Yeah, I once made a pilgrimage to the original site of the Zodiak Free Arts Lab, on one of my visits to Germany...
So sad about this.
― geeta, Saturday, 6 August 2011 18:40 (twelve years ago) link
Posting to ILM from yr phone, from the back of the room during a keynote talk = challenging
― geeta, Saturday, 6 August 2011 18:43 (twelve years ago) link
rip, big man.
― you've got male (jim in glasgow), Sunday, 7 August 2011 00:20 (twelve years ago) link
RIP
― nakhchivan, Sunday, 7 August 2011 00:26 (twelve years ago) link
RIP. I'm feelin' Blau about this.
― The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ), Sunday, 7 August 2011 04:19 (twelve years ago) link
RIP - never heard a ton of his work, but the Kluster LPs and his solo stuff on Important is really good
― i genuinely thought when i first joined that he was the admin (ilxor), Sunday, 7 August 2011 04:27 (twelve years ago) link
Das bummer. RIP Con. Great man.
― R. Stornoway (Tom D.), Sunday, 7 August 2011 11:48 (twelve years ago) link
RIP. Rot is one of my favorite things ever, as are Kluster and that first Tangerine Dream album. A tremendous figure in my musical life for sure.
― douche chills (crüt), Sunday, 7 August 2011 11:50 (twelve years ago) link
Writing up an obituary piece--let me know if any of you have thoughts or memories you'd like to add
A friend is giving me a copy of a radio show he did in the '80s, where he had Schnitzler as the special musical guest--it is awesome
― geeta, Sunday, 7 August 2011 19:51 (twelve years ago) link
jeez, this is a bummer. r.i.p.
― original bgm, Monday, 8 August 2011 13:48 (twelve years ago) link
― moonship journey to baja, Monday, 8 August 2011 16:21 (twelve years ago) link
Brief but wonderful documentary (auf Deutsch):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTR88nW4GcU
― geeta, Monday, 8 August 2011 18:56 (twelve years ago) link
i have never gotten deep into his music, not because i don't love "auf dem schwarzen kanal" but only because i have found it so hard to get ahold of. i never got those captain trip reissues of yellow, red, black, etc
someone should organize a memorial torrent
― moonship journey to baja, Monday, 8 August 2011 21:21 (twelve years ago) link
he's done a lot of different things. 'auf dem schwarzen kanal' was the most visible 12" in a brief pop music period. if you like that, check out 'con 3' 'consequenz I' 'consequenz II' and 'roofmusic' (the latter is silly but a sentimental favorite)
and 'ballet statique' (aka 'con') -- not pop, but it's not just his best but one of the best electronic music albums of all time
― Milton Parker, Monday, 8 August 2011 22:15 (twelve years ago) link
ballet statique was reissued earlier this year. milton otm, completely essential
pretty much everything i've heard of his up until like mid 80s (haven't had a chance to go much further as yet) has been gold, pure gold
especially love his warped synth pop phase
hopefully there'll be some reissues of the private press stuff
rip con
― missingNO, Tuesday, 9 August 2011 00:35 (twelve years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUdIZsbCe-g
gelb, pure gelb
wrote these reviews of the captain trips reissues for a retail website that sold out of them before they could even post them -- ah well, here now
Conrad Schnitzler, Con (Captain Trips Records)
From 1978, 'Con' is Schnitzler's most legendary release. After adecade of recording extended side long damaged & detuned synthepics, he went into the studio with Tangerine Dream's Peter Baumann,who refined Schnitzler's most decentered sounds into five discreettracks. At a time when many of the established electronicmusicians were eschewing all abstraction to focus on classical (andcommercial) melodies, spending more and more time behind the keyboardsand less at the patchbay, Schnitzler's sculptures on 'Con' werepushing even further towards the forgotten potentials for pureabstraction in electronic sound. The opening thirteen minutetrack 'Electric Garden' is a subtle and spare masterpiece.
This album was originally released on CD by Spalax as 'BalletStatique' in 1992 with five bonus tracks taken from the 1981 album'Electrocon'. This edition on Captain Trips is remastered(sounds slightly louder but otherwise the same), and contains threenew bonus tracks, including two later reworkings of the track 'BalletStatique'. Lovely mini-sleeve replica of the original vinyl, andan illustrated fold-out sleeve. Though there's no need to rebuythis if you have the Spalax edition, many of the people who've heard'Con' list it among their favorite electronic albums of all time,including me. If you're only buying one, make sure it's thisone.
Conrad Schnitzler, Con 2+ (Captain Trips Records)
The 1980 followup to Schnitzler's disorienting and beautifulmasterpiece 'Con', was, surprisingly, a 12-inch disco single for RCARecords. Though 'Disco' might remain a relative term, the fourtracks on the 'Auf Dem Schwarzen Kanal' EP are straight up danceableelectropop. The production standard is very high, withSchnitzler's distinct analog synth solos filling in all the detailsbetween his chanted, vocodered & filtered vocals. Releasednear the beginning of Neue Deutsche Welle and the rise of Germanicelectropop that signalled a clean break from the tranced out cosmicmusic of the 70's, Schnitzler might have been the last person peopleexpected to bridge the gap without missing a beat, but he did it:this 12" EP is definitely of interest to fans of contemporaryworks by D.A.F., Pyrolator or Palais Schaumberg, but shows thedistinctive fingerprints of a ten year veteran of the electric musiclab. This Captain Trips release fills out the disc with apreviously unreleased album recorded in 1981, 'Consequenz 3',featuring an assortment of primitive synth sounds laid over loud,live, real drums -- while some of the tracks sound somewhatunfinished, the sounds remain bizarre and there are enough strangetwists in the tracks to take the unprepared listener by surprise.The main attraction here, however, is of course the re-release of thelong unavailable 'Auf Dem Schwarzen Kanal'. Captain Trips hasadded a lyric sheet in English and Japanese, as well as an illustratedfold-out insert.
Conrad Schnitzler, Con 3 (Captain Trips Records)
Schnitzler's 1981 'Con 3' follows on from the previous year's 12"EP with an entire album of electropop for Germany's Sky Records.The sounds are still strange, but the cleanly recorded spoken wordvocals are now front and center in the mix. There are manypeople who will prefer his slightly bent electropop songs to the purerabstractions of his earlier (and later) work -- and for those who love'Auf Dem Schwarzen Kanal', this is definitely the album lengthfollowup. Perhaps slightly less strange, but still, with theoccasional track like 'Wer Sind Wir Denn', hardly normal. The CDadds six tracks of instrumental remixes of the album's tracks -- very,very minimal.
Conrad Schnitzler, Electrocon (Captain Trips Records)
The original CD release of 'Con' (as 'Ballet Statique') on SpalaxRecords in 1992 also featured five previously unreleased bonus tracksthat were just as beautiful as the album itself, each one exactly fourminutes long. Here at last is a release of the entire album theywere pulled from, also recorded at Peter Baumann's Paragon Studio from1980 to 1981. If you're a fan of 'Con', this is certainly a greatfollowup purchase. And this one definitely has my favoritecover of the entire series -- the man himself, dressed to ridecomplete with robotic helmet, posing atop a metal sculpture,brandishing his binaural head-shaped microphone at the end of a longpole. Thanking you!
― Milton Parker, Tuesday, 9 August 2011 08:02 (twelve years ago) link
2006 interview in The Wire:
http://thewire.co.uk/articles/7175/
― ban this sick stunt (anagram), Tuesday, 9 August 2011 16:03 (twelve years ago) link
Thanking you!
― I thought that I heard you loling, I thought that I heard you steen (crüt), Tuesday, 9 August 2011 17:18 (twelve years ago) link
Love this:
"I’m not soft eyes. I’m eyes with bananas in. I have Xs in my eyes."
― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Tuesday, 9 August 2011 17:24 (twelve years ago) link
nice piece on con by randy jones:
http://madronalabs.com/topics/987-conrad-schnitzler-remembered
― geeta, Wednesday, 10 August 2011 05:33 (twelve years ago) link
“Ja! I’m always trying to make sounds that aren’t normal. To avoid sounds that you can make real music with.”
Love this guy.
― The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ), Wednesday, 10 August 2011 05:38 (twelve years ago) link
Conrad Schnitzler tribute on WFMU right now (3-6 PM EST) with special guest GenKen, who knew him well:
http://wfmu.org
― geeta, Thursday, 18 August 2011 19:01 (twelve years ago) link
they're playing 'Gelb' right now
I'm told they'll soon be live mixing material from the cassette concerts--it's like a con-cert but on WFMU
― geeta, Thursday, 18 August 2011 19:10 (twelve years ago) link
thanks for the heads up! listening. d-_-b
― original bgm, Thursday, 18 August 2011 19:58 (twelve years ago) link
^^
― puerile fantasies (Matt P), Thursday, 18 August 2011 20:05 (twelve years ago) link
my epic 3000-word obituary on Schnitzler will be up at frieze.com, either later today or tomorrow--i'll post the link when it's up
― geeta, Thursday, 18 August 2011 20:07 (twelve years ago) link
here's the link to the obituary i wrote, for frieze:
http://www.frieze.com/comment/article/conrad-schnitzler/
― geeta, Sunday, 21 August 2011 23:27 (twelve years ago) link
The Live '72 double LP on Further is excellent.
― allday, Sunday, 21 August 2011 23:45 (twelve years ago) link
you are some kind of saint, geeta
amazing work
― Milton Parker, Monday, 22 August 2011 17:26 (twelve years ago) link
you are sweet, milton
just heard from seidel, who told me that he's printing it out and delivering it to con's wife
― geeta, Tuesday, 23 August 2011 23:02 (twelve years ago) link
Great piece
― 50000000 elves (blank), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 23:46 (twelve years ago) link
yeah!
― puerile fantasies (Matt P), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 23:51 (twelve years ago) link
thanks, guys!
Dave weighs in at the Stranger, great headline:
http://lineout.thestranger.com/lineout/archives/2011/08/24/the-longest-article-on-the-internet-about-conrad-schnitzler
― geeta, Thursday, 25 August 2011 00:23 (twelve years ago) link
finally got around to reading your article, geeta. really loved it.
― original bgm, Sunday, 4 September 2011 07:07 (twelve years ago) link
thanks, alan.
i've been getting a lot of letters from people asking me to post the 30-page-long Con email that I refer to in the article. wondering if that's a good idea.
i mean, it is long. there is certainly interesting stuff in there. most of it is in german. but perhaps i should wait before doing that. for one thing, it'd be good to translate the whole thing from german to english. but also, to interpret it, try to give it some context, instead of just dropping it on my website as a giant mass of data. for example, there's a lot of interesting stuff in there about his thoughts on various sculptors (jean arp, alexander archipenko, etc); a lot of stuff about rhythm, and his concept of how rhythm works, and about painting (especially jackson pollock)
― geeta, Sunday, 4 September 2011 20:03 (twelve years ago) link
i was going to say ... and i was going to ask whether it's enough for a 33 1/3 or something that length?
― mr peabody (moonship journey to baja), Sunday, 4 September 2011 20:09 (twelve years ago) link
not that they'd do a 33 1/3 on ballet statique or whatever
― mr peabody (moonship journey to baja), Sunday, 4 September 2011 20:10 (twelve years ago) link
ha ha! i think writing one 33 1/3 book was enough for me!
if i wrote a 120-page book about something like this, something that meant a lot to me that was a bit too 'out-there' for yr average american publishing house--and just distributed it myself, as a PDF, would people be into it? perhaps i could get people to send donations? if i could get people to agree to pay $10 up front (perhaps for a 'signed, numbered' copy that's printed on nice paper?) i could probably afford to do this.
― geeta, Sunday, 4 September 2011 20:26 (twelve years ago) link
i would
― mr peabody (moonship journey to baja), Sunday, 4 September 2011 20:35 (twelve years ago) link
<3
now i just need to round up another 2,999 people and it's a go
― geeta, Sunday, 4 September 2011 21:18 (twelve years ago) link
#2999!
― original bgm, Monday, 5 September 2011 05:41 (twelve years ago) link
if i wrote a 120-page book about something like this, something that meant a lot to me that was a bit too 'out-there' for yr average american publishing house
I was going to suggest talking to the folks who put out the Roedelius biography "Painting with Sound", which was about that length iirc and padded out by lots of glossy photos, but the internet says that's the only book they ever published, so I guess they're probably the author's one-man operation rather than an actual publisher you could pitch to.
Anyway somehow I heard of that and bought a real paper copy without knowing the author or even being a hardcore obsessive Roedelius fan, if that gives you any hope.
Thing I was strangely delighted to learn: Conrad's son Gregor i.e. the teenager ranting on Conrad und Sohn has gone on to be a screenwriter, incl. for long-running much-loved German crime show Tatort
― the ascent of nyan (a passing spacecadet), Monday, 5 September 2011 13:11 (twelve years ago) link
I'm in. So that's, what, another 2996 to go?
― Euripides Trousers (Tom D.), Monday, 5 September 2011 13:14 (twelve years ago) link
Count me in, too.
But I don't really see why it being a long e-mail and parts of it in German should obstruct it being posted in full, if you think it can be interesting to many?
― Vision Kreayshawn Newsun (Le Bateau Ivre), Monday, 5 September 2011 13:37 (twelve years ago) link
if it was $10 i bet i could get 10 friends to buy it
ich habe vier jahre deutsche klasse gelearned im schule
― mr peabody (moonship journey to baja), Monday, 5 September 2011 17:31 (twelve years ago) link
see if you can spot the fake german in that sentence
for what it's worth ILX has some folks who do small publishing (forget their usernames), they did chapbooks for Abbott and ZS
chancepress.com
― sleeve, Monday, 5 September 2011 18:30 (twelve years ago) link
blurb.com books can look pretty nice too
― original bgm, Monday, 5 September 2011 18:57 (twelve years ago) link
i think we're down to 2,994 now
<3 all of you
posting to ILM from my phone, in the hospital--today totally sucks :(
― geeta, Tuesday, 6 September 2011 20:56 (twelve years ago) link