Monday 20 April 2015

Conrad Schnitzler ‎– "Rot" (Konrad Schnitzler Self-released ‎– KS 1002) 1973

To mark the birthday of thee most famous German (A.H.),here's one of thee most overlooked and not famous Germans,(K.S.).And in turn,back to the more intellectual end of the German electronic experience and what a load of Rot,or Red it is.How much more Red,or Rot, could a record sleeve be? None more? Well I've seen redder ones, but none by the Grandaddy, or Grossvater, of Industrial, Conrad Schnitzler. Although this early solo effort is not as proto-industrial as his previous work with Kluster, it is not yer standard Krautrock Kosmishe bore off,like Klaus Schulze,or Popol Vuh. 'Rot' concentrates on exploring and manipulating Electronic sound,rather than as accompaniment for some Utopian acid trip. No meetings with God here, just the raw reality of contorted analogue sound. Some beautiful noises twist and writhe in  the space of the two LP length sides here, one ironically entitled 'Krautrock'. A fine probing exploration this self released album is too;originally limited to just 500 copies,I expect it to comfortably pass 500 downloads very quickly,and so it should;this should be heard at least once.

Tracklist:
AMeditation
BKrautrock

DOWNLOAD this red meditation krautrot HERE!

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes! More Conrad please

Anonymous said...

Great upload, Jonny Zchivago. Have you ever seen this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC77b749ChM

Wolfgang Seidel plays sort of a DJ mix of Conrad Schnitzler tunes at the (usually very boring and club sound oriented) Boiler Room Berlin.

By the way, do you happen to have Joel Vandroogenbroek's "Biomechanoïd" from 1980?

Jonny Zchivago said...

bLOODY HELL, YES i DO.That bloke from Brainticket? I'll upload it soon for ya.

Anonymous said...

Yes, the Brainticket guy. Man, that would be awesome, thanks in advance!

Tayo said...

Vielen Dank JZ.

bill said...

Beautiful. Thankyou. Happy 420.

Jonny Zchivago said...

And a very merry 4/20 to you allllll!
its a kind of anti-christmas innit?

Jonny Zchivago said...

Gern geschehen.

Jonny Zchivago said...

Well, here's Biomechanoid by that Brainticket guy,complete with H R Geiger Artwork:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/5bfm5chzetw8yjh/Biomechanoid.rar

Njoy.

Alan Burns said...

So much to love about this one. Even among his contemporaries, Schnitzler was miles ahead with this sort of sound.

The track titles on this one are brilliant as well: 'Meditation', when the aural content could scarcely be less meditative (see also the first T. Dream album, which Schnitzler enlivens wonderfully); and 'Krautrock', beating Faust to the punch by a year in taking the piss out of the genre tag that they were being lumped with.

Gotta get hold of 'Blau' and 'Grun' next... apparently they're in much the same vein as this one. Been listening to early 80s Schnitzler as well in recent weeks - Auf Dem Schwarzen Kanal is the absolute dogs bollocks, a true monster of a track that should've been bigger than Kraftwerk.

Jonny Zchivago said...

I do have Blau and Grun(cd version).as well as Zug,and Gelb.I'll upload these,purely because they are great,as well as DIY in their original versions.

Alan Burns said...

Nice one!

You're also right on the money with Schnitzler being so proto-industrial, I keep hearing uncanny little bits of TG-type sounds all over the place in these albums. Listened to a bit of 'Kluster-Eruption' the other day, and was just waiting on G P-O coming in with 'It was a normal day in Manchester... Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were drinking German wiiiine'...

Anonymous said...

Again, thank you, Jonny Zchivago, for Biomechanoïd!

bill said...

Thanks +1 for Biomech! Fab.

Jonny Zchivago said...

Cheers all.I am buoyed by the enthusiasm for this german electronic stuff. I'm enjoying these records myself too.I've even been playing Klaus Schulze and some TD.Such fun. makes a change from endless drones.

Chris S said...

In agreement with all of the above! Thanks Jonny!

the saucer people said...

Wow, the early Asmus Tietchens cassette releases and now the Grossvater of them all! Yeah, this is such a great album, I grabbed a few of the Captain Trip reissues including this one a while back.

As you say, this is Kosmische Jim, but not as we know it - like all truly great artists, it takes a generation or two to have the perspective and distance on just how original and paradigm-shifting their art was and when you listen to the music he was making throughout the seventies, you realise just how ahead of the game KS was.

To be honest, while I have always loved German music like Neu! Cluster and Can (which I imagine stems from hearing the female fronted NDW of Malaria! and X Mal Xmal Deutschland on John Peel as a young hormonally charged teenager) and could cynically smile when the 'Kosmische' revival occurred a while ago with the Soul Jazz compilations - I must admit I did not really pay any attention to Kluster and Konrad till maybe five or six years ago and it has taken that long to really get a grasp on just how much music he made and how even now I have still only heard a fraction of it and it just gets better the more you listen to it - give it another couple of years and no doubt the great man will be having a Soul Jazz compilation of his own!

---

I'm a big fan of 'library' music so it is great to see so much love for Brainticket man Joel Vandroogenbroeck's Biomechanoïd which was the first release on the German library label Coloursound (he actually released a shed load of albums on this label under various names like Eric Vann, V.D.B. Joel, J.V.D.B etc (most if not all are floating around the blog universe).

Anyway, the Belgian label Aguirre Records (no prizes or guessing where their inspiration comes from) reissued the album in 2014 and again in 2015 - here is a 320 digital download of said album for anyone interested:

mediafire.com/download/t129zhzu8lna58x/JV_-_BioMech_(Coloursound_CS1_Germany_1980).rar

If the copyright bots block it at MF, just close the page down and re-open it, works every time for some weird reason.

the saucer people said...

Speaking of early KS/CS music, I imagine all of you have already grabbed this but just in case you have not, some kind soul has done a FLAC/WAV rip of the 10CD super limited edition of Conrad Schnitzler & Wolfgang Seidel - 10 kW/h (1973-1977)

And the kind souls over at Wet Spots.. erm Wet Dreams affiliate Electronic Orgy have posted it

http://electronicorgy.blogspot.com.es/2015/04/konrad-wolfgang-10-kwh-1973-1977.html

As you can imagine, it is just jaw-dropping in its variety and intensity (note, the USB '11th Disc' was recorded was recorded 08 January 2010.)

Jonny Zchivago said...

I also had this unhealthy attraction to NDW birds as a teenager,but concurrently had already discovered the krautrock classics from the olden days.
Fancied that Anja bird somewhat,but look at her now and reckon the other Frauleins in the band were more attractive. Flash a bit of blond(bleached) hair at an 18 year old and he gets the Horn,says the marketing man at 4AD.
I still get a twitcher with Women of the SS.....even though i know that the real women of the SS were the worst kind of munter imaginable....hang on????...DOWN BOY!

the saucer people said...

Glad to hear I wasn't the only one who fell prey to the 4AD marketing men as regards the X Mal bevvy of Fräulein lovelies!

I first saw them when I was 14 or 15 at the Sheffield Leadmill and though Anja was certainly the classic Teutonic temptress, I have vague memories of staring all night at the keyboard player, Fiona Sangster, so much so, that I do remember her giving me a contemptuous scowl (probably thinking why is that weird small English schoolboy staring at me so much?).

Actually now I come to think about it, between the X Mal and Malaria! Fräuleins and the girl who played Christiane F. in the film as well as Christiane F herself in the Decoder film, I must have spent a large percentage of my teenage years obsessing about German female artists -ah the joy of strange teenage obsessions...

And as for the cinematic she-wolves of the SS... down boy indeed! (with deepest apologies to the anti-fascist part of my brain who is already flooding me with shame neurons as I type...)

Jonny Zchivago said...

Its strange is sexuality? I wouldn't describe myself as a Nazi,although many people have and still do in these venerated columns; but they did have the best uniforms,(thanks to Hugo Boss),the best Tanks, great names for stuff; Panzerfaust, Volksturm. A great logo. And a league of women who were frequently filmed doing erotic exercises to taunt us repressed English. If you notice, a lot of them ss Birds had hairy armpits.
I assume all this leads to a (not so) deeply supressed Sado-masochistic angle.....and why not?
I was lucky enough to 'cop off' with a east german female,and yes, she had hairy armpits,liked einsturzende neubauten,and was called Uschi.Unfortunately she refused to wear a swastika armband, fishnets, and pvc bra and panties.(Standard SS uniform wasn't it?).
This is where I am usually branded a Holocaust denier or something equally preposterous!
Definitely DOWN BOY!

tsanakas said...

Conrad Schnitzler, an old friend of mine, was AND IS the GOD of ELECTRONICA.