Klaus Schulze – Irrlicht

What can I say? A timeless electronic classic by the grandfather of modern electronic space music. There was nothing quite like it at the time, inescapably and unashamedly electronic full of gorgeous organic synth timbres and tones. It has some superb sweeping ambient textures, and as with Wendy Carlos’ Sonic Seasonings which was released this same year, they both predated what became the whole ambient thing by at least six years, well before Eno coined the phrase. It was this LP, the Wendy Carlos albums and early Tangerine Dream records that sparked my interest in electronic music and analogue sequencer composition. I was listening to Irrlicht a lot when I first joined Throbbing Gristle and I think you can sometimes hear those influences in what I was playing back then. To my ears it still sounds as good as it did nearly 50 years ago.