In many respects this is a collaoration against nature. Synths of all Germanic coldness Klaus Schulze (I allow myself to use a cliché as trite as I know almost nothing of his works and it must be that I do illusion, especially in a paragraph of introduction) and vocalizations supra-terrestrial overflowing emotion of Lisa Gerrard should never have to meet, let alone to melt into a long-term collaboration. And yet ...
When their first album together Farscape was published in 2008, I was not sure at first what to think. After have been disappointed repeatedly during the 2000s by the artistic choices of Lisa Gerrard, I felt that sinking slowly in the anecdotal, refusing to be stuck with other than their own temperaments and no longer work with collaborators of the background which were careful not to push it to put themselves in danger, I ended up not expect much from it. Too often, Lisa chose to accompany her voice just tablecloths planouillantes without personality (of the Whale Rider Soundtrack particular) and the result was disappointing, because these webs were designed simply as a funnel that directs attention the listener to a voice, only to be well connected to anything, managed the feat of appearing trite sad. Even Lisa Gerrard has no right to proceed to freewheel and hope that I find it awesome by default (even if for the effectiveness of my argument, I pass over in silence here The Silver Tree (2006), an album who had already somewhat reconciled with his recent productions).
Knowing the reputation of Klaus Schulze as pope German synth hovering, so I was told initially that the new leadership would at least force it to adapt to abandon his strings usual to find a new way of singing, to put her voice to another artistic personality, possibly as strong and determined as his.
Listening to Farscape made me a little disillusioned. Like everyone else, Klaus Schulze has probably found initially paralyzed by the voice of Lisa Gerrard and did not dare endanger it, merely in the first five tables in a small carpet weaving arpeggios and dropping the reins to Lisa, who was probably only too happy to find his little habits. Things are just starting to become interesting in the last two tables at the end of CD2 where an early dialogue is established between the voice of Lisa Gerrard and Klaus Schulze accompaniment.
That said, the disc was already germinating a sign of a possible renewal. Indeed, the length of the pieces, twenty minutes on average, gave the singer a new freedom that it seemed not quite knowing what to do but probably had unconsciously to open new perspectives. After all, many world music (Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan for example) work on the mode of repetition until exhaustion. But it is a direction which, until now, the origins of pop-rock band Dead Can Dance had kept away. Perhaps this notion of time it would take her to rethink how she sees her singing, to find the desire to build songs and the unique ability to create and resolve tensions, a capacity that was the secret of manufacturing its production of the 80 and 90 and found in its purest form in songs like The Host of Seraphim or Cantara example.
That was my state of mind this Friday evening when, ensconced in a seat of the AB, I see the lights go out of the room (height): joy of seeing Lisa Gerrard in a room-sized, curious to see what is capable Klaus Schulze, but small hope of actually finding the exceptional intensity of my concerts by Dead Can Dance and Lisa Gerrard in the 90s. What was it? Find out by following the next episode the fabulous adventures of "Little Peter the country synths magical fairy godmother and Lisa" (tentative title).
