Klaus Schulze, who has died aged 74 after suffering from renal disease, released more than 60 albums in his lifetime. He was often the recipient of such accolades as the godfather of techno music, was considered part of the Berlin School of electronic music and was credited with being an inspirational figure in ambient and IDM (intelligent dance music).
Perhaps it would be more accurate to describe him as a versatile and gifted composer whose music encompassed ideas from many genres, including classical and jazz, which he expressed through mainly electronic means. Though he started out as a rock drummer who was briefly a member of Tangerine Dream, he always knew that he “wanted to play with harmonies and sounds”. The revolutionary arrival of synthesisers in the early 1970s gave him the tools that could express his bubbling musical ideas. The film music composer Hans Zimmer used one of Schulze’s pieces as part of his score for the movie Dune (2021), and described his work as “the perfect balance between the soul and technology”.
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