Conrad Schnitzler
Conrad Schnitzler (1937 to 2011) was an institution of German electronic music for forty years. A student of Joseph Beuys in Düsseldorf in the mid 1960s, he opened the Zodiak Free Arts Lab in Berlin in 1968, played on Tangerine Dream's first album, Electronic Meditation, then left to form Kluster with Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius. From the early 1970s he worked alone with synthesizers and tape, releasing Rot, Blau and a stream of cassettes sold by hand and by mail; his Cassetten Konzerte, in which he played back and mixed several tapes at once, turned every concert into a new piece.
Conrad Schnitzler (1937 to 2011) was an institution of German electronic music for forty years. A student of Joseph Beuys in Düsseldorf in the mid 1960s, he opened the Zodiak Free Arts Lab in Berlin in 1968, played on Tangerine Dream's first album, Electronic Meditation, then left to form Kluster with Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius. From the early 1970s he worked alone with synthesizers and tape, releasing Rot, Blau and a stream of cassettes sold by hand and by mail; his Cassetten Konzerte, in which he played back and mixed several tapes at once, turned every concert into a new piece.
Slow Motion
Schnitzler decelerates: long, hovering electronic tones and slow-turning sequences that reward patience. 'Slow Motion' is among the more meditative corners of his vast output, cold, spacious and quietly mesmerising.
Filmmusik 2
The second volume of Schnitzler's cinema for the mind's eye. Sequencer motifs and alien textures sketch scene after scene of electronic drama: the restless imagination of a true pioneer, drawn from his boundless tape archive.
Filmmusik 1
Imaginary soundtracks from the Kluster co-founder. 'Filmmusik 1' collects vivid electronic scenes, sinister, playful and cosmic by turns, music for films that never existed, from one of Germany's boldest sonic minds.
Congratulacion
More from the inexhaustible archive of Berlin's electronic anarchist. Schnitzler stacks pulsing sequences and caustic tone-colours into restless, self-contained machines of sound: uncompromising, hypnotic and utterly his own.
Conditions of the Gas Giant
Previously unreleased tapes from the Kluster co-founder and restless electronic pioneer. Cold, pulsing sequencer patterns and alien tone-colours map an imaginary planet: raw, hypnotic and unmistakably Schnitzler, from his vast archive.
Conal
Conal arrived in 1981 on the Norwegian independent Uniton Records, in a run of 4,000 copies, at a point when Conrad Schnitzler was long past being a German secret. The founding member of Kluster and a brief early presence in Tangerine Dream had spent the 1970s building a body of work largely outside the record industry, issuing a torrent of self-released cassettes and LPs whose titles almost all open with the syllable Con, completed by a second that points somewhere. By the start of the 1980s th…
Nachtfahrt
*150 copies limited edition* Here CON presents an uneasy experimental piece exploring obscure liquid sonic realms and their contents. Schnitzler continues to take the familiar and transform it into something unrecognizably warped. Nachtfahrt is a deeply hypnotic album. CON guides this grim tale through numerous moods, CONveying a transition from dreamy weightlessness to noir tension.
LichtPunkte
*150 copies limited edition* LichtPunkte is a dense work, enhanced by inventive arrangements and powerful narrative ideas so abundant that the album could serve as a launchpad for several more works. There are spaces filled with melodies that float and hover, and there are layers that are intricate and full of forward movement. CON's drive and focused creative energy make this work an outstanding example of the 'Berlin Kosmische Schule'.
Consequenz III
On Consequenz III, Conrad Schnitzler and Wolf Sequenza (Wolfgang Seidel) drive their most “pop‑adjacent” collaboration to a razor’s edge. Eleven short rhythmic études balance strict, serial electronics against near‑song structures, turning drum‑tight patterns and sequenced pulses into miniature, dance‑optional experiments in post‑Berlin‑school repetition.
Cas-Con II
As part of our series "Experimental Electronic Underground GDR", we are very pleased to be able to make a very special recording available again. On the evening of 3.9.1986, the privately announced and illegal concert took place in the Erlöserkirche in East Berlin/GDR. Montgomery mixed Schnitzler's music live from the tapes. Jörg Thomasius recorded the performance and released the recording in 1987 on his own underground cassette label Krötenkassetten. The elaborately restored original recording…
Con-Struct
The German pioneer of electronic music Conrad Schnitzler (1937-2011) amassed a vast archive of sounds for use in combination with each other in live performances. In 2011 the idea came up of con-structing new compositions, not remixes, from this material. The Con-Struct series was born. This release features con-structions by Baal & Mortimer who writes about it in the linernotes: It was exciting to break open existing material, peeling something out of the past and thus transgressing it and open…
Rot (CD)
First 1997 CD re-issue on Plate Lunch of the wild electronic first album from 1973 former Tangerine Dream / Kluster memember and one of the most peculiar and adventurous electronic explorers of the German scene.
Zug (LP)
First vinyl re-issue on M=minimal of the very rare privately released "red cassette" from 1974 of minimal rhythmic/floating electronic music by former Tangerine Dream / Kluster memember and one of the most peculiar and adventurous electronic explorers of the German scene.
Auf Dem Schwarzen Kanal (12"EP)
Very rare original 1980 EP on RCA with four pieces of NDW/avantgarde-dance electronic music by former Tangerine Dream / Kluster memember and one of the most peculiar and adventurous electronic explorers of the German scene.
Contrasts (2 tapes)
1988 double-cassette set on Auricle released in an edition of 200 hand-numbered copies by the two outstanding Berlin electronic musicians.
Deutsche Elektronische Musik 2 (Record A) (2LP)
First volume of the Soul Jazz's superb introduction to experimental German rock and electronic Musik from 1971 to 1983, a 2013 2LP set featuring A.R. & Machines, Can, Roedelius, Michael Rother, Popol Vuh, Michael Hoenig, Agitation Free, D.A.F., Harald Grosskopf, Amon Düül II, Conrad Schnitzler & Wolf Sequenza, Bröselmaschine, Eno Moebius & Roedelius, Gila, Wolfgang Riechmann.
Windmills
*150 copies limited edition* On the website fancymoon.com, CON himself describes 'Windmills' as Electro Cosmic Metal Industrial. It comprises 33 tracks and represents a continuous body of electronic music. The album was recorded and performed in the same vein as 'III Kugeln', serving as its predecessor, and is made up of four “solo electric pieces”: Sack, Turbine, Raumknoten, and Fenster. As FdW noted in his review of 'III Kugeln', this is not ambient, not dance music, not musique concrète, not …
Upwards
*150 copies limited edition* The music on 'Upwards' is constantly surprising and as always, it's expansive and incredibly captivating. The work comprises 19 "electric miniature" compositions, and one could say they all lead nowhere – and this is true, because CON has always valued the journey itself rather than the destination. It is intensely rich and beautifully remastered by Guillermo Pizarro at Vitória Régia Studios.
No Borders (LP)
Rare and great post-industrial experimental compilation edited by the Haters' GX Jupitter-Larsen presenting very obscure Canadian projects available only here - Si Monkey, .08, Xyster and L.C.D. Grey - plus the outstanding Italian master M.B, privately released in a numbered edition in 1982. With booklet.
Rr·concerrt
*150 copies limited edition* Like all concerts by Conrad Schnitzler, this one is unpredictable and always captivatingly beautiful. A masterfully crafted mix of four solo works, all located in close proximity to the RR album itself. There are few such works in the entire discography, and most of them are included in our top 100.