Conrad Schnitzler

Conrad Schnitzler's green album (aka Grün), originally released in 1981 on Edition Block. "Schnitzler's tracks in the 1970s were lengthy and shared a musical pattern which varied only minimally. Hence the green album has just one track on each side and any changes in melodic structure are subtle in nature. Both pieces are very much typical of Schnitzler in style, but less so tonally. An analog rhythm machine ploughs almost brutally through the astoundingly delicate electronic veil of 'Der Riese und seine Frau' ('The Giant and His Wife'), bearing little resemblance to Schnitzler's usual sequencer cascades. The second piece, created four years later, sounds completely different. Its title may be similarly poetic, but 'Bis die Blaue Blume blüht' ('Until the Blue Flower Blooms') transports the listener into another world altogether. A diminutive melody, consisting of just seven notes, becomes a kind of mantra, repeated with only the slightest variation until the end, as clusters of tiny sonic meteorites constantly swirl around, sparkling in all the colors of the spectrum. The composition is carried and held together by a permanent sequencer figure, brilliantly enhancing the catchy tune. Listening to the rhythmic-harmonic character and taking into account the year in which it was made (1980), it is fair to assume that this was recorded in Peter Baumann's Paragon Studio, like the Con album. The similarities are impossible to ignore. It is a well documented fact that Peter Baumann often allowed Schnitzler to work in his studio during this period. On the LP version, 'Bis die Blaue Blume blüht' can be played at 33 or 45 rpm, revealing a wholly different piece of music at the chosen speed. Both speeds are available as two tracks on the CD version. For a composer to come up with something like this by design speaks of great artistry -- or perhaps of great fortuity. Presumably the former. Schnitzler most likely experimented to this end and set up the recording in the studio to allow for both playback options -- an unusual device for the early 1980s and further evidence of his capacity for transcending artistic borders. The borders between Schnitzler's creative periods are too nebulous to be sure that the green album represents the coda of his '70s music. Still, Schnitzler's musical essence of the decade is in evidence as aural concentrate on both pieces. Not, however, as a recapitulatory review, but as a foundation, fertile ground in which Schnitzler's art would thrive in the decades which followed." --Asmus Tietchens