My Podcast: The Holmes Archive of Electronic Music
My blog for the Bob Moog Foundation.
Thank you to everyone who downloaded and streamed the December podcast featuring holiday music played on various electronic instruments. The holiday podcasts rank among my most popular. In looking back over the years of the podcast—I began producing it in 2020—I like to review the most popular episodes overall. This, of course, gives me information that I can use as I plan future episodes. At the top of the list of most downloaded episodes is The BBC Shipping Forecast Soundscape from July 2023. Following close behind are a number of episodes covering a host of styles, genres, and technologies. Symphonic rock always scores high, the history or drum machines has been in my top ten since 2021, episodes about electronic jazz, ambient music, and a couple of episodes of space music for the stoned and astral tripping. The only episode in the top ten around an individual artist is the one I produced about Ryuichi Sakamoto. I’ll put the complete list of the top ten downloaded episodes in my podcast notes if you want to take a look.
For this episode, I want to return to a profile of the vintage recordings of an individual artist. This would be the late Conrad Schnitzler whose influence and collaborations in German electronic music are legendary. He was already a figure in performance art and music in Germany when he became a founding member of Tangerine Dream and recorded on their first album, Electronic Meditation in 1970. After laying down sound bombs on that album, he left to explore noise and electronics, often using his own electronic instruments to transform everyday noise in sound art. For three albums, he joined the German band Kluster (with a K) with Moebius and Roedelius. He was a musical iconoclast, ever prolific and usually self-releasing his original electronic works on cassette and sometimes albums. He worked in performance art and video and was a well-loved musician who eschewed popularity for creating art that satisfied himself.
A collection of his writing was published in 2023, called SOMETIMES IT DEGENERATES INTO MUSIC, by Conrad Schnitzler. In it he wrote, “I’m a performer, performance artist, intermedia artist—not multimedia, but between the media. I tend to see the word ‘musician’ as a derogatory term.” He added, “Back then I wanted to replay what I knew from my time as a machinist—the noise from the factory buildings—with instruments. I didn’t want normal scales, nor could I play them. That was my freedom: not being able to do anything. Sometimes it got out of hand and turned into music.”
Schnitzler self-released an “enormous amount of acoustic material in the 1970s and 1980s, deliberately disregarding the mechanisms of the music market.”
This is the first of what will probably be a two- or three-part series to recognize the audio genius and creative powerhouse that was Conrad Schnitzler. I’ll be playing four complete album sides from some of his formative works from the seventies, including some film music that wasn’t released at the time. I include this because I hear a kind of bridge in his style that lead to the album Consequenz in 1980.
Episode 138
Electronic Music of Conrad Schnitzler—A Retrospective, Part 1.
Playlist
Time | Track Time* | Start |
Introduction –Thom Holmes | 06:06 | 00:00 |
Conrad Schnitzler, “Meditation” from Rot (Red) (1973 Conrad Schnitzler Self-released. Composed, performed, recorded, and produced by Conrad Schnitzler. | 19:44 | 08:28 |
Conrad Schnitzler, “Die Rebellen Haben Sich In Den Bergen Versteckt” from Blau (Blue) (1974 Conrad Schnitzler Self-released. Composed, performed, recorded, and produced by Conrad Schnitzler. | 18:44 | 28:06 |
Conrad Schnitzler, “05/1975 B (6:11),” “05/1975 A (4:29),” “12/1975 A (1:53),” “14/1975 A (2:21),” “03/1975 A” from Filmmusik 2 (2017 Bureau B). Composed, performed, recorded, and produced by Conrad Schnitzler.These works were for composed for films that did not yet (most never) existed. They date from 1975 and fill an interesting niche in his work from the time. These shorter works contrast nicely to the extended works that he was producing up until this time. | 18:47 | 45:40 |
Conrad Schnitzler + Wolf Sequenza, “Nächte In Kreuzberg” (3:48), “Humpf” (2:51), “M5-477” (4:39), “Pendel” (4:16), “Wer Geht Da?” (3:46), and “Copacabana” (5:17) from Consequenz (1980 Conrad Schnitzler Self-released). Composed, performed, recorded, and produced by Conrad Schnitzler and Wolf Sequenza (Wolfgang Seidel). | 24:36 | 01:05:22 |
Note: These are all complete album sides. For Filmmusic 2 and Consequenz, the album sides include several individual tracks and the timings for each are shown in parentheses in the descriptions above.
Opening background music: Conrad Schnitzler, “Untitled” (excerpt, side A) of the Red Cassette (1974 Conrad Schnitzler Self-released) (09:08).
Introduction to the podcast voiced by Anne Benkovitz.
Additional opening, closing, and other incidental music by Thom Holmes.
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