''Trancefer'' is the fourteenth album by

Klaus Schulze Klaus Schulze (4 August 1947 – 26 April 2022) was a German electronic music pioneer, composer and musician. He also used the alias Richard Wahnfried and was a member of the Krautrock bands Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel, and the Cosmic Jokers ...

. It was originally released in 1981, and in 2006 was the twenty-third Schulze album reissued by Revisited Records. With the original total running time of 37 minutes and 23 seconds, it was the shortest album in Schulze's canon until the 2006 reissue doubled its running time by including alternate versions of the main tracks.

Overview

''Trancefer'' features strong performances by Wolfgang Tiepold on cello and

Michael Shrieve Michael Shrieve (born July 6, 1949) is an American drummer, percussionist, and composer. He is best known as the drummer of the rock band Santana, playing on the band's first seven albums from 1969 to 1974. At age 20, Shrieve was the second youn ...

on percussion. Although it was his second album recorded with digital instruments, and has a great deal of treble, it is an example of the Berlin School genre which developed in the 1970s. The second track, "Silent Running", was inspired by the science fiction film ''

Silent Running ''Silent Running'' is a 1972 American ecological-themed science fiction film. It is the directorial debut of Douglas Trumbull, and stars Bruce Dern, Cliff Potts, Ron Rifkin, and Jesse Vint. Plot In the future, all forests on Earth have b ...

'' starring

Bruce Dern Bruce MacLeish Dern (born June 4, 1936) is an American actor. He has received several accolades, including the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor and the Silver Bear for Best Actor. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Suppo ...

. This was the third Schulze piece to be inspired by science fiction, following "Dune" (from ''

Dune A dune is a landform composed of wind- or water-driven sand. It typically takes the form of a mound, ridge, or hill. An area with dunes is called a dune system or a dune complex. A large dune complex is called a dune field, while broad, flat ...

'', 1979) and "The Andromeda Strain" (1976; first collected on ''

Historic Edition ''Historic Edition'' is a limited edition 10-disc CD box set released by Klaus Schulze in 1995 containing unreleased archival recordings. This set was wholly included in Schulze's 50-disc CD box set '' The Ultimate Edition'' released in 2000 (disc ...

'', 1995). ''Trancefer'' is quite distinctive in its sound and arrangements. It is quite different from what Schulze was doing in the 1970s in the sense that it is not a composition that uses sequencers, transpositions, and a main melody line. ''Trancefer'' is more syncopated, and here the main focus is put on the dialog between the percussion and the chords Schulze is playing on the

Yamaha CS-80 The Yamaha CS-80 is an analog synthesizer introduced by Yamaha Corporation in 1977. It supports true 8-voice polyphony, with two independent synthesizer layers per voice each with its own set of front panel controls, in addition to a number of ha ...

synthesizer. Two pre-release versions of ''Trancefer'' were produced as test pressings before the release of the album. The first, limited to 300 copies, was cut at 45 RPM (the "normal cut"), and the other, limited to 500 copies, plays at 33 RPM and was

half-speed mastered Half-speed mastering is a technique occasionally used when cutting the acetate lacquers from which phonograph records are produced. The cutting machine platter is run at half of the usual speed (16 rpm for 33 rpm records) while the signal to be ...

(the "halfspeed cut"). The mixes on both versions are different than the released versions. One track from each test cut was included on the 2006 Revisited reissue.

Track listing

All tracks composed by Klaus Schulze.

References

External links

''Trancefer''
at the official site of Klaus Schulze * {{Authority control Klaus Schulze albums 1981 albums