Entrance [Import]

En=Trance, is without doubt my favourite all time synth album. It appear to be overlooked by many Schulze fans. Don't make this mistake! As with many of Schulze's work, you have to treat it like a good wine, and after a few listenings you begin to appreciate the mastery of this music. Once it gets you your hooked.
This CD contains only 4 tracks, but what tracks. A feast of sweeping and interweaving chords that take you somewhere else.
The title track kicks off with Schulze's souring synth lines, pushing your speakers to the limit, and an underlying thundererous base underpins the whole thing, this music begs to be played loud. You wonder when it will calm down, it doesn't. It reminds me of the rythmic roaring of the waves during a storm.
Numerique comes next, with a slightly more laid back approach, but equally hypnotic and powerful.
Fm Delight is, I feel, THE ultimate synth creation bar none. All of the emotional strings are engaged in this track, and the whole piece seems to ride a gigantic rollercoaster of emotion. A no holes barred masterful piece.
Closing with Velvet System, confirms Schulze's skill. This is another beautiful piece. Rolling chords and bass lines pump out of the speakers apace and set your mind free.
To sum up - shut the doors, pump up the volume and leave your stress behind.
Essential listening. A must buy.

Four tracks of around eighteen minutes each and fantastic recording quality. For me this is the last decent album Klaus Schulze produced.

The opening, title, track kicks off with a melee of effects (like a modern, digital version of Klaus' 1979 offering 'Dune', for those familiar with that work). After four minutes these fade away as a jaunty, up-tempo sequence starts up. However this tends to dominate the piece and mask any development the track might have. There ARE things going on below the surface but frankly they are not interesting enough to make me want to listen. Consequently the piece just goes on for too long. And, in fact, this is the big flaw for the first half of the album: the pieces start well enough and sound like they are going to get quite interesting but just when you think "something is bound to happen now"... it doesn't!!!

'alpha-Numerique' starts with a deep bass 'choir voice' accompanied by short, chopping synth chords. A sharp blast heralds a lightweight, playful sequence. This time things do change a bit - but rather than the gradual evolvement we are used to from most of Schulze's work, we get sudden changes. But it's all a bit too 'plinky-plonky' for my liking and lacks real conviction, so I can't really take it seriously. Part way through Klaus briefly adds some percussive stabs that add meat to the track but it's far too late. However I do love the way he kills the track with a wonderful crescendo of drums!

'Fm Delight' is far superior!! Close your eyes and listen to the wonderful, dreamy, angelic introductory theme - paradise! A lovely, bouncy sequence starts up and then in come what sound like synthesiser versions of tom-toms to add to the effervescent mix. An electric piano stabs away happily to enhance the piece further. Out of the four tracks on the album, this one shows some form of evolvement. The one track worthy of its eighteen minutes play time and easily the best piece on the disc.

'Velvet System' runs a very close second. Commencing in a similar style to the previous track, this actually builds a lot quicker, this time things get more frenetic and 'louder'. Sharp synth blasts provide doors to new turns in the track (again we get sudden changes rather than slow evolvements). Unfortunately the track suffers arrested development during its second half for a few minutes, but this is a small blemish on the piece as a whole when, at fourteen minutes, the track suddenly becomes alive again with thundering synth voices.

Overall, then, two pieces that really needed proper development along with two absolute classics. The latter tracks are historically significant as they represent Schulze's swansong in terms of the genuine artistic inventiveness and credibility that he had possessed as far back as the mid 1960s (but that's another story).

Overall I am awarding the album four stars as the latter tracks more than make up for the inferior ones.