Another one from the category 'album art too terrifying to hear the actual album'
(Sorry for veering off topic...)
edit: Klaus Nomi is in fact a hard one to listen to, 80ies synth pop with androgynous eunuch-like-vocals, but seems like it was an interesting figure, saw a documentation about him recently, kind of a sad story of life.
I got to Schulze's '80s works. I can't remember exactly how far I got before deciding that Schulze isn't for me, but it was some point around the late '80s. Hah.
OK, listened to a few KS-albums these days, Picture Music, Timewind, Moondawn and Mirage, I thought this would give me a good overlook as the typical albums from his classical "kosmische musik" 70ies sequencer-phase, and I especially found Timewind to be pretty impressive. "Wahnfried 1883" blowed me completely away. It´s like a 1000 audio tracks of analog synthesizer building a cosmic cathedral of sound. Not very complex musically, but never banal, always interesting melodically.
But then it´s like the other albums I heard so far all seemed a bit inferior to this. Especially on Moondawn he relies too much on uninspired synth-noodling over the same repetitive sequencer patterns imo. I think you can hear he´s not the classical trained pianist like someone like say Vangelis I think is, who brought into his playing a lot of actual classic/jazzy sounding stuff.
Tangerine Dream I think too were never the great virtuoso instrumentalists, but on their mid-70ies albums (the only ones I know so far) they used simple and effective melodies and a lot of rather obscure sounds/soundscapes woven into their tracks, what makes them sounding more like pioneers of 90ies ambient techno stuff. Except for Timewind, I think I like the TD-stuff more than what I heard so far from Schulze.
yes ks doesn't seem like a classically trained instrumentalist to me either. he started out as a drummer before anything though. i see him first and foremost as an artist. much like fsol he creates collages/tapestries
a lot and i mean a lot of his music is long arp sequencer runs with him noodling
idk you either like it or grow to or ya don't ha
try out Kontinuum
it may be more of the same to you idk but i love it
Dennis, I'm with you almost word-for-word. KS's stuff largely seems like him jamming, whereas even at their most freeform, TD's pieces tended to sound composed to some extent (other than the pre-Virgin stuff, obviously). KS's stuff just doesn't have anything to really hook me and drag me in. Timewind, too, is the only one I've returned to.