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Revision as of 20:57, 16 January 2006 by Endomion (talk | contribs) (→Classic Period: - stratosfear has a write up)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)The Berlin School of electronic music, or just Berlin School, was a development of electronic music in the 1970s characterized by soaring electric guitar or synthesizer melodies in high-register accompanied by complex, shifting sequencer bass ostinatos. The lead soloist's warm, human improvisations were counterpoint to the cold, robotic precision of the bassline. Sound effects such as wind, and washes of Mellotron choir, flute, or strings were often added for color. Most works were instrumental, vocals were used sparingly.
Vintage Berlin School tracks typically ran about twenty or thirty minutes, filling one side of a vinyl LP. The genre was so thoroughly identified with the long form that a general shift to shorter pieces in the 1980's seemed to herald the death of the movement. After the coming of the compact disc "retro" artists were no longer limited by the need to flip over a vinyl record. Some newer works run continuously as a single track for almost 80 minutes.
An outgrowth of Krautrock, Berlin School was so named because most of its early practitioners were based out of Berlin, Germany. The genre's identification with "space music" made it distinct from the more industrial or dance-oriented Dusseldorf School which included Can, Cluster, Kraftwerk, and Neu!. Berlin School was a relatively self-contained style that has not had nearly the impact on music in general that Kraftwerk has had on synth pop, but Ambient House, Trip-Hop, and the 1997 variety of Electronica have their roots in Berlin School.
Proto-Berlin School
Berlin School sounds very much like the theme to the UK television show Doctor Who, which was constructed from tape recordings of oscillators in 1963, years before the invention of the Moog synthesizer. In 1971 Pink Floyd recorded an instrumental titled One Of These Days for the LP Meddle that sounded very similar to the Dr. Who theme (but used two bass guitars interacting with a tape delay system). Its use of wind and other incidental sound effects foreshadowed (or possibly inspired) the Berlin sound.
Former Tangerine Dream drummer Klaus Schulze recorded the track Totem in 1973 but did not release it until 1975 in Picture Music (after Tangerine Dream's seminal Phaedra charted well in the United Kingdom). Totem featured resonant synthesizer patches (combined with tape echo) that resembled the sounds produced by his later sequencer work. In 1986 Tangerine Dream released Green Desert which they had recorded in 1973 and left on the shelf like Schulze did. It contained the track "Astral Voyager" which was tentative Berlin School in the vein of "Convention of the 24" from TD's White Eagle LP from 1982. Green Desert therefore (despite some glossy 80's post-production work on the original material) was the first Berlin School recording.
Classic Period
Analog sequencers were used by Pete Townsend on The Who's Baba O'Reilly in 1971 and by Pink Floyd on 1973's Dark Side of the Moon, but the classic era of Berlin School commenced with the release of Phaedra by Tangerine Dream in 1974, their first on Virgin Records, and closed with Hyperborea by the same group in 1983. Bandmember Christopher Franke is credited with turning the Modular Moog's control-voltage analog sequencer with its matrix of shorting pins into a live performance instrument and launching the Berlin sound.
In 1975 Tangerine Dream more or less reigned alone with a studio album, Rubycon, and the live album Ricochet. Klaus Schulze delivered the popular but transitional LP Timewind. It contained the side-long track Beyreuth Return recorded in one take using Franke's technique with the pins, but the sequencing failed to structure the piece.
Moondawn by Klaus Schulze in 1976 was his first real entry in this genre, joined by Jean-Michel Jarre with Oxygene in the same year. Tangerine Dream delivered a studio work, Stratosfear, and the soundtrack to the film Sorcerer.
In 1977 Ashra (Manuel Göttsching) released New Age of Earth, along with Michael Hoenig's Departure from the Northern Wasteland, and Vangelis' Spiral. Tangerine Dream toured the United States and released a double album, Encore, with three sides of Berlin School and a side of proto-Ambient.
Tangerine Dream drew some fire from fans for resorting to vocals on 1978's Cyclone, but "Madrigal Meridian" (which occupies the entire second half of that disk) is a slab of pure Berlin School similar to the shorter "Frank Herbert" track from Klaus Schulze' classic double LP X. Jean-Michel Jarre's Equinoxe relies on the sequencer for more than half of the album.
Each artist had a unique signature. Tangerine Dream's extremely complex sequences used a variety of tone colors. Jarre's galloping sequences were heavy on the bass. Michael Hoenig's sequences constantly and steadily changed, resembling some of Philip Glass's minimalist work. Klaus Schulze preferred his sequences to be an octave or two higher than Hoenig's, shorter and more hypnotic.
Latter-Day Berlin School
Between 1979 and 1984 Tangerine Dream exhausted most of the possibilites of this genre and began to record more accessible, short-form "new age" tracks for albums such as Exit, Le Parc and Underwater Sunlight. Jean-Michel Jarre delivered his ultimate sequencer statement with Magnetic Fields in 1981 and then began to record rock-oriented tracks that would please more fans in a concert setting. As the technology improved and MIDI came into the picture, musicians began to see synthesizers as a means to have the sounds of traditional instruments available at the touch of a button. It became apparent that the Berlin sound had arisen from work-arounds to technological limitations that were rapidly disappearing.
But some newer artists began to deliberately record in the mode of Berlin School from a genuine affection and budding nostalgia for the genre. In 1988, five years after Tangerine Dream left the Virgin label, Wavestar released their acclaimed CD Moonwind, perhaps the apex of the genre. The clean picked-bass and synthesizer trills of "Chase the Evening" distilled the Berlin sound to its essence. Even Tangerine Dream continues to send an occasional nod in that direction, such as the outstanding track "Culpa Levis" from Dream Mixes 2: TimeSquare in 1997. Modern interpretations of the 1970's Berlin School sound are created by "retro" artists such as AirSculpture, Arcane, Dweller at the Threshold, Ken Martin, Radio Massacre International, Wolfram der Spyra and Under The Dome.
References
Various contributors, All Music Guide to Electronica, Backbeat Books, San Francisco, 2001.
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