Inside Out U.S.
2000
Ballett 1
About This Album
Ballett 1 is the first of four works to have been composed and recorded by Klaus Schulze after the passing of his mother in 1998. It and the other three volumes in the series were included on the now deleted ten-disc Contemporary Works I box set. It is one of those pieces in which Schulze moves dangerously close to classical music. He's flirted with it before with various qualitative results. There are three pieces -- or movements if you like -- that make up this nearly 77-minute work. Schulze manages all the keyboards, naturally, from sequencers and samplers to multi-chordal synths. Indeed, as the work begins with its use of sampled voices spouting gibberish, one thinks immediately of Jean Michel Jarre's classic Zoolook, but no dice; they pass very quickly and the endless chord patterns begin, accompanied by Wolfgang Tiepold's cello. The entire section (entitled "Getting Near") sounds like an intro whose passages fold in on themselves in order to begin the cycle anew. This is followed by the dramatic shift of "Slightly Touched," which lasts just under half an hour. There is a dynamic shift here as Tiepold's cello becomes the main focus of its beginning, with Schulze playing quietly and purposefully underneath, creating timbres and sonorities for the cellist to work from.
Track List (try tracks 1 and 3)

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