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This album is nearly thirty years old now, but is still available, and Klaus Schulze is rightly regarded as one of the founding spirits of early electronic music. There are several aspects that characterise his work from this early period.
First of all, the tracks tend to be long - almost every track produced in this period is an entire long side of an LP, (we were definitely in the vinyl era then!). Indeed you sometimes got the impression that he could happily have carried on for hours, and was only stopped by the needle falling into the hole in the middle! Maybe they don't seem so long now we are in the era of CD's, but for the time, this was unusual.
Which leads neatly to the second characteristic - the sequences are very repetitive, and with a very low level of variation or development within the tracks, apart from a bit of build up at the start, that generally backs out at the end.
People who dislike his music tend to find this problematic, but those who like it find it hypnotic and effective. You certainly get much more music on one of his LP's than you do from a Tangerine Dream one of the same period.
The overall tone is consistently downbeat, but the pace is generally rapid, this goes well with the extended tracks.
"Ways of Changes" weighs in at 17 minutes, and starts with quite a lot of acoustic guitar to the fore, but soon the oscillators are warbling away, up and down, (think "Silver Machine"), over rapid tom-toms, and minor key keyboards.
"Some velvet phasing" is much more minimal, a very effective simple and plaintive keyboard theme, with some extreme phasing effects applied. (Phasing is the sort of 'eeeeooow!' effect, a swept frequency filter to get technical). It's very sad and very beautiful. Eight and a half minutes of this.
"Voices of Syn" is the third track, nearly 23 minutes. It begins with an unaccompanied operatic male voice, and he does not sound very happy about his lot in life. Soon the keyboards join in with a low slow drone, (an a sort of phasing with volume over it). Bleak but effective. After 6 minutes, Mr Opera has gone away, and we are into the main sequence. The droning volume phase keyboards continue to meander, but now there is a steady simple rapid percussion accompaniment, (sounds like someone playing the spoons to me!), and sort of repeated dull hooting noise. Sounds come and go, something a bit like a piano appears a couple of times, but mainly it chugs along in a similar style.
Note that the three albums from this period that I know well, Blackdance, Timewind, and Cyborg, all have a similar style and feel, so if you like one you are very likely to enjoy the others too.
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