics solely for the purpose of dovetailing with video images that only he could see and imagine, this is an extraordinary work. Clearly, he was the sort of restless, questing polymath who puts the lazy likes of me seriously to shame.
The long final track is a different kettle of fish. Its extreme duration allows Conrad to really push the listener and to a certain extent himself with the limits of what is tolerable. We have three distinct changes in feel over the track; the first ten minutes are proto-techno (bearing in mind this is 1975), the beat is fairly relentless and in the foreground an oscillator rises and falls about every forty-five seconds. It is just enough time for you to be drawn back in again each time, rather like riding a rollercoaster, the thrill continuing until the rhythm starts to slow, a sinister drone takes over and the waves return at a lower pitch. Things become random and scattered after this, the sound of foil being scrunched becomes oddly mesmeric until matters gradually drop out and the track ends as a skeleton of its former self.
-Mr Olivetti-