Free Download TRANCEDANCER
We are happy to present to you now the original double album version of KAZZ first solo CD TRANCEDANCER.
Originally released late 1998 as a private release, it was officially released in Germany as a single CD.
The CD has been unavailable for some time, but now here it is in its full form, as originally intended.
With your free download you also get a PDF containing the original artwork plus extended liner notes.
All music was written, arranged, produced and performed by KAZZ,
except ”Gymnopedie” (written by Erik Satie, arranged by KAZZ).
Recorded and mixed at Timeless Sound Studios, Enschede, The Netherlands,
between Oct. 1996 – March 1998
CD1:
1. Entering The House (6;34)
2. Asking For Trancefur (4;20)
3a. Trancedancer 1 (10;10)
3b. Trancedancer 2 (4;15)
4. Meeting At Point Zero,1598 BC (5;20)
5a. Trancedancer 3 (9;58)
5b. Gymnopedie (E.Satie) (4;25)
6a. Watching Waters (6;35)
6b. Voices At X-Mas Eve Raising
The Lanterns (9;20)
6c. The Band Of The Army (1;40)
6d. Trancedancer 4 (6;57)
6e. Leaving The House (4;11)
CD2:
1. Trancedancer 5 (15;42)
2. 24 Hours:
The Day (9;50)
The Evening (4;40)
The Night (6;20)
3. Argentina’s Jazz (5;42)
4. Trancedancer 6 (10;00)
Sitting still & wondering (5;09) /
Trancedancer 6 (once more) (9;27)
KAZZ ABOUT THE TRACKS
Entering The House
This is an unlikely track to open an album, with just orchestral sounds. It was more a bit of a joke. It was showing what my music was absolutely not like. But then, it was the first time I had the possibility to bring in these sounds, and some of them reappear in other tracks. But I admit, it was just fun and I had no pretentions in writing an orchestral masterpiece.
Asking For Trancefur
Ah, Trancefur. The track was written as a little dance song, it even had a melody and a chorus. The basic line came pretty spontaneous. There was a sound in my Korg Trinity that developed when I held the key longer. From there the track grew into this dancething. It soon turned out to be an audience favorite. At my first concerts this was the opening number of the show, but it soon got the setcloser as I expanded the track with a new middle section and a long introduction, which was based upon the outro you hear in the studio version. In 2001, as more new material came in, Trancefur became the steady encore, as you can hear on the live-cd encores@home.de.
Trancedancer 1 / Trancedancer 2
These were the first tracks written when I had this album in mind. Both have strong links with older recordings from Klaus Schulze. But still, I think Klaus would never had done it this way, so the tracks have their right of existence. I don’t regard them as KS-copycat-compositions.
Meeting At Point Zero, 1598 BC
This is composition that has some medieval feeling. I always liked very much the feeling of music from the middle ages. There is always something happy about it and at the same time something dark. It was only played live once.
Trancedancer 3
Well, here’s some members of the orchestra taking their places. They get along with the sequencer and the (I admit) sometimes deafening percussion. Watch your loudspeakers. It’s one of the more catchier things I ever wrote and always got a strong response from those in the audience who wanted to dance. I am not sure what track by Klaus Schulze inspired me to write this.
Gymnopedie
A beautiful piece by the wonderful Erik Satie. Many people know the melody but when asked, only few have it on record or cd. I always wanted to do something with the tune. So I wanted people to have a chance to buy the song and recorded it myself. It is a complete new arrangement, as the original was played on piano only.
Trancedancer 4
Trancedancer 4 has five parts. The first segment, subtitled ‘‘Watching Waters’’ is an abstract soundscape that smoothly flows into ‘‘Voices At X-Mas Eve Raising The Lanterns’’. This is basically a three chord folksong, where only voices have been used. About halfway through the song the scale changes from major to minor. I wrote the track on Christmas Day, hence the title. At the end of the section The Band of The Salvation Army come out of nowhere, playing a short theme, before the real Trancedancer comes in. First there’s some funky bass introduction with a floating stringsmelody in the background, followed by a strong sequenced bass line and heavy percussion. The track concludes with some melodic atmospheric layers, with the same chords as the rhythmic part.
Trancedancer 5
Trancedancer 5 is a longer, ambient piece. It has various layers of strings. There is no percussion here. Someonce once called it a minddance, but you also might describe it as (the more familiar) picture music. Sit back and relax with this one.
24 Hours
A bit of a weird one this piece describes the day of someone working his ass off in the factory during daytime, being fully depending of machines around him. But when the job is done he finds time to relax in the evening and finally gets his well deserved sleep. Listening back to the music for the first time since a couple of years I think the first part is pretty mad.
Argentinas Jazz
A short track that pays tribute to the great late Astor Piazzolla, who may not have invented the tango but certainly took it into a new dimension with his brilliant jazzy adventures. Though the track has nothing to do with tango or Astor’s music, his spirit was certainly dwelling around the place when this piece was written.
Trancedancer 6
This track may bring back memories of the early Seventies, when Klaus Schulze still was with Ash Ra Tempel. There is a lot of percussion and guitar, all improvising and going on and on, only being interrupted in the middle with a section entitled Sitting Still And Wondering, which is a piano piece I wrote earlier and which seemed to fit in here perfectly.
HISTORY OF TRANCEDANCER
Though Trancedancer was KAZZ’ CD-debut, it was never meant to be. Already in 1996 KAZZ had almost completed a 77-minute composition called THE OBSERVATIONS OF MR. WHATT. Almost two years he had been working on the project. And by July 1996 he was busy in the mixing-process.
Then bad luck struck. As he went on holiday to Belgium with his family, his complete music collection was stolen. Instruments, CDs, equipment, all was gone when KAZZ returned home. All that was left was a poor cassette recording of the almost finished project and a floppy disk with some MIDI-information. Among the stolen equipment was his beloved EMU Vintage Keys set-up and Yamaha DX7. And most of all, the computer with the project. For two months KAZZ was unable to do anything. His world was collapsed. His faith in human kind had disappeared.
Slowly he packed up the idea of starting up the whole project from scratch. After purchasing new equipment the idea faded and so did the Mr. Whatt project. The unfinished audio tape still lies in the vaults.
After going through a period of transition, KAZZ started working on new compositions late 1996. The basic idea was to record a set of tracks, that would relate to the old works of Klaus Schulze. Though not specifically meant as a tribute-album, KAZZ was eager to dedicate the album to Klaus Schulze. The release of the album should coincide with Schulze’s 50th birthday in August 1997.
But recordings didn’t progress as fast as KAZZ wanted. He wasn’t able to spend the amount of time to recording as he wanted. Other events took his time as well: a busy job, an absolute crisis in his marriage, which eventually lead to a divorce in 1999. From the positive side there were heaps of musical ideas coming up. By the time Klaus Schulze turned 50 KAZZ found himself with a lot of new material, but most still not finished. So it was decided to forget about the whole birthday-thing and concentrate on the music instead. As it was going to be a private release anyway, there was no need to hurry.
By the end of the 1997 all backing tracks were finished. The eight Trancedancer-pieces (the ones dedicated to Klaus Schulze) were put together in a definitive order as a couple of them consisted of various parts. Besides there were a number of other tracks, which had no relationship with the KS-dedications. One of them being the Eric Satie composition Gymnopedie.
On Saturday Jan. 3rd 1998 KAZZ played his first ever living room concert at a party of one his friends. Here the new tracks were played live for the first time with KAZZ improvising all the soloing. It was his first solo appearance since 1994.
The next months saw KAZZ working hard on the final bits and pieces. In May all recording work was done. In the meantime KAZZ had left the band he founded in 1994, pH Factor. As the band had progressed into a direction he was not really interested in, he decided it was time to leave and from now on fully concentrate on a solo career.
Summertime did not leave much time for the mixing but by the end of September the job was finished. As the artwork was already printed, the 2CD was rushreleased in the first week of October by his private label Timeless Sounds.
KAZZ concentrated promotion activities in Germany, not only because it was the home of electronic music. Over the years he got to know a lot of people there and they might be kind of help to him to spread the news.
As it happened, KAZZ also sent a copy to Klaus Dieter Müller, manager of Klaus Schulze, who responded at first not too positive, putting KAZZ as a kind of Schulze-copycat. But then he did ask KAZZ to participate in the official Tribute To Klaus Schulze-CD, that was to be released through Berlin based Manikin Records on Jan. 1st 1999. For that CD KAZZ recorded a new track called Frank’s Tango, incorporating two fragments of Schulze classics (being Frank Herbert and Tango-Saty). He recorded two different versions of the track, a danceversion and a rockversion, the latter being more a kind of a joke. KDM chose the rockversion for the CD. In the CD booklet the release of Trancedancer was also mentioned.
Trancedancer got positive reviews all over and attracted attention on many levels. One of them was a small German company, who succeeded to sign KAZZ, after adding to the contract he had absolute freedom of creativity. The only problem being they didn’t want to release it as a 2CD. So it was decided to edit some of the tracks and leave a couple out.
KAZZ: ‘‘That was a tough decision. On some moments it felt like killing your baby, cutting it to bits and pieces.’’
In March 1999 the single-CD version was released in Germany. Though it didn’t sell a million copies, both company and artist were quite satisfied. Two years later KAZZ left the company for various reasons, not on a friendly basis. It was decided that KAZZ would sell the album till the stock run out. In November 2004 the last copies of the single-album were sold. KAZZ: ‘‘I am glad this little nightmare is over now.’’
One final note: in this story there is talk of 8 Trancedancer compositions. Only 6 appeared on the album. What happened to the missing two tracks. KAZZ: “The studiorecordings of those two tracks were never finished. I decided to leave them out because they were too long to include on the album. They were both over 20 minutes long. Later I made a new edit of both tracks and used it as an encore. The tracks appeared as Trancedancer 7 on my first live album encores@home.de which was recorded in 2001 during gigs in Germany.”
Though KAZZ released quite a number of cassette-only albums prior to Trancedancer, it is this sometimes hypnotising album that marks the starting point of KAZZ as a solo artist. Those familiar with later release will notify his style has undergone some changes, but the basic principles have never changed.
So now, get ready for the music. We have both versions of TRANCEDANCER for you.
The full double CD version is here
The edited single CD version is here